Not Just Drones: What Other Devices Does DJI Make? | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

Source: eftm.com

DJI is the undis­put­ed leader in the pro­duc­tion and sale of con­sumer drones, occu­py­ing almost 80% of the glob­al mar­ket. How­ev­er, despite being wide­ly rec­og­nized and dom­i­nat­ing the mar­ket, not many con­sumers know that DJI’s prod­uct line is not lim­it­ed to quad­copters at all. For all DJI fans and those inter­est­ed in gad­gets and tech­nol­o­gy, we have pre­pared a small overview that cov­ers the main cat­e­gories of DJI prod­ucts with sev­er­al of the best devices in each.

Drones

Despite a very diverse and exten­sive cat­a­log, one can­not ignore the fact that DJI is best known for its drones. The name of the com­pa­ny is grad­u­al­ly becom­ing so pop­u­lar that it is being used as a syn­onym for the word quad­copter (as it once hap­pened with GoPro and action cam­eras). The main rea­son for this is that DJI makes the best con­sumer drones in the world. Of course, oth­er com­pa­nies also release great mod­els, but no one does it as con­sis­tent­ly as DJI and with the same lev­el of inno­va­tion.

DJI Mav­ic Mini. Source: tvspecialists.com

From the Phan­tom to the Mav­ic, every year DJI releas­es mod­els that push the bound­aries of what we can imag­ine in con­sumer drones, set­ting the bar ever high­er. Take the new Mav­ic Air 2, for exam­ple. In many ways, this is a real break­through. Build­ing on the ground-break­ing tech­nol­o­gy of the orig­i­nal Mav­ic Air and dra­mat­i­cal­ly enhanc­ing the qual­i­ty of footage to meet the demands of the advanced video­g­ra­ph­er, DJI has made the Mav­ic Air 2 a tru­ly unique mod­el that is cur­rent­ly unri­valed by any oth­er brand. And DJI con­sis­tent­ly repeats such things year after year. There­fore, the com­pa­ny almost com­plete­ly owns the mar­ket and can right­ly be called the main drone man­u­fac­tur­er in the world.

You can read more about the new Mav­ic Air 2 in our review. Ear­li­er, we looked at the Mav­ic Mini and the strengths and weak­ness­es of the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Mav­ic Pro and Zoom.

Stabilizers

If DJI stopped mak­ing drones, it would still be one of the most impor­tant tech com­pa­nies, thanks in part to its exten­sive gimbal/steadicam cat­a­log.

Steadicams are motor­ized cam­era devices that allow you to sta­bi­lize video and facil­i­tate cer­tain cin­e­mat­ic move­ments and tech­niques. Steadicams come in dif­fer­ent sizes — from fold­ing hand-held devices to large devices attached to the oper­a­tor’s body. The size of the steadicam direct­ly depends on the type of cam­era and the weight that it can with­stand, as well as on the meth­ods of appli­ca­tion.

DJI Ronin-SC. Source: dji.com

The DJI line of stubs cov­ers the full range of dif­fer­ent designs of this device. Small­er steadicams can be found in the Ronin‑S/SC and Osmo series, which allow you to use devices rang­ing in size from a smart­phone to mid-range DSLRs and mir­ror­less cam­eras. While their pri­ma­ry func­tion is video sta­bi­liza­tion, the ben­e­fits of using DJI Steadicams go far beyond get­ting smooth hand­held video. So fold­ing steadicam for smart­phones DJI Osmo Mobile 3 (review can be read here) is equipped with auto­mat­ic track­ing func­tions (track­ing), the abil­i­ty to shoot hyper­laps­es and time-laps­es, and also has con­ve­nient con­trol both by phys­i­cal but­tons on the device itself and through a spe­cial appli­ca­tion.

DJI Ronin 2. Source: newatlas.com

At the oth­er end of the spec­trum, larg­er pro­fes­sion­al sys­tems like the Ronin 2 offer smart design, effec­tive sta­bi­liza­tion, ver­sa­til­i­ty and the abil­i­ty to mount heavy cam­eras and acces­sories, mak­ing them a crit­i­cal tool for pro­fes­sion­al film­mak­ing. This type of sta­bi­liz­er can be attached to the hood of a car to cap­ture a high-speed chase, or by attach­ing a cam­era with a cable to cap­ture an aer­i­al view, etc., and this mate­r­i­al will be per­fect­ly sta­bi­lized. Because they are designed for pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tion, these larg­er steadicams also have a much high­er car­ry­ing capac­i­ty. For exam­ple, Ronin 2 can sup­port cam­eras and acces­sories with a total weight of up to 13.6 kg.

action cameras

In hind­sight, DJI’s deci­sion to devel­op its own action cam­era seems pret­ty log­i­cal. The com­pa­ny’s suc­cess in the drone mar­ket and expe­ri­ence in devel­op­ing essen­tial fea­tures for action cam­eras, such as video sta­bi­liza­tion or a rugged hous­ing, meant that DJI already had almost all the nec­es­sary tools to build a qual­i­ty action cam­era.

Osmo Action is DJI’s first clas­sic action cam­era. But despite being a first gen­er­a­tion device, the Osmo Action is as tech­no­log­i­cal­ly advanced as any­thing you can find on the mar­ket right now.

DJI Osmo Action. Source: itigic.com

With a 1/2.3‑inch CMOS sen­sor, the cam­era can shoot 4K video at 60 fps, equipped with an elec­tron­ic sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem, and allows you to get a super smooth pic­ture. Osmo Action has already man­aged to gain some pop­u­lar­i­ty among action pho­tog­ra­phers and trav­el blog­gers, seri­ous­ly com­pet­ing with the tra­di­tion­al­ly dom­i­nant GoPro in this area (DJI Osmo Action review and com­par­i­son with GoPro Hero 7 Black can be found here).

It’s also worth men­tion­ing that DJI has anoth­er prod­uct close to the action cam­era cat­e­go­ry, the Osmo Pock­et. Osmo Pock­et is a pock­et steadicam with an inte­grat­ed cam­era that com­bines a num­ber of advan­tages of a tra­di­tion­al action cam­era and a hand­held stub.

DJI Osmo Pock­et. Source: xiaomist.com

It is steadicams that remain the gold stan­dard in terms of video sta­bi­liza­tion in any light­ing con­di­tions, out­per­form­ing both elec­tron­ic sta­bi­liza­tion of action cam­eras and smart­phones and opti­cal sta­bi­liza­tion in com­pact cam­era lens­es in terms of effi­cien­cy. And thanks to the built-in motors, the sta­bi­liz­er allows you to cre­ate some cin­e­mat­ic effects (for exam­ple, motion lapse, panora­ma and time lapse). As with a num­ber of new DJI steadicams, the Osmo Pock­et fea­tures the Active­Track active object track­ing sys­tem. The minia­ture cam­era allows you to shoot 4K video at 60 fps and take 12-megapix­el pho­tos.

Results

With an exten­sive cat­a­log and con­tin­u­ous intro­duc­tion of new inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts, DJI is like­ly to main­tain its dom­i­nant posi­tion in the mar­ket in the com­ing years. The com­pa­ny’s new prod­uct lines, such as action cam­eras and robot­ics, look very promis­ing, but in more tra­di­tion­al indus­tries such as drones and steadicams, the Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­er does not seem to be slow­ing down.

If you have ques­tions about DJI prod­ucts, we are hap­py to answer them in the com­ments. We will also be hap­py if you share your expe­ri­ence of using the com­pa­ny’s devices.

* when prepar­ing the arti­cle, mate­ri­als from the resources bhphotovideo.com and onfoto.ru were used.