DJI Mavic Air 2 Takes Potential to the Next Level

On April 15, 2021, DJI introduced an even more advanced version of the drone. As much as possible about DJI AIR 2S in our review.

Introduction

The very case when the final result exceed­ed almost all the pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned expec­ta­tions by an order of mag­ni­tude. DJI Mav­ic Air 2 is the sec­ond com­plete­ly redesigned ver­sion of the leg­endary Mav­ic Air drone, the high-tech poten­tial of which can eas­i­ly com­pete with the flag­ship mod­els of the Mav­ic portable series, thus pre­de­ter­min­ing their immi­nent full-fledged upgrade. Look­ing ahead, we note that the devel­op­er not only man­aged to build a com­plete­ly new drone that sets mod­ern hob­by trends, but also offer its prod­uct at the price of its pre­de­ces­sor. By tra­di­tion, let’s start with the key fea­tures of the bright nov­el­ty.

Peculiarities

• Weight 570 g
• Satel­lite posi­tion­ing GPS/GLONASS
• Front / rear and bot­tom visu­al­iza­tion sys­tem of the sur­round­ing world (includ­ing: visu­al, ultra­son­ic and IR sen­sors + addi­tion­al LED back­light for cor­rect oper­a­tion of the sys­tem in low light con­di­tions)
• Ocu­Sync 2.0 dig­i­tal video trans­mis­sion tech­nol­o­gy
• Oper­at­ing range 2.4GHz / 5.8GHz fre­quen­cies with the abil­i­ty to auto­mat­i­cal­ly switch in real time to the chan­nel with the least inter­fer­ence
• Max. FPV removal dis­tance 10 km
• Max. 1080P video stream­ing qual­i­ty
• Max. flight time 34 min
• Max. ceil­ing above sea lev­el 5000 m
• Max. hor­i­zon­tal flight speed 68.4 km/h
• 48MP 4K cam­era built on 1/2‑inch Sony IMX586 CMOS sen­sor with 0.8um pix­el size; with built-in Bay­er col­or fil­ter array
• 3‑axis mechan­i­cal image sta­bi­liza­tion
• Max. Movie Record­ing Mode: 4K@60fps
• Max. pho­to res­o­lu­tion: 8000 × 6000 pix­els
• Pop­py. bit rate 120 Mbps
• Dig­i­tal zoom (2x for 4K/2.7K; 4x for FHD)
• HDR modes for photo/video/panorama
• Smart­Pho­to Func­tion
• 4‑Mode 8K/4K Hyper­lapse (Course Lock/Free/Waypoint/Circle)
• Focus­Track Intel­li­gent Fol­low­er Set (Spot­light 2.0/ActiveTrack 3.0/Point of inter­est 3.0)
• 6 × auto­mat­ic flight and Quick­Shot modes (Dronie/Circle/Helix/Rocket/Boomerang/Asteroid)
• D‑Cinelike Col­or Pro­file
• H.264/H.265 video codecs
• New con­trol equip­ment (with remov­able sticks) and max. run­ning time 240 min­utes
• DJI Smart Con­troller sup­port
• Advanced pilot assis­tance sys­tem for pilot­ing the third gen­er­a­tion APAS 3.0
• Built-in mem­o­ry 8GB
• DJI Fly Mobile App
• Built in mob. DJI Mimo edi­tor app
• Two sets of ND fil­ters
• MicroSD card slot up to 256GB
• Con­nec­tion inter­faces: USB‑C

Equipment

The devel­op­er offers the drone in four trim lev­els:

Mavic Air 2

Mavic Air 2 Fly More Combo

Mavic Air 2 Fly More Combo & DJI Care Refresh

Mavic Air 2 Fly More Combo (DJI Smart Controller)

Appearance

Specification

Drone

Take­off weight:

570 gr

Dimen­sions (fold­ed L×W×H):

180×97×84mm

Dimen­sions (in flight L×W×H):

183×253×77mm

Diag­o­nal size:

302 mm

Max. climb rate:

14.4 km/h (S mode)
14.4km/h (N mode)

Max. sink rate:

10.8km/h (S mode)
10.8km/h (N mode)
18 km/h (mode S at a sharp descent)
10.8 km/h (all modes at 4500 m)

Max. ceil­ing above sea lev­el:

5000 m

Max. flight time (calm):

34 min

Max. hov­er­ing time (calm):

33 min

Max. flight dis­tance (calm):

18.5 km

Max. hor­i­zon­tal flight speed:

68.4 km/h (S mode)
43.2 km/h (N mode)
18 km/h (T mode)

Max. per­mis­si­ble wind speed:

8–10m/s (lev­el 5)

Max. tilt angle:

35º (S mode)
20º (N mode)
35º (N mode in strong wind con­di­tions)

Max. angu­lar veloc­i­ty:

250º/s (S mode)
250º/s (N mode)

Oper­at­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

-10º to +40ºC

Oper­at­ing fre­quen­cy range:

2.400–2.4835 GHz
5.725–5.850 GHz

Trans­mit­ter pow­er (EIRP):

Satel­lite posi­tion­ing:

GPS+GLONASS

Posi­tion­ing Accu­ra­cy:

In the ver­ti­cal plane:
± 0.1 m (with visu­al posi­tion­ing sys­tem enabled)
± 0.5 m (posi­tion­ing by satel­lites)
In the hor­i­zon­tal plane:
± 0.1 m (with visu­al posi­tion­ing sys­tem enabled)
± 1.5 m (posi­tion­ing by satel­lites)

Pro­pellers:

Quick release, qui­et, fold­able

Com­pass:

Com­pass mod­ule

IMU:

IMU mod­ule

Built-in mem­o­ry:

8GB

battery

Type of:

Lithi­um Poly­mer 3S

Capac­i­ty:

3500 mAh

Volt­age:

11.55 V

Max. charg­ing volt­age:

13.2 V

Pow­er:

40.42 Wh

The weight:

198 g

Charg­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

+5℃ to +40℃

Max. charg­ing pow­er:

38 W

Camera

Matrix:

1/2″ CMOS Sony IMX586 with built-in Bay­er col­or fil­ter array
Num­ber of effec­tive pix­els: 12M and 48M

Lens:

FOV: 84°
Eq. Focal length: 24 mm
Diaphragm: f/2.8
Focal length: 1 m to ∞

ISO range:

Video: 100‑6400
Pho­to (12MP): 100‑3200 (auto)
100‑6400 (man­u­al)
Pho­to (48MP): 100‑1600 (auto)
100‑3200 (man­u­al)

Max. image size:

48MP 8000×6000 pix­els

Pho­to modes:

Time-lapse: 12MP and 48MP
Burst shoot­ing: 12MP, 3/5/7 frames
Auto­mat­ic Expo­sure Com­pen­sa­tion (AEB): 12MP, 0.7EV in 3/5 steps
Inter­val shoot­ing: 12MP 2/3/5/7/10/15/20/30/60 sec
Smart Pho­to: Scene Recog­ni­tion, Hyper­Light and HDR
HDR panora­ma:
Ver­ti­cal (3×1): 3328 × 8000 pix­els (width × height)
Wide (3×3): 8000 × 6144 pix­els (width × height)
180° panora­ma (3×7): 8192 × 3500 pix­els (width × height)
Sphere (3×8+1): 8192 × 4096 pix­els (width × height)

Video res­o­lu­tion:

4K: 3840 × 2160 @ 24/25/30/48/50/60 fps
2.7K: 2688 × 1512 @ 24/25/30/48/50/60 fps
FHD: 1920 × 1080 @ 24/25/30/48/50/60/120/240 fps
4K Ultra HD HDR: 3840 × 2160 @ 24/25/30 fps
2.7K HDR: 2688 × 1512 @ 24/25/30 fps
FHD HDR: 1920 × 1080 @ 24/25/30 fps

Max. video bitrate:

120 Mbps

Col­or pro­file:

D‑Cinelike, Nor­mal

Sup­port­ed file sys­tems:

FAT32 and
exFAT

Pho­to for­mat:

JPEG/DNG(RAW)

Video for­mat:

MP4/MOV (H.264/MPEG‑4 AVC, H.265/HEVC)

Sup­port­ed SD cards:

microSD up to 256GB with read/write speeds up to UHS‑1 Speed ​​Grade 3

Rec­om­mend­ed micro SD cards:

San­Disk Extreme PRO 64GB V30 A2 microS­DXC
San­Disk High Endurance 64GB V30 microS­DXC
San­Disk Extreme 64GB V30 A2 microS­DXC
San­Disk Extreme 128GB V30 A2 microS­DXC
San­Disk Extreme 256GB V30 A2 microS­DXC
Lexar 667x 64GB V30 A2 microS­DXC
Lexar High Endurance 64GB V30 microS­DXC
Sam­sung EVO Plus (Yel­low) 64GB microS­DXC
Sam­sung EVO Plus (Red) 64GB microS­DXC
Sam­sung EVO Plus 128GB microS­DXC
Sam­sung EVO Plus 256GB microS­DXC
Kingston V30 128GB microS­DXC
Netac 256GB A1 microS­DXC

Zoom:

suspension

Mechan­i­cal range of rota­tion angles:

Incline: ‑135° to 45°
Bank: ‑45° to 45°
Turn: ‑100° to 100°

Oper­at­ing range of rota­tion angles:

Tilt: ‑90° to 0° (default) ‑90° to 24° (extend­ed)

Sta­bi­liza­tion:

3‑axis mechan­i­cal (tilt, roll, pan)

Max. con­trolled speed (tilt):

100°/s

Angu­lar vibra­tion range:

±0.01°

Sensor system

Front sen­sors:

Mea­sur­ing accu­ra­cy range:
0.35–22 m
Recog­ni­tion range: 0.35–44 m
Obsta­cle Detec­tion Speed:
≤ 12 m/s
FOV: Hor­i­zon­tal: 71°; ver­ti­cal: 56°

Rear sen­sors:

Mea­sur­ing accu­ra­cy range: 0.37–23.6 m
Recog­ni­tion range: 0.37–47.2 m
Obsta­cle Detec­tion Speed:
≤ 12m/s
FOV: Hor­i­zon­tal: 57°; ver­ti­cal: 44°

Avail­able low­er sen­sors:

Dual vision sen­sors + Time of Flight (ToF) sen­sors

Low­er sen­sors:

ToF mea­sure­ment accu­ra­cy range: 0.1–8 m
Posi­tion­ing range: 0.5–30 m
Posi­tion­ing range of video sen­sors: 0.5–60 m

Side sen­sors:

No

Bot­tom Aux­il­iary Light:

1 x LED

Safety

Obsta­cle avoid­ance sys­tem:

Advanced Pilot Assis­tance Sys­tem (APAS 3.0)

Videolink

Video stream trans­mis­sion sys­tem:

Ocu­Sync 2.0
2.4GHz/5.8GHz auto-switch­ing

Max. sig­nal trans­mis­sion dis­tance:

10 km (FCC), 6 km (CE), 6 km (SRRC), 6 km (MIC)

Broad­cast qual­i­ty:

720p@30fps
1080p@30fps

Sig­nal delay (depend­ing on con­di­tions at the launch site and mobile device):

120–130ms

Video encod­ing for­mat:

H.265

Max. broad­cast bitrate:

40 Mbps

Oper­at­ing range fre­quen­cies:

2.4–2.4835 GHz
5.725–5.850 GHz

Remote Control

Con­trol equip­ment trans­mis­sion sys­tem:

Ocu­Sync 2.0

Ports of com­pat­i­ble mobs. devices:

Light­ning, Micro USB, USB Type‑C

Max. size of sup­port­ed mobiles. devices:

180 × 86 × 10 mm (Height × Width × Thick­ness)

Oper­at­ing range tem­per­a­tures:

-10℃ to 40℃

Trans­mit­ter pow­er (EIRP):

Work­ing Current/Voltage:

1200mA at 3.7V (for Android)
700mA at 3.7V (iOS)

Camera Potential

The pho­to and video qual­i­ty of the Mav­ic Air 2 has reached a whole new lev­el. Now it can shoot amaz­ing­ly smooth 4K video at 60 fps. A D‑Cinelike col­or pro­file is avail­able to store more infor­ma­tion for post-pro­cess­ing, while the HEVC (H.265) video codec will record more image infor­ma­tion using less mem­o­ry with­out loss of dynam­ic range and detail.

HDR video

Thanks to the new high-per­for­mance Sony IMX586 sen­sor with a built-in Bay­er col­or fil­ter array, HDR mode is also avail­able for video shoot­ing on the new Mav­ic Air 2. Expo­sure lev­els are now even­ly dis­trib­uted across the frame, accu­rate­ly cap­tur­ing light and dark details. The impo­si­tion of such frames on top of each oth­er makes it pos­si­ble to get a col­or­ful, bal­anced and attrac­tive pic­ture with a high dynam­ic range at the out­put.

48MP photo

With the advent of the 1/2‑inch CMOS sen­sor, the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion drone has the abil­i­ty to take impres­sive 48-megapix­el pho­tos, which, even when zoomed in, do not lose detail.

SmartPhoto Function

In the arse­nal of tools that improve the qual­i­ty of pho­tog­ra­phy, there is a new scene recog­ni­tion func­tion — Smart­Pho­to, which com­bines Hyper­Light and HDR modes for opti­mal results. With Scene Recog­ni­tion, the func­tion allows you to opti­mize var­i­ous cam­era set­tings for five dif­fer­ent scenes: sun­set, sky, grass, snow, and trees.

• In over-light con­di­tions, HDR great­ly improves dynam­ic range by adjust­ing expo­sure set­tings and merg­ing frames to pro­duce brighter, high­er-qual­i­ty pho­tos.
• Hyper­Light opti­mizes pho­tos tak­en in low light, result­ing in reduced noise and improved clar­i­ty.

Pho­tos tak­en in Smart­Pho­to mode have a res­o­lu­tion of 12MP.

HDR Panorama

Mav­ic Air 2 offers DJI’s most advanced panora­ma mode, with a wider dynam­ic range, vibrant col­ors, and amaz­ing detail.

Intelligent flight and shooting modes

Mav­ic Air 2 com­bines a pow­er­ful cam­era with intel­li­gent shoot­ing modes for cin­e­mat­ic-lev­el results. Cre­ative aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy has nev­er been eas­i­er.

FocusTrack

Pro­fes­sion­al-qual­i­ty footage made easy with Focus­Track. An easy-to-use set of pre-installed intel­li­gent sub­ject track­ing modes includ­ing Active Track 3.0, Spot­light 2.0 and Point of Inter­est 3.0 that don’t require you to be a pro­fes­sion­al cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er to unleash your cre­ativ­i­ty.

Active Track 3.0

Track­ing and avoid­ing obsta­cles is smoother than ever with DJI’s third-gen­er­a­tion Active­Track tech­nol­o­gy. With improved best path find­ing and faster and more accu­rate pre­dic­tion of lost objects, this tech­nol­o­gy will keep your cho­sen sub­ject in the cen­ter of the frame, even if it moves behind a tree.

Spotlight 2.0

In this con­ve­nient mode, sim­ply select the sub­ject to shoot. After that, you can fly the drone in any direc­tion, and the cam­era will always track the select­ed object.

Point of Interest 3.0

The third gen­er­a­tion of the Point of Inter­est 3.0 mode has become notice­ably bet­ter than POI 2.0. The recog­ni­tion of flat sur­faces has been opti­mized and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of object loss has been elim­i­nat­ed. POI 3.0 can now also track dynam­ic objects such as peo­ple, cars, and boats.

8K Hyperlapse

Mav­ic Air 2 sup­ports 8K Hyper­lapse video cap­ture, allow­ing you to warp time and space for par­tic­u­lar­ly unique footage. No post-pro­cess­ing. Choose your shoot­ing loca­tion and one of the four avail­able modes, and let the DJI Fly app do the rest.

course lock

Free

Waypoint

Circle

Hyper­lapse in 8K is only avail­able for Free and Way­point modes.

Quickshots

Quick­Shots are the hall­mark of almost every DJI drone. The Mav­ic Air 2 is no excep­tion. With these modes, you can cre­ate a com­plex aer­i­al route for shoot­ing a short cin­e­mat­ic video in just a few taps. After shoot­ing, the result can also be eas­i­ly edit­ed by over­lay­ing music, apply­ing all kinds of effects and fil­ters through intu­itive Sto­ry tem­plates, in order to lat­er share the mas­ter­piece on social net­works. There are 6 Quick­Shot sce­nar­ios avail­able:

Dronie

Circle

helix

Rocket

Boomerang

Asteroid

OcuSync 2.0

At present, Ocu­Sync 2.0 dig­i­tal video trans­mis­sion tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides the Mav­ic Air 2 with a record-break­ing FPV dis­tance of up to 10 kilo­me­ters among all fly­ing semi-pro­fes­sion­al DJI prod­ucts, with 1080P video stream­ing qual­i­ty.

2.4GHz/5.8GHz

Mav­ic Air 2’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem sup­ports dual-band oper­a­tion of 2.4/5.8GHz and is able to auto­mat­i­cal­ly switch to the best chan­nel in real time with min­i­mal inter­fer­ence, which great­ly improves the safe­ty of pilot­ing in dif­fi­cult con­di­tions.

Max. FPV dis­tance is valid for the FCC stan­dard (in the fre­quen­cy range of 5.8GHz) in an inter­fer­ence-free area. For Rus­sia, only the 2.4GHz fre­quen­cy range is avail­able, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces the max. removal thresh­old from 10 km to 6 km. Fly the drone with­in visu­al line of sight, except when it is per­mit­ted to fly out­side of it. Com­ply with local laws and reg­u­la­tions.

Food

The opti­mal com­bi­na­tion of the weight of the drone and the right pow­er sup­ply allowed the devel­op­er to achieve a record flight time of 34 min­utes among all DJI drones, which in real con­di­tions (depend­ing on the pilot­ing style and envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions) will pro­vide the user with at least 30 min­utes in the air.

The devel­op­er clar­i­fies that the max­i­mum flight time was obtained when fly­ing at an angle of 9 ° at a speed of 18 km / h in calm con­di­tions.

Obstacle avoidance system

For envi­ron­men­tal per­cep­tion, Mav­ic Air 2 is equipped with a 3‑way sen­sor imag­ing sys­tem: Front (2 visu­al sen­sors; work­ing range up to 22 meters) / Rear (2 visu­al sen­sors; work­ing range up to 23.6 meters) / Bot­tom (IR sen­sors). For the cor­rect oper­a­tion of the low­er com­plex of sen­sors in low light con­di­tions (impor­tant for an accu­rate and safe land­ing), the sys­tem works in con­junc­tion with the LED back­light locat­ed also in the low­er part of the drone (turns on auto­mat­i­cal­ly; forced on and off is allowed).

APAS 3.0

Advanced Pilot Assis­tance Sys­tems (APAS) 3.0 — The third gen­er­a­tion advanced pilot assis­tance sys­tem uses advanced map­ping tech­nol­o­gy for smooth track­ing and con­fi­dent obsta­cle avoid­ance in dif­fi­cult envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions. The per­for­mance of obsta­cle avoid­ance and auto­mat­ic flight plan­ning has improved sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pared to pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions of the sys­tem, which improves safe­ty and pro­vides more options for oper­a­tion.

The devel­op­er notes that APAS 3.0 and Focus­Track are not avail­able when record­ing in modes 4K at 60, 50 and 48 fps, 2.7K at 60, 50 and 48 fps and 1080P at 120 and 240 fps.

Remote Control

The com­plete­ly redesigned Mav­ic Air 2 remote con­troller fea­tures an ergonom­ic design for a more com­fort­able grip, detach­able sticks for greater porta­bil­i­ty, and boasts an impres­sive 240 min­utes of bat­tery life. The new hold­er great­ly facil­i­tat­ed the instal­la­tion and con­nec­tion of the smart­phone, and the built-in anten­nas pro­vid­ed more con­ve­nient inter­ac­tion with the equip­ment with­out degrad­ing the sig­nal recep­tion qual­i­ty.

Drone con­trol is also pos­si­ble using the DJI Smart Con­troller, the best uni­ver­sal con­trol equip­ment for today, the man­u­fac­tura­bil­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty of which have already been appre­ci­at­ed by all advanced users.

The devel­op­er clar­i­fies that the bat­tery life was mea­sured when work­ing with a smart­phone based on Android in the absence of inter­fer­ence. In turn, this sug­gests that the dura­tion of the remote, cou­pled with devices based on iOS should be a lit­tle longer.

Mob. Appendix

In addi­tion to man­ag­ing the drone’s set­tings, the DJI Fly app makes it easy to edit your footage. The soft­ware inte­grates the DJI Mimo edit­ing suite, which gives you access to man­u­al set­tings, advanced fea­tures, and intu­itive tem­plates to cre­ate pro­fes­sion­al com­po­si­tions in sec­onds.

ND filters

Two sets of ND fil­ters are avail­able for the Mav­ic Air 2 to help the user con­trol the expo­sure and pro­vide more cre­ative options. The ND 16/64/256 set is use­ful for adjust­ing shut­ter speed even in over-lit con­di­tions, while the ND 4/8/32 set will pro­duce bright images even at low ISOs.

Fil­ters ND16/64/256 are includ­ed in the extend­ed Fly More Com­bo pack­age. Fil­ter set ND4/8/32 sold sep­a­rate­ly.

Price

Drone DJI Mav­ic Air 2 is already avail­able for order. In addi­tion to the four bun­dles, the con­sumer has access to the DJI Care Refresh Extend­ed Ser­vice Pack­age for $79, which includes the abil­i­ty to replace the prod­uct in the event of an acci­dent / crash, water dam­age or any oth­er rea­son (but no more than two devices per year), as well as receiv­ing pri­or­i­ty sup­port and expert advice from DJI prod­uct experts. In addi­tion, DJI will cov­er ship­ping costs in both cas­es, each time a replace­ment prod­uct is sent. The lat­est ship­ping pay­ment terms apply only to the coun­try where the DJI Care Refresh pack­age was pur­chased. Depend­ing on the con­fig­u­ra­tion, the prices for the drone are arranged in the fol­low­ing order:

1. Mav­ic Air 2 — $559
2. Mav­ic Air 2 Fly More Com­bo — $789
3. Mav­ic Air 2 Fly More Com­bo & DJI Care Refresh — $850
4. Mav­ic Air 2 Fly More Com­bo (DJI Smart Con­troller) — $1200

Conclusion

DJI Mav­ic Air 2 from $559

Func­tion­al­i­ty

9/10

Flight time

8/10

flight qual­i­ties

10/10

com­pact­ness

9/10

Equip­ment

10/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

10/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Portable Design/Foldable Design
• Anterior/posterior and infe­ri­or envi­ron­men­tal imag­ing sys­tem
• Ocu­Sync 2.0 Dig­i­tal Video Trans­mis­sion (Max FPV Dis­tance 10km) / Sup­port DJI Smart Con­troller
• Max. flight time 34 min
• 48MP 4K cam­era (best image qual­i­ty among competitors)/4K@60fps
• The best poten­tial in pho­to / video shoot­ing (due to var­i­ous modes and func­tions that improve the qual­i­ty of the footage)
• D‑Cinelike col­or pro­file (more free­dom in post-pro­cess­ing)
• Focus­Track Intel­li­gent Fol­low­er Suite
• APAS 3.0 (Secure Man­age­ment)
• Price

Minuses

• No Tri­pod Mode

With­out exag­ger­a­tion, an indica­tive upgrade result for the sec­ond ver­sion of the leg­endary Mav­ic Air. The drone has received such a pow­er­ful range of improve­ments that it can eas­i­ly com­pete with most expen­sive top-end UAVs. For oth­er cur­rent com­peti­tors, the mod­el acts as a mes­sage from DJI devel­op­ers, which pre­de­ter­mines the poten­tial of future flag­ship mod­els, which are expect­ed to appear in the near future. As the say­ing goes, “one shot, two birds with one stone.” At the moment, Air 2 has man­aged to gain max­i­mum con­sumer recog­ni­tion and is the most rec­om­mend­ed drone in the hob­by for those who, for var­i­ous rea­sons, do not con­sid­er buy­ing Pro ver­sions, but at the same time want to get an equal­ly tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion that cor­re­sponds to mod­ern trends in a rapid­ly devel­op­ing mar­ket. Age lim­it 16+.

On April 15, 2021, DJI introduced an even more advanced version of the drone. As much as possible about DJI AIR 2S in our review.

FAQ

Drone

Q. What are the main improve­ments of Mav­ic Air 2 over Mav­ic Air?

A. The cam­era per­for­mance, smart fea­tures, flight time and video stream­ing sys­tem have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved, and inter­ac­tion with the air­craft is now imple­ment­ed through the new DJI Fly app, which pro­vides an even more opti­mized flight.

Q. How to prop­er­ly install pro­pellers on motors?

A. Attach the white-marked pro­pellers to the white-marked motors. Next, attach the unmarked pro­pellers to the unmarked motors. Make sure the pro­pellers are attached cor­rect­ly or the drone will not be able to take off.

Q. Is Mav­ic Air 2 com­pat­i­ble with DJI Gog­gles or DJI Gog­gles RE FPV Gog­gles?

Oh no.

Q. Which microSD card should I use?

A. San­Disk Extreme PRO 64GB V30 A2 microS­DXC
San­Disk High Endurance 64GB V30 microS­DXC
San­Disk Extreme 64GB V30 A2 microS­DXC
San­Disk Extreme 128GB V30 A2 microS­DXC
San­Disk Extreme 256GB V30 A2 microS­DXC
Lexar Lexar 667x 64GB V30 A2 microS­DXC
Lexar High Endurance 64GB V30 microS­DXC
Sam­sung EVO 64GB microS­DXC
Sam­sung EVO Plus 64GB microS­DXC
Sam­sung EVO Plus 256GB microS­DXC
Kingston 128GB V30 microS­DXC
Netac 256GB A1 microS­DXC.

Q. Is Mav­ic Air 2 water­proof?

Oh no.

Q. How do I install ND fil­ters?

A. Hold the cam­era care­ful­ly to avoid dam­ag­ing it, and slow­ly turn the fil­ter to install or remove it. Make sure the ND fil­ter is secure­ly installed to avoid acci­den­tal sep­a­ra­tion dur­ing flight.

Safety and obstacle detection system

Q. Does the Mav­ic Air 2 have an option­al LED light?

Oh yeah. Mav­ic Air 2 has an addi­tion­al back­light for improved vis­i­bil­i­ty and safe­ty in low light con­di­tions, like the Mav­ic 2 series.

Q. Does Mav­ic Air 2 pro­vide obsta­cle detec­tion in all direc­tions?

Oh no. Mav­ic Air 2 pro­vides for­ward, back­ward, and down­ward obsta­cle detec­tion.

Q. What is the dif­fer­ence between APAS 2.0 and APAS 3.0?

A. APAS 3.0 has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved over pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions. The sys­tem now cre­ates a real-time map of its sur­round­ings, pro­vid­ing one of the best obsta­cle avoid­ance avail­able on DJI drones.

Q. What is the dif­fer­ence between Active­Track 2.0 and Active­Track 3.0?

A. By inte­grat­ing the APAS 3.0 Obsta­cle Avoid­ance Sys­tem, Active­Track 3.0 has been great­ly improved over Active­Track 2.0. Over­all track­ing capa­bil­i­ties have been great­ly improved, resum­ing track­ing after los­ing an object is sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster than ever.

Control panel and video streaming

Q. Is Mav­ic Air 2 com­pat­i­ble with DJI Smart Con­troller?

Oh yeah.

Q. Is Mav­ic Air 2 com­pat­i­ble with the Mav­ic 2 Remote Con­troller?

Oh no.

Q. How much has Ocu­Sync 2.0 improved?

A. Ocu­Sync 2.0 sup­ports the 2.4 and 5.8 GHz fre­quen­cy bands. It fea­tures high­er noise immu­ni­ty due to auto­mat­ic switch­ing between fre­quen­cies, pro­vides FHD qual­i­ty video stream­ing at a dis­tance of up to 10 km (achieved in an inter­fer­ence-free zone and in FCC mode).

Q. Does the stock remote have an HDMI port?

Oh no.

Q. How can I improve sig­nal recep­tion?

A. There are anten­nas in the smart­phone clip of the remote con­trol. Make sure the anten­nas are point­ing towards the air­craft. Refer to the user man­u­al for more infor­ma­tion on cor­rect anten­na place­ment. Also, make sure you don’t have any trans­mit­ting devices on you and that Wi-Fi and Blue­tooth are turned off on your mobile devices.

Q. What are the advan­tages of the new con­trol equip­ment?

A. The remote con­trol boasts an extend­ed bat­tery life of up to 240 min­utes, a more com­fort­able grip, improved anten­na design, and a more com­fort­able view­ing angle when view­ing from the screen.

Camera

Q. What res­o­lu­tions and pho­to for­mats are avail­able?

A. Reg­u­lar pho­tos can be tak­en at 12 or 48 megapix­els, and RAW for­mat is also avail­able for more advanced edit­ing.

Q. What video modes does the Mav­ic Air 2 sup­port?

A. Mav­ic Air 2 sup­ports nor­mal video up to 4K@60fps and HDR video up to 4K@30fps. Slow-motion video is avail­able in 1080p at up to 240 fps (8x slow motion).

Q. Can I shoot in Dlog or anoth­er neu­tral col­or pro­file?

Oh yeah. Mav­ic Air 2 offers a neu­tral D‑Cinelike pro­file for deep­er post-pro­cess­ing of footage.

Q. What are the advan­tages of H.265 video codec?

A. HEVC (H.265) — more mod­ern video codec than H.264; it retains more detail and deliv­ers high­er image qual­i­ty.

Q. Can I man­age cam­era set­tings man­u­al­ly?

Oh yeah.

Q. What is Smart­Pho­to?

A. Smart­Pho­to com­bines tech­nolo­gies such as Scene Detec­tion, Hyper­Light and HDR in one mode for opti­mal results. Scene Recog­ni­tion opti­mizes var­i­ous cam­era set­tings for dif­fer­ent scenes and sup­ports five cat­e­gories of intel­li­gent recog­ni­tion: sun­set, blue sky, grass, snow, and green trees. Hyper­Light opti­mizes pho­tos tak­en at night or in low light con­di­tions. HDR selects the best image from mul­ti­ple lay­ers thanks to an adap­tive dynam­ic expan­sion algo­rithm that deter­mines the opti­mal para­me­ters.

Intelligent Features

Q. Out of the four avail­able Hyper­lapse modes, which 8K res­o­lu­tion is rel­e­vant?

A. 8K res­o­lu­tion is only avail­able for Free and Way­point modes.

Q. What intel­li­gent flight and shoot­ing modes does Mav­ic Air 2 sup­port?

A. Mav­ic Air 2 sup­ports Quick­Shots, Hyper­lapse, and Focus­Track.

Q. What is Focus­Track mode?

A. Focus­Track con­sists of three dif­fer­ent smart track­ing modes: Active­Track 3.0, Point of Inter­est 3.0 (POI) and Spot­light 2.0. All three modes offer dif­fer­ent track­ing sce­nar­ios for every sit­u­a­tion.

Q. Are there any video record­ing set­tings where APAS 3.0 or Focus­Track is not avail­able?

A. APAS 3.0 is not avail­able when record­ing video at 4K/60fps, 4K/50fps, 4K/48fps, 2.7K/60fps, 2.7K/50fps, 2.7K/ 48fps, 1080p/240fps, 1080p/120fps, 1080p/60fps, 1080p/50fps and 1080p/48fps.

Focus­Track is not avail­able when record­ing video at 4K/60fps, 4K/50fps, 4K/48fps, 2.7K/60fps, 2.7K/50fps, 2.7K/48fps sec­ond, 1080p/240fps and 1080p/120fps.

Q. What are the best video play­ers for view­ing 8K Hyper­lapse footage?

A. The devel­op­er rec­om­mends Pot­Play­er for Win­dows sys­tems and SPlay­er for macOS.

Firmware

Q. How do I update the Mav­ic Air 2 firmware?

A. You can update the firmware through the DJI Fly mobile app or DJI Assis­tant 2 soft­ware for Mav­ic (avail­able for Mac and Win­dows). All of them are avail­able for down­load on the offi­cial DJI web­site.

Q. What should I do if the firmware ver­sions of the remote con­trol and the bat­tery do not match?

A. Use the DJI Fly app or DJI Assis­tant 2 soft­ware for Mav­ic to update the firmware.

Q. Where can I down­load the DJI Fly app?

A. To down­load the DJI Fly app, vis­it the offi­cial DJI Air 2S down­load page at https://www.dji.com/air-2s/downloads.

Video

From the developer

Video of unpack­ing and prepar­ing the drone for oper­a­tion.

Video tuto­r­i­al on how to launch Mav­ic Air 2 for the first time.

Overview of the con­trol pan­el.

Video tuto­r­i­al on how to use Focus Track.

Video tuto­r­i­al on cre­at­ing a Hyper­lapse video.

Video tuto­r­i­al on how to use the Smart Return To Home fea­ture.

Video instruc­tions for installing and remov­ing pro­peller guards.

Video instruc­tions for installing and remov­ing ND fil­ters.

Video instruc­tions for updat­ing the firmware.

From users

Max. removal dis­tance.

DJI Mav­ic Air 2 drone review.

Active Track 3.0 test in the for­est.

Com­par­a­tive review of DJI Mav­ic Air 2 vs Mav­ic 2 Pro.

Com­par­a­tive test for the qual­i­ty of shoot­ing Mav­ic Air 2 vs Mav­ic Air vs Mav­ic 2 Pro vs Mav­ic Mini.

Mav­ic Air 2 vs Sky­dio 2 object fol­low­ing com­par­i­son test.