DJI Mavic Air 2 - £759/$799

A drone that looks like it will literally fly off the shelves

- Adam Juniper

The new Mavic Air 2 is the latest generation of the DJI dynasty. The Mavic range is DJI’s family of consumer camera drones; the now-familiar folding design has cascaded down from the Mavic (launched in August 2018) through to the recent super-light Mavic Mini (which arrived in late 2019). The only outlier was the original Mavic Air, from early 2018. It's friendly styling in a choice of colors was a plus, but even at launch, the Mavic Air had some major drawbacks: its battery life was poor and its range was disappointing.

The world beyond DJI has been marching on apace, too. The Mavic Air’s natural market might be thought of as people looking essentially for a ‘flying GoPro,’ to capture family fun or content for branding. The slo-mo possibilities offered by 60fps at the now de-rigueur 4K video resolution are what the market wants, and recent drone releases (like the PowerVision PowerEgg X) deliver. With the Mavic Air – and the Mavic 2 Pro for that matter – only offering 4K at 30fps, customers’ heads were turning.

The DJI Mavic Air 2 dispenses with its predecessor’s stand-out styling and instead makes its Mavic heritage very clear, with styling so close to the Mavic 2 Pro that at first glance it’s hard to spot the difference between the two. That design approach has advantages that are difficult to ignore; it folds small (180 x 97 x 84mm), but opens to a good size (183 x 253 x77mm). That, in turn, makes it very nimble in the air – something the beefier 3,500mAh battery helps with. It means the 570g take-off weight (up from the original) isn’t really a problem, especially since the maximum flight time is up to 34 minutes. (The original Air claimed a flight time of 21 minutes).

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