Streaming 1080p/60fps up to 20km wirelessly is mind boggling to me. What kind of tech is used to make that happen? seems like it'd require a lot of power.
DJI Mini 4 Pro
21–30 of 452 posts
Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro
#22I've had the original Mini since it came out.
Other than damaging a prop from it hitting a blade of grass on landing it is in perfect shape. Yes, they are so fragile I landed very smoothly in the grass and soft grass is enough to damage the props!
I don't fly it as much as I used to. These new ones are certainly an engineering marvel with how much they have added and still kept it under 249g.
The big one to me though is the wind resistance. 10.7m/s is 23mph. The original specs 17mph. It is hard to say at which point it starts having trouble, but 23mph is a non-trivial improvement, it probably means 2x as many days you can actually fly.
Now the things that suck about DJI, and I wonder if they are actually at all improved with a new drone:
- Geofencing sometimes locks you out of legal flights, no way around that unless you can jailbreak
- Some legal flights require you going through an unlock process, and if the DJI web infrastructure is having a bad day you also get locked out of flying in a legal place
I would probably buy from another competitor, especially a US one, just over the unlock experience with DJI.
Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro
#23Let's hope this thing is compatible with DJI's own goggles. They seem to be getting better about this, but for a while they released drones that weren't... a real disappointing WTF.
Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro
#24Where is the US or EU competitor to DJI? They are running away with it. Oh right, we instead pioneered regulation and legislation , all those deaths from drones falling down and drones hitting planes.
US competitor to DJI in what? Consumer marker or technology?
If it's consumer marker where less cost matters a lot, there won't be a US competitor. DJI has home-turf, scale, and first mover advantage there, and a US competitor can maaybe match DJI in price.
In technology/autonomy? Skydio beat them years ago (https://www.skydio.com/). They launched as a consumer drone but I guess recently realized how consumer market in west isn't as profitable as enterprise/defense market so they shut down their consumer division. Skydio founders were pioneers in autonomous aerial vehicles, and it's not surprising they beat everyone else in autonomy. When they launched their first drone a few years ago, they were doing outdoor vision based autonomy for drone using on board compute only - it's an insanely hard problem, especially when you want to do in reliably in a product and not in a lab setting for nice videos. They did it and blew everyone away. DJI fan boys will say 'oh but DJI had autonomy too'. No they didn't, at best they had feedback based obstacle avoidance.
I often tell my friends, one of my biggest regret was not signing up for an internship at Skydio back in 2018. They came to UIUC for recruiting, and they didn't realize their product yet. Back then I was a dumb first year grad student, I didn't check the founders background, and naively thought it was yet another dumb drone company trying to get some VC money by pitching something they'd obviously fail it. I've never been so wrong.
Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro
#25Light drones are great, but how far away are we from quiet consumer drones? I'd love to not have every hike ruined by some wannabe videographer.
The mini is pretty damn quiet. At 50ft of altitude people don't hear it. AT 100ft of altitude people don't even see it.
I've flown one hundreds of times and other than other drone owners no one has ever said a thing or noticed. The drone owners notice and come over to talk drones.
Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro
#26Light drones are great, but how far away are we from quiet consumer drones? I'd love to not have every hike ruined by some wannabe videographer.
I had the same thought seeing the hero videos on this page displaying beautiful mountain scapes and vistas - I wouldn't want to be the person disturbing this space with an intrusive drone.
Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro
#27Where is the US or EU competitor to DJI? They are running away with it. Oh right, we instead pioneered regulation and legislation , all those deaths from drones falling down and drones hitting planes.
It isn't clear to me that there is a reason for a US competitor to exist in the pro-sumer market. There are plenty of US firms selling their own parts/BNF kits for the hobbyist market and plenty doing commercial.
Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro
#28Where is the US or EU competitor to DJI? They are running away with it. Oh right, we instead pioneered regulation and legislation , all those deaths from drones falling down and drones hitting planes.
You can replace DJI with any other consumer electronics manufacturer. It's hard to compete with China's vertical integration + cheaper labor. Skydio (Californian startup) used to manufacture consumer drones but recently exited that business to focus on enterprise, probably because of the higher margins.
Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro
#29Was just telling my friend I was a bit surprised at how rapidly consumer drones advanced in the late 2010's and have slowed down ever since. Seems like a lot of these features haven't really improved all that much in the past 5 years.
Re: DJI Mini 4 Pro
#30>Take off whenever inspiration strikes. Weighing less than 249 g, Mini 4 Pro was designed for convenience on the go, [1] and the drone's weight means there's no need for training or examinations in most countries and regions. Wasn't this loophole basically closed by the US FAA a couple years back?
It's not a loophole, it's a deliberate exemption!
Makes enough sense to me but curious why specifically? Are they quieter or less dangerous below that size / weight?