The Mavic Air[1] is a minor engineering marvel. The first time you set up DJI’s new drone it’s like trying to solve a puzzle box. You flip, you twist, you unfold.
The metal joysticks are safely nestled inside the flip-out arms of the controller, the landing gear safely nestled in the propeller arms. Not a millimeter is wasted, not even in the packaging. It’s the culmination of a dozen years of drone making experience — but really, it’s built directly on top of the company’s recent push to make the perfect consumer quadcopter.
More than anything, the Air feels like a refinement of the company’s first two folding drones, the Mavic Pro and Spark. It slots somewhere between its predecessors in terms of both sizing and price. But the device has the benefit of six additional months of hardware and software advancements, in some ways even besting the pricier Pro.
Like the Pro and Spark, the Air is another strong step toward a truly mainstream drone. But between the $799 starting price and some still idiosyncratic artifacts in the hardware and software design, it’s still a ways from the sort of plug and play setup the company is ultimately aiming for.
But hey, unlike our Pro[2] and Spark reviews[3], this time things didn’t end too badly for either the reviewer or reviewee — so that certainly marks a positive step toward that ultimate goal.
Flight school
There are plenty of lessons one can draw from GoPro’s latest stumble[4]. Chief among them is the fact that drones are hard. When the action-camera maker opted to go it alone on its own folding drone, it clearly didn’t know what lay ahead....