Best quadcopters 2019 | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

Quad­copters quick­ly ceased to be a curios­i­ty, man­aged to sur­vive the wild pop­u­lar­i­ty, and final­ly set­tled on the fact that they became a spe­cial­ized device for aer­i­al pho­to and video film­ing. Today you can find quite a few mod­els, from the sim­plest and most bud­getary to the most expen­sive, which promise great endurance and high-qual­i­ty results. And while there are plen­ty of mod­els that are designed to mount your cam­era, today we will focus on one-piece drones that include both a film­ing tool and an air­craft. We con­sid­er the top mod­els of quad­copters for 2019, which cope with weath­er con­di­tions, and with a pho­to or video. Iron­i­cal­ly, there are only three gad­gets on our list, all of which belong to DJI’s top line. But let’s not delay, and look at what these devices are able to offer us.

Source: cnet

DJI Mavic Air

This quad­copter won the title of the best in 2019 for a rea­son. Many experts and review­ers agreed on this, and we are only try­ing to con­firm their words. DJI Mav­ic Air is a bal­ance between pow­er, price and size. It is much lighter than the Pro 1 and Pro 2 mod­els, and not much larg­er than the Spark mod­el from the same man­u­fac­tur­er. Its dimen­sions would like to be called close to ide­al. If you have expe­ri­enced the trans­porta­tion of a quad­copter, you will sure­ly agree with this. And if you add to this also four fold­ing screws, on which the quadro­copter actu­al­ly flies, and a 4K cam­era, then you don’t need to think of any­thing. You can imme­di­ate­ly see that you have a great device.

The video qual­i­ty pro­vid­ed by the Mav­ic Air does not suf­fer at all due to its size. The 3‑axis cam­era sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem built into this quad­copter can com­pete with larg­er mod­els, such as the Mav­ic Pro, which we will talk about lat­er. Pho­tos tak­en with the 12MP cam­era are just as detailed, if not bet­ter. In addi­tion, it is worth not­ing the high con­trast of the result­ing images. The drone shoots panora­mas in four dif­fer­ent styles, and it does­n’t need any help to do it. You just need to select the appro­pri­ate mode. Mav­ic Air will hov­er at one point and shoot a series of shots from dif­fer­ent angles, while it will stitch the shots on its own.

Like the Spark, Mav­ic Air can be con­trolled using ges­tures or a smart­phone. This is very con­ve­nient, espe­cial­ly if you have a habit of throw­ing the remote con­trol some­where and for­get­ting about it. You will nev­er be left with­out con­trol. How­ev­er, don’t throw away the orig­i­nal Mav­ic Air con­troller. Work­ing with him is a sep­a­rate pleas­ant expe­ri­ence. Con­trols are light and respon­sive, so you real­ly feel in con­trol of your device. The con­troller itself is slight­ly small­er than on the noto­ri­ous Mav­ic Pro, and is not equipped with an LCD dis­play, all for the sake of com­pact­ness and price. But do not wor­ry, because you will also have a smart­phone with all the data at hand.

The quad­copter can fly over a dis­tance of 4 km and back, tak­ing into account the fact that one bat­tery charge is enough for about 20 min­utes. This fig­ure is less than that of the Pro, but it is quite enough for shoot­ing.

The obsta­cle course sys­tem of the DJI Mav­ic Air deserves spe­cial atten­tion. Sen­sors are installed both front and rear. That is, the chance of crash­ing is neg­li­gi­ble, and it helps you fly the quad­copter with more con­fi­dence.

We’ve already not­ed the Mav­ic Air’s com­pact size, but we haven’t yet answered a ques­tion that will right­ful­ly both­er many: at this size, how does the gad­get cope with the wind? The answer is sim­ple — amaz­ing­ly good. With wind speeds up to 9 meters per sec­ond and even high­er (medi­um to strong windi­ness on the Beau­fort scale), Mav­ic Air moves smooth­ly and con­fi­dent­ly. And if you con­nect the sport mode, then even stronger winds will be on the shoul­der.

But you can’t do with­out cons, and one, even the only one that users note is the high-pitched sound that the device makes. Some com­pare it to a mos­qui­to swarm, oth­ers to bees, but every­one agrees, the sound can be very annoy­ing. This, of course, is solved by replac­ing the screws, but if you are ready to endure the sound, or on the con­trary, you will like it, then the Mav­ic Air is just per­fect for you. And in this you are not alone, the quad­copter is real­ly very good, which is why we chose it as the best.

Source: Trust­ed Reviews

DJI Mavic 2 Pro

DJI’s pro­fes­sion­al quad­copter mod­el imme­di­ate­ly arous­es inter­est. Part­ly because out­ward­ly it repeats the design of its pre­de­ces­sor, dif­fer­ing only in size. The Mav­ic 2 Pro is slight­ly larg­er and there­fore heav­ier. In appear­ance, it may even seem that it will not take off, and even drop­ping it in flight or even just like that, to be hon­est, is scary.

But to ensure that the Mav­ic 2 Pro does not fall, DJI took care of it pro­fes­sion­al­ly and care­ful­ly. Obsta­cle sen­sors are not just present, there are only 10 of them on the body, and they face in almost every direc­tion. The sen­sors are espe­cial­ly suc­cess­ful in the fol­low mode, when the quad­copter flies behind the own­er. Try to pass through thick­ets, trees or any oth­er obsta­cle course and see for your­self. The device cap­tures and bypass­es every­thing that gets in its way, regard­less of size. You can even say that the Mav­ic 2 Pro is extreme­ly atten­tive, which in this case plays a sig­nif­i­cant role.

Anoth­er plus is the Has­sel­blad 3‑axis cam­era, which is equipped with an inch CMOS sen­sor (same as on Sony’s RX10 and RX100). The aper­ture ranges from f/2.8 to f/11. Impres­sive? Whether there will be more, the cam­era is capa­ble of shoot­ing 4K at 30fps, and video of the less pop­u­lar 2.7K for­mat at 60fps. If you want to shoot Full HD, then at your ser­vice as much as 120 frames per sec­ond.

Pho­tos can be tak­en in RAW for­mat at 20 megapix­els. If you trans­late every­thing into the usu­al user lan­guage, then you can expect excel­lent pho­to and video results from the Mav­ic 2 Pro.

When it comes to fly­ing and the endurance of a quad­copter, there is also some­thing to pay atten­tion to here. The Mav­ic 2 Pro flies pro­fes­sion­al­ly, oth­er­wise it sim­ply can­not be called. At the same time, it is com­plete­ly con­trol­lable and obeys you. The new motors used on this quad­copter are sig­nif­i­cant­ly heav­ier than those seen on pre­vi­ous ones. But their pow­er is much high­er. In Sport Mode, the Mav­ic 2 Pro is capa­ble of reach­ing speeds of up to 70 km/h, and the bat­tery, also upgrad­ed from the pre­vi­ous mod­el, will pro­vide up to 30 min­utes of flight time on a sin­gle charge. The quad­copter also works much qui­eter, at long dis­tances you won’t even hear it. As for mem­o­ry, there is 8 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry and the abil­i­ty to expand it using a microSD card.

The con­troller is per­haps anoth­er detail that has hard­ly changed from the pre­vi­ous ver­sion of the quad­copter, although even it received a new speed switch for nor­mal flight, sport or tri­pod mount­ing modes.

The app that comes with the Mav­ic 2 Pro quad­copter is a pret­ty neat sys­tem that allows you to select modes, shoot­ing func­tions, and more. The only thing the Mav­ic 2 Pro los­es to the Air, aside from its weight, is ges­ture con­trol. The Mav­ic 2 Pro does not have this fea­ture. But the dif­fer­ence, of course, is in the lev­el of the device, and when it comes to a seri­ous pro­fes­sion­al-lev­el quad­copter, Mav­ic 2 ful­ly con­firms the Pro set-top box, pro­vid­ing high-qual­i­ty per­for­mance and wide func­tion­al­i­ty in a rugged, durable body.

Source: Trust­ed Reviews

DJI Mavic 2

And one more quad­copter, not sur­pris­ing­ly, from the same man­u­fac­tur­er. What is so spe­cial about the DJI Mav­ic 2 Zoom? It’s prac­ti­cal­ly a trans­formed ver­sion of the DJI Mav­ic 2 Pro, with some sig­nif­i­cant changes right where it counts. Both quad­copters are sim­i­lar in size and even in weight, although the Pro mod­el still out­weighs by a cou­ple of grams. All the same obsta­cle sen­sors work on the case, which works only in plus for both mod­els, and inside they are almost indis­tin­guish­able.

But we have already said that there are still dif­fer­ences, but it is hid­den, as you prob­a­bly already guessed, in the cam­era.

The Pro got a Has­sel­blad for pro­fes­sion­al aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy, and we’ve already dis­cussed all of its specifics above. Zoom, on the oth­er hand, prefers not the res­o­lu­tion of the matrix, but the opti­cal zoom, con­firm­ing its name. There­fore, we get a 2x opti­cal zoom, and a focal length of 24–48mm (by 35mm). All this is designed for shoot­ing video. At the same time, the video capa­bil­i­ties of the DJI Mav­ic 2 Zoom are exact­ly the same as those of the Pro. That is 4K at 30fps, 2.7K at 60fps and Full HD at 120fps.

If you still don’t quite under­stand why a cam­era for video, and even from the air, has a zoom, then we have a few ideas. For exam­ple, with such a device, you can shoot wildlife, ani­mals, with­out fright­en­ing them. We do not rec­om­mend pho­tograph­ing closed objects, but if we talk about the capa­bil­i­ties of the DJI Mav­ic 2 Zoom, then it does an excel­lent job with shots where you need to shoot and fly away.

The DJI Mav­ic 2 Zoom offers a vari­ety of shoot­ing modes, includ­ing some quite artis­tic ones. So, for oper­a­tors, this tool is very inter­est­ing and can add specifics to any video.

By the way, prob­a­bly the most attrac­tive dif­fer­ence from the Pro mod­el is the price. The DJI Mav­ic 2 Zoom is sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er than the Pro. So much so that it can play a deci­sive role in the final choice. One has only to remem­ber that the DJI Mav­ic 2 Zoom is still more focused on video, so for pho­tos it will not be an ide­al choice. This, how­ev­er, does not mean at all that he can­not cope with them.

DJI has arguably made a big name for itself in the world of quad­copters, and look­ing at these three flag­ship drone mod­els, we don’t won­der why for a sec­ond. Each of them is char­ac­ter­ized by high pow­er, the abil­i­ty to over­come obsta­cles with­out much effort, with­stand dif­fi­cult weath­er con­di­tions and, most impor­tant­ly, is able to pro­duce excel­lent results.

Of course, there are oth­er mod­els that are suit­able for dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es: DJI SPARK, which is excel­lent at tak­ing pho­tos and self­ies, Par­rot Bebob, which allows you to con­trol the drone using VR, DJI Inspire 2, which is capa­ble of shoot­ing pro­fes­sion­al-qual­i­ty videos, and many oth­ers.

Always remem­ber that quad­copters should be han­dled with extreme care. And you need to choose the right mod­el based on your require­ments and pre­ferred shoot­ing styles.