Sadly the new Mavic Mini is a waste of time for anyone looking to use it for photography or video use. Having deliberately downgraded many features of this drone, a trick played by the professional video industry for many years.
Giving a drone Auto White Balance only (AWB) is a complete disaster for photographers and anyone producing video. Only this week I flew my Mavic 2 in my local park to discover after a firmware update my drone was set to AWB.
Flying over yellow autumnal leaved trees drastically changes your white balance if set to AWB making your footage useless, so to give you a drone with AWB only is a disaster and very poor thinking by DJI.
With the Skydio 2 made in the USA about to enter the arena DJI should not be producing drones with a very poor feature set. Other commentators say they are “protecting” the Mavic line of drones…nonsense.
All they are doing is loosing a major percentage of serious drone users who would welcome a drone of this weight and size.
I would like to thank Nino Leitner from Cinema 5D for pointing out these poor features and here is his video and a link to his review https://www.cinema5d.com/dji-mavic-mini-review-good-pro-filmmaking/
It’s made for the US Market which allows you to fly licence free under 250 grams
Philip, I think you have missed your assessment. DJI did not try to make a drone for professionals. Watch the video on DJI web site and you will see that they are all young people looking to have fun. And possibly they will only see the results on a smartphone …
HDW : The point being DJI would have sold twice as many had they not deliberately left off these important features.
Hello. Thank you for your post. Having finally retired I had sold my drone fleet Phantom 4, Mavic Pro and Inspire1 X5R, I was rather interested in the mini but could not get the answers I was looking for until I checked Cinema 5D yesterday evening. The questions I ask, will DJI upgrade to firmware to fix awb and lock the shutter speed? If they do I would be very likely buy it for hobby use as I live in the Snowdonia National Park.
I would just like to pass on these thoughts. Yes, I was impressed by this highly convenient little drone BUT rather than spend on this drone and be not entirely satisfied I decided instead not to mess about and buy the Mavic 2 pro. Convenience! brilliant compared to the Inspire 1 pro X5! So my thought: don’t rush in think carefully.
Well I got mine and as it’s marketed as a ‘toy’ I think that’s way to think about the Mini. There’s some suggestion about that there will be a Mk2 edition at some point with extra sensors for collision avoidance but other than a 4K camera upgrade, I’m happy with for what it is, an inexpensive entry level drone for a novice like me. If it goes well I’ll probably upgrade to a more ‘pro’ model further down the line.
Hi Philip, thanks for your review.
Not sure if I agree with your conclusion though. I produce videos within the construction industry and with a CAA PFAW operate a couple of dji drones, an Inspire1 Pro and Mavic 2 Pro. Whilst the Mavic Mini will not produce the same quality footage as a larger drone the footage I’ve seen on youtube is quite impressive for such a small camera. It’s sheer portability means it will be great for quick cutaways and short sequences.
And it’s really good value despite the limitations you point out, less than a GoPro!
If you were to use the Mavic mini in a commercial environment you would need to a CAA PFAW certificate despite the fact that you do not need to register this tiny drone.