DJI Mini 2: Everything You Need to Know

Introduction

Mod­i­fied “Mav­ic Mini” is pre­sent­ed. And, as we already know, com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor, the Mini 2 received an unex­pect­ed­ly pow­er­ful pack­age of improve­ments that affect­ed both the hard­ware and soft­ware of the drone. So, sig­nif­i­cant upgrades of the nov­el­ty include: the time-test­ed sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion Ocu­Sync dig­i­tal video stream trans­mis­sion sys­tem, which is already equipped with such bright mod­els as the Air 2 and Mav­ic 2 Pro/Zoom/Enterprise; increased cam­era per­for­mance, which now shoots not in 2.7K, but in 4K res­o­lu­tion at 24/25/30 frames per sec­ond, and with the abil­i­ty to zoom; and more pow­er­ful pow­er plant. But, most impor­tant­ly, all this and more comes to us in the same light­weight mod­el that does not require UAV reg­is­tra­tion, which makes the Mini 2 the best GPS drone in the cat­e­go­ry up to 250 grams today. In this review, we have col­lect­ed all the key infor­ma­tion regard­ing the Mini 2 drone, which will be inter­est­ing and use­ful for both the own­ers of the nov­el­ty and poten­tial buy­ers. So let’s fly!

comparison table

For those who don’t have time to read, here’s our com­par­i­son chart, which will allow you to quick­ly com­pare the stat­ed key poten­tial of Mav­ic Mini, Mini SE, Mini 2, Mini 3 Pro:

The weight

With all the announced improve­ments, the devel­op­er left this para­me­ter of the nov­el­ty unchanged — less than 250 grams. And to be pre­cise, the weight of the Mini 2 in flight con­di­tion (with MicroSD on board) was 237.4 grams. For users of the World, this means that they are exempt­ed from the manda­to­ry pro­ce­dure for account­ing for UAVs (details here). Before start­ing, always check local laws and reg­u­la­tions. Use pro­peller guards and be care­ful when fly­ing near peo­ple and ani­mals. Remem­ber, safe­ty is above all!

Equipment

By tra­di­tion, the devel­op­er offers the drone in two pos­si­ble con­fig­u­ra­tions: the stan­dard “DJI Mini 2” and the extend­ed “DJI Mini 2 Fly More Com­bo”:

1. DJI Mini 2 (Includ­ed: Aircraft/Remote/1×Battery/2×Replacement Propeller/Charging Cable/3×RC Cables/Spare Prop Mounts/Screwdriver/User Man­u­al)
2. DJI Mini 2 Fly More Com­bo (Includ­ed: Drone/Remote/3 × bat­tery/6 × app. pro­pellers/Charging cable/3 × RC cables/18W mem­o­ry/Charg­er for simul­ta­ne­ous sequen­tial charg­ing of three bat­ter­ies/pro­peller lock/Spare fas­ten­ers for propellers/Screwdriver/User’s manual/Trans­port bag)

As you can see, both kits have every­thing to real­ize your first flight almost imme­di­ate­ly after pur­chase. How­ev­er, it would be bet­ter if you give your pref­er­ence to the extend­ed kit when choos­ing, since it includes all the nec­es­sary com­po­nents for the full and com­fort­able oper­a­tion of the drone, which you will soon­er or lat­er come to dur­ing the oper­a­tion of the stan­dard kit, since all these com­po­nents are avail­able as addi­tion­al . acces­sories.

Fly More Combo Components

What are these com­po­nents and why are they so rel­e­vant?

3 × battery

The extend­ed kit includes three bat­ter­ies for the drone at once, each of which pro­vides 25–27 min­utes of real flight time.

6 × app. propellers

With drones from DJI, this is a rare case, but no one is safe from acci­dents / crash­es. The stan­dard kit will allow you to make a mis­take only twice, since in this case it only has two pro­pellers, and with dif­fer­ent direc­tions of rota­tion (CW / CCW). This means that if you break a CW prop twice, you will have to stop fly­ing for lack of a spare prop. What can not be said about the extend­ed Fly More Com­bo, in which for this case you have at your dis­pos­al as many as six spare 3 × CW and 3 × CCW props, or as many as six times you can take to the air again despite an unfor­tu­nate mis­un­der­stand­ing.

Battery charging

The stan­dard kit does not have a charg­er at all. This is due to the fact that the devel­op­er worked on the abil­i­ty to charge the remote con­trol and the drone from almost any USB charg­er, includ­ing in QuickCharge mode (DJI Mini 2 sup­ports QC and USB PD fast charg­ing pro­to­cols, and also sup­ports input pow­er up to 29 W).

The Fly More Com­bo kit includes two charg­ers at once:

1. Charg­ing Hub/T­wo-Way Charg­ing Hub — can charge up to three bat­ter­ies in sequen­tial mode, and if you con­nect a remote con­trol to it, then after the bat­tery charg­ing process, the bat­tery of the con­trol equip­ment will also be charged. Among oth­er things, the charg­ing hub can eas­i­ly serve as a portable charg­er for your smart­phone / USB device or sim­ply for stor­ing and trans­port­ing the drone bat­tery). Sep­a­rate­ly from the kit, the hub will cost the con­sumer $39.
2. 18W USB Charger/DJI 18W USB Charg­er — for charg­ing the bat­tery of the drone or the remote con­trol from the 220V net­work. Or, while the drone bat­ter­ies are charg­ing from the charg­ing hub, you can charge the remote con­trol, as the hub can­not charge mul­ti­ple devices at the same time.

propeller lock

An equal­ly impor­tant and nec­es­sary com­po­nent that comes exclu­sive­ly in the extend­ed kit is the Pro­peller Hold­er. Its task is to secure­ly and, most impor­tant­ly, aes­thet­i­cal­ly fix the pro­pellers dur­ing the drone trans­porta­tion. With­out a retain­er, the props are in a free state, as a result of which there is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty of deform­ing / dam­ag­ing them. And any vio­la­tion of the geom­e­try of the blades can lead to unnec­es­sary vibra­tions, an increase in noise, or even to the exclu­sion of fur­ther oper­a­tion of the copter. The Pro­peller Hold­er price is $13.

Transport bag

The trans­port bag is the key acces­so­ry of the extend­ed set. The bag allows you to fit all the com­po­nents of the Fly More Com­bo and keep them in one place, and when it’s time to fly, you can quick­ly take it with you on the road. You will def­i­nite­ly buy it in the future, in the event that you refuse the extend­ed kit. Sep­a­rate­ly from the kit, the trans­port bag will cost the user $39.

As you can see, the extend­ed kit does not con­tain any­thing super­flu­ous, all com­po­nents and their quan­ti­ty are opti­mal for the full and com­fort­able oper­a­tion of the drone. The price dif­fer­ence between the sets is only $150.

OcuSync 2.0

The first upgrade in impor­tance and sig­nif­i­cance that came to the mod­i­fied Mav­ic Mini. Com­pared to enhanced Wi-Fi, which enabled video stream­ing (FPV flight) for its pre­de­ces­sor, Ocu­Sync 2.0 tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides the user with even more free­dom and con­fi­dence in a reli­able FPV con­nec­tion when fly­ing beyond visu­al con­tact with the air­craft. Pri­or to the advent of the Mini 2, Ocu­Sync (2.0) was the hall­mark of excep­tion­al­ly expen­sive DJI mod­els such as the Phan­tom 4 Pro V2.0, Mav­ic Air 2, and Mav­ic 2 Pro/Zoom/Enterprise. Despite the dras­tic dif­fer­ence in tech­nol­o­gy poten­tial, enhanced Wi-Fi gave the Mav­ic Mini an impres­sive range of up to 4 km, with the arrival of the top-end sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion Ocu­Sync, the range has expand­ed to an impres­sive 10 km. And that’s incred­i­bly cool for a $449 con­sumer GPS drone!

4K video

This is the next major upgrade after Ocu­Sync, which, accord­ing to insid­ers, start­ed the refine­ment of Mav­ic Mini. Now Mini 2 can shoot in 4K mode at 24/25/30 fps (Max video mode of pre­de­ces­sor: 2.7K: 2720 × 1530 at 25/30 fps).

Most like­ly, the refine­ment was imple­ment­ed in soft­ware, since the cam­era itself remained unchanged and, as before, was built on a 12MP 1/2.3‑inch CMOS matrix, but the devel­op­er has not yet spec­i­fied about the chipset involved. How­ev­er, it is worth not­ing that the image qual­i­ty of the sec­ond Mini def­i­nite­ly deserves respect and can eas­i­ly com­pete with a num­ber of top full-sized GPS drones, such as Mav­ic Pro, Par­rot Anafi, FIMI X8 SE 2020 or Hub­san 2.

Zoom

The 4x dig­i­tal zoom is a nice bonus of the soft­ware upgrade of the drone’s film­ing part. It is worth not­ing that this option, before the appear­ance of the Mini 2, as well as the Ocu­Sync tech­nol­o­gy, was the hall­mark of exclu­sive­ly pre­mi­um DJI drones. By the way, the declared 4x zoom is not avail­able for all video modes:

• for 4K mode: 2x zoom
• for 2.7K mode: 3x zoom
• for FHD mode: 4x zoom

Food

Com­pared to the Mini 1 bat­tery, the Mini 2 bat­tery dropped in capac­i­ty (Mini 1/Mini 2 bat­tery capac­i­ty: 2400/2250mAh), gained notice­ably in weight (Mini 1/Mini 2 bat­tery weight: 100/86.2g) and at the same time gained in pow­er. This approach allowed the devel­op­er to keep the weight cat­e­go­ry “up to 250 grams”, as well as to obtain the max. a flight time of 31 min­utes (pre­de­ces­sor time: 30 min­utes), which DJI notes was achieved at a con­stant lev­el flight speed of 16.92 km/h. In prac­tice, with a mixed pilot­ing mode (i.e., a nor­mal user mode), the max­i­mum flight dura­tion of both ver­sions has not changed and will aver­age 25–27 min­utes.

Battery interchangeability

Inter­change­abil­i­ty of Mini 1/Mini 2 bat­ter­ies is allowed, but uni­lat­er­al­ly. This means that due to the design fea­tures of the bat­ter­ies of both drones, the bat­tery of the Mini 1 works with­out prob­lems with the Mini 2, but the bat­tery from the Mini 2 can­not even be installed in the bat­tery com­part­ment of its pre­de­ces­sor.

As for the instal­la­tion in Mini 2, bat­ter­ies from Mini 1, then such an upgrade will not be rel­e­vant for two rea­sons:

1. Max. flight time in prac­tice will remain unchanged (25–27 min).
2. The flight weight of the drone will change, which with the bat­tery of the pre­de­ces­sor will exceed 250 grams, which in some coun­tries (includ­ing the World) oblig­es the user to reg­is­ter / reg­is­ter the UAV.

USB‑C port

No less impor­tant, but expect­ed by many users, is an update for the sec­ond ver­sion of the Mini. Now we have at our dis­pos­al not a Micro USB port, but a more pro­duc­tive and user-friend­ly USB‑C port, which pre­de­ter­mines, among oth­er things, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fast charg­ing (Mini 2 sup­ports QC and USB PD fast charg­ing pro­to­cols, with a mem­o­ry input pow­er of up to 29 W) . Through this port, the user can both charge the drone’s bat­tery and con­nect the drone to a com­put­er for sub­se­quent inter­ac­tion (updat­ing firmware via DJI Assis­tant 2 soft­ware; extract­ing footage from an installed MicroSD card).

Management and Compatibility

The remote con­trol is anoth­er inno­va­tion for the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Mini, which was pre­de­ter­mined by Ocu­Sync 2.0 tech­nol­o­gy. The drone now comes with the RC231 hard­ware by default, which, as we all already know, is equipped with the incom­pa­ra­ble Mav­ic Air 2. And this is undoubt­ed­ly cool, because the new remote con­trol has already man­aged to prove itself from the best side.

Also with the advent of Ocu­Sync, we get sup­port for pair­ing the drone with top-end DJI Smart Con­troller con­trol equip­ment, the ben­e­fits of which will be ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed by advanced users, espe­cial­ly those who have sev­er­al DJI drones built on the Ocu­Sync sys­tem in their fleet.

Interchangeability of standard consoles

The devel­op­er clar­i­fies that due to the use of com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent video stream trans­mis­sion tech­nolo­gies, the inter­change­abil­i­ty of remote con­trols is exclud­ed. In turn, the equip­ment of Mav­ic Air 2 and Mini 2 are com­plete­ly and com­plete­ly inter­change­able.

*Remotes from left to right: DJI Mav­ic Mini/DJI Mini 2.

Motors

Com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor, the Mini 2 received a more effi­cient pow­er plant, thanks to which it was pos­si­ble to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve flight per­for­mance and increase the wind resis­tance of the drone. For exam­ple, the hor­i­zon­tal flight speed has been increased from 46.8 km/h to 57.6 km/h, which is not bad at all. For com­par­i­son, let’s take the max­i­mum lev­el flight speed of a full-size Mav­ic Air 2 — 68.4 km/h.

Level 5 wind resistance

Thanks to a more pow­er­ful pow­er plant, the devel­op­er man­aged to raise the wind resis­tance from the fourth to the fifth lev­el. In prac­tice, the sec­ond ver­sion con­fi­dent­ly copes with winds up to 12 m/s, with gusts up to 19 m/s, and this is no joke. Check out this demon­stra­tive Mini 2 wind test.

Propellers

As you can see in the image below, the devel­op­er final­ized the design of mount­ing the blades to the motor, and also worked on the geom­e­try of the blades them­selves, which made it pos­si­ble to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the over­all noise of the drone’s pow­er plant and, in part, the over­all weight of the drone.

Noisiness

Maybe for some this fac­tor is not so sig­nif­i­cant com­pared to the allow­able flight range, but as prac­tice shows, the pow­er plant of the mod­i­fied Mini 2 received a notice­able dif­fer­ence in noise. The drone has become an order of mag­ni­tude qui­eter than its pre­de­ces­sor. Here is a noise test video of Mini 1 vs Mini 2.

Obstacle detection and avoidance

This option is not avail­able for the “Mini” series of drones, since they are not ini­tial­ly equipped with a sen­sor sys­tem for detect­ing and fly­ing around obsta­cles. The only sen­sor tan­dem, con­sist­ing of three sen­sors, is locat­ed at the bot­tom of the drone. It acts as an aux­il­iary sen­sor posi­tion­ing sys­tem in the alti­tude range up to 30 m. It is acti­vat­ed dur­ing auto-land­ing, or when satel­lite posi­tion­ing is not avail­able (fly­ing in an apart­ment, house, room, etc.). The imi­ta­tion of the front sen­sors has remained an imi­ta­tion, except that for the best ven­ti­la­tion of the Mini 2 it has received a pass-through for­mat.

active track

The lack of a sen­so­ry sys­tem for detect­ing and fly­ing around obsta­cles in gen­er­al pre­de­ter­mined the absence of an auto­mat­ic mode for fol­low­ing the Active­Track object, since the lat­ter requires the afore­men­tioned sys­tem to ful­ly work so that the drone can avoid col­li­sions with obsta­cles dur­ing the track­ing process, and this, as you under­stand, is already more expen­sive DJI mod­els.

quick shot

The hall­mark of all fold­ing DJI drones is five auto­mat­ic flight and shoot­ing modes Quick­shot (Dronie/Helix/Rocket/Circle/Boomerang), which allow the aver­age user to cre­ate short-length cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces in just a few taps, in order to sub­se­quent­ly con­vey the atmos­phere around you as much as pos­si­ble, there­by pre­serv­ing for many years the best moments of life, cap­tured from the best angle.

JPG/RAW and AEB photo

Anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant bonus from the devel­op­er, which will be high­ly appre­ci­at­ed by advanced users. Now in the pho­to arse­nal of the sec­ond ver­sion of Mini, in addi­tion to the stan­dard JPG for­mat, RAW for­mat and AEB shoot­ing mode have been added, which togeth­er pro­vide max­i­mum free­dom in post-pro­cess­ing footage using tools such as Light­room and Pho­to­shop.

Manual setting for photos and videos

In addi­tion to the above for­mats and shoot­ing modes, full man­u­al con­trol for pho­to and video modes has been added. Now you can man­u­al­ly set expo­sure, shut­ter speed and ISO.

panoramic shooting

Anoth­er new pho­to mode fol­low­ing the AEB mode, which will undoubt­ed­ly be appre­ci­at­ed by every­one with­out excep­tion. Three options for panoram­ic shoot­ing are avail­able to the user:

1. Sphere (Spher­i­cal)
2. 180° (180 degree)
3. Wide-angle

Direct download and instant editing

Three com­plete­ly new fea­tures that only the Mini 2 can boast of today, imple­ment­ed for the fastest pos­si­ble inter­ac­tion with the footage:

• Quick­Trans­fer — allows you to quick­ly and wire­less­ly trans­fer footage from the drone to a smart­phone with a max. 20MB/s speed. More­over, only these two devices are enough to imple­ment the trans­mis­sion (more about the new func­tion in the drone review and the FAQ sec­tion). True, there is one caveat. The devel­op­er spec­i­fies that the declared max. down­load speed is 20 MB/s, pro­vid­ed when the drone oper­ates exclu­sive­ly in the 5.8 GHz fre­quen­cy band. When using the Quick­Trans­fer func­tion in the 2.4 GHz fre­quen­cy band, max. down­load speed will be 6 MB/s.
• Trimmed Down­load — the func­tion allows you to quick­ly cut the desired frag­ment for sub­se­quent edit­ing and down­load­ing to your smart­phone.
• Imag­i­na­tive Tem­plates is an intu­itive edi­tor built into the DJI Fly app. With a diverse set of cre­ative tem­plates, you can per­son­al­ize your footage in just a few taps and share it with the world.

Front LED status indicator

It is one of the few exter­nal dif­fer­ences of the sec­ond ver­sion of the Mini. Pro­vides frontal infor­ma­tion to the user about the cur­rent state of the drone. For exam­ple, when it is used in self­ie mode, in which the air­craft is always turned to the front of the user, thus elim­i­nat­ing the abil­i­ty to see the sec­ond sta­tus indi­ca­tor locat­ed on the rear of the drone. By the way, if desired, the col­or of the indi­ca­tor can be changed based on your pref­er­ences by going to the drone set­tings menu in the DJI Fly app.

Let’s summarize

In this review, we have told you about all the new fea­tures of the Mini 2 drone, which will help you to ful­ly expe­ri­ence the new light­weight ver­sion so that you can make the right choice lat­er. We also rec­om­mend our sep­a­rate review for review, where we have col­lect­ed the key char­ac­ter­is­tics of all drones of the Mav­ic series in one table. We hope that the mate­r­i­al pre­sent­ed was use­ful to you. Thank you for your atten­tion.