DJI launched the Mavic Mini in 2019 and the selling point of this drone is its weight. It weighs just under 250 grams.
A lot of countries classify drones under 250 grams as Nano drones and you don’t need to register or get a license for flying them.
Buying a Drone was a tough decision for me because I don’t need it in my workflow. But the price tag of $399 for DJI Mavic Mini makes it pretty tempting to have. So, I bought it to spice up the vlogs I do once in a while.
Watch the Unboxing Video
Price and Availability in India
Another challenge of buying a Drone in India, especially the DJI drones, is that they are not officially available in the country. So the people who are using it have either bought it from the outside the country, got a friend to bring them back in India, or in the grey market where there are shops who sell the product for a profit margin.
Then there are also individuals who bring products from outside the country and sell them on sites like OLX.
The international pricing, $399 roughly translates to Rs 29000, you can get the boxed package by paying Rs 10000 or more extra. I got it from someone who was selling it on OLX for Rs 40000.
Since it is officially available in Dubai, the USD price is rightly converted into Rs 29000. If you live in a country where it is officially available, the price is really attractive for the DJI Mavic Mini, because, even for Rs 40000, it pretty amazing drone.
What’s in the box
Unboxing the DJI Mavic Mini is a nice experience. Perhaps I was more excited as it was the first drone I ever bought.
You can watch the Unboxing video of the DJI Mavic Mini embedded in the article above.
You get the Drone, the Battery, the Remote controller, some extra propellors, three types of cables (MicroUSB, Lightning, & Type-C) to connect the mobile with the remote controller. There’s also a small screwdriver that is given to unscrew and screw the extra propellors to it.
The user guide has been also provided in the box along with a micro USB cable to charge that remained battery as well as the remote controller. There is no charging adaptor available in the box, but you can use any USB type adaptor to charge the Drone and the remote controller.
The camera of the Drone is set up on a tiny gimbal, which makes sure you get super stable footage that you can use in your videos. To project the camera from scratches when you carry it in your bag, there is a protector that needs to be removed before taking the flight.
If you buy the Fly More combo, the additional things you get is a propeller guard along with two additional batteries and a charging station where you can charge 3 batteries.
If you are going to shoot a lot of aerial footage then it is highly recommended you go for the Fly More combo where you get additional batteries because the flight time for one battery is approximately 27 minutes. We will be talking about the battery later in the article and also the issues I faced having just for the single battery.
Built Quality and Setting it up to Fly
The build quality of the drone is what you expect from DJI, it is a pretty nightly build. It looks like a shrink-down version of Mavic Pro which is almost double the price of this drone.
Setting up the Drone is pretty straight forward there are sticker signs guiding the users to open the wings. You can install the DJI app on your Android or iPhone from the respective Play Store or App store turn on the DJ Mavic Mini Drone, your smartphone to the remote controller using the cable provided in the box and turn on the remote controller and wait for it to get paired.
Once it is the connection it will prompt you to open the app you have to do it once and you can select to auto open the app whenever the mobile phone is connected to the controller. Once you are in the app you can follow the instructions.
It does sound a little overwhelming in the beginning but gives it a few minutes and follow the instructions inside the app patiently and you are good to go.
The first-ever flight will not be great because you won’t have an idea how sensitive how to resize the remote controller is so if it is highly recommended you do it in an open area otherwise you will end up crashing the drone in one of the walls if you are inside.
Flying experience and camera performance
I was seriously amazed by the kind of precision the DJ Mavic Mini Drone has when flying. When you take off it achieves a certain altitude and then hours until you use the remote controller to fly it even higher.
Even while flying, turning, going forward and backward, the drone is pretty precise.
And at this point, you will realize it is not as easy as it is as it looks to fly a Drone and capture amazing aerial shots. Thankfully there are presets available inside the app which can let you create some amazing footage without much effort.
Once the DJ magic Mini don’t it started you start seeing the camera feed on your mobile phone screen. You can select the resolution, which is only full HD and Quad HD on DJ Mavic Mini.
The camera feed that you see on your mobile phone screen is cached on your phone and is in 720p resolution, so if you want the Full HD or the Quad HD resolution video along with the sound, you will have to press the record button that appears on the mobile screen.
There isn’t any control given in the camera and it is just in the auto mode so the surroundings and the weather conditions would affect the quality of the video. If it is cloudy the video footage is going to be boring, and if it is a little darker then also so there isn’t much you can do.
But if you fly the Drone in the daytime you can get some good footage but only after you train Yourself by flying the Drone a few times.
I haven’t got the time to test the don’t much but since the Drone is quite a light Drone is not great at withstanding the wind. So one needs to be really careful while flying this drone in the beach area where the wind fish actually pretty strong.
It won’t give you professional quality footage which is ok because it is not maid for that purpose that is for hobbies like me or people who just want to add a different perspective by showing a wide shot of the surroundings or adding a few clips into their YouTube videos.
Having said that, one guy on my feed who does wedding shoots, was unaware about this Mavic Mini and was amazed by the size and the possibility is it brings into his own workflow where he could fly the Drone inside the banquet halls where it is pretty much impossible to fly heavy drones without disturbing the guests.
Remote control performance and range
The remote controller provided with the DJ Mavic Mini Drone also has rechargeable batteries that cannot be taken out. You can use the same micro USB cable provided in the box to charge the remote controller as well.
The battery can last for several slides. I had to recharge the remote controller after I flew the DJI Mavic Mini Drone 4 times.
DJI claims the controller range to be 4 kilometers, which is quite decent. Nobody is really going to fly such a tiny Drone so far. Even if you try I it will have to be in an open space without any interactions.
Several YouTube videos tested out the range and it turned out to be around 1 kilometer in the populated areas because of several interruptions. But even 1 kilometer is quite ok for a Drone this small. You’re kind of lose it from your side once it is several meters away from you.
And because it comes under Nano drones the maximum altitude allowed for this to one in India is 15 and I think it is true for several other countries as well. So if you have connected it with the official DJ app you cannot go beyond 15 meters in altitude. This is enough for this Drone because you can get some good aerial view from that altitude.
However there are ways to unlock it and fly the Drone even higher which we will be talking about in other articles, you can use the search option on the blog to search for that article if you are reading this article at a later date.
Battery Performance and Actual Fly Time
At the starting of this article, I already mentioned that I got the standard version which only has one battery.
I was assuming that 27 minutes flight time would be sufficient for me to capture small aerial footage that I can include in my YouTube videos, and I could also use a power bank to juice it up between the flights if I have to, but my plan failed.
For one, the total flight time is 27 minutes but that does not mean you can get 27 minutes of video footage worth using.
The drone starts sending you an alert when the battery percentage reaches less than 20%, and you also spent the first few minutes of the flight time in sending the Drone in the sky. So the actual usable time for getting aerial footage is around 10 to 15 minutes.
Charging with a power bank is painfully slow. Even if you have a power bank with fast charging capability is it is going to take at least half an hour to get some charge.
So if you are covering an event where you have to fly The Throne several times it is out of the question to do it in a single battery. But if you just want to take a few aerial shots of several minutes to add them into your videos then it’s good enough.
DJI Mavic Mini or Mini 2? Which One to Go For?
Now that we already have got a DJI Mavic Mini 2 launched, buying the Mini 1 is out of the question. Especially, since the price gap is not so high, it’s only $50 more, and by paying this amount extra, you get a remote controller that has a range of 10 kilometers in comparison to 4 kilometers on the DJI Mavic Mini.
Also, the DJI Mavic Mini 2 lets you capture videos at 4K resolution, and you also so get some improvements in the speed.
Having said that, if in countries, where DJI is officially not available, and the price difference between the Mini and Mini 2 is more than $100, then the DJI Mavic Mini would make more sense as all the improved features wont to be useful for everyone.
Hope you find the information given in this article is useful to you. You can read more articles to make your tech life easy.
Here is the DJI Mavic Mini 2 Fly More Combo Listing on Amazon Dubai at 2090AED which roughly converts into Rs 41500. Which I think is great deal for people living in Dubai and countries nearby.
