If youre in the market for a new drone, but first lets go get some footage: Music, hey, my name is jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go in the process of gathering this footage. I did my best to make sure all the settings were exactly the same, and i flew to as close of the same flight piles as possible in the process. We also got stuck with our cars because we were driving on some back mountain roads that had recently had a fair amount of snow on them. Thankfully, we were able to get unstuck via a little bit of elbow grease its 10 degrees, its a little bit of a breeze blowing time to uh yeah, launch this thing and see what it can do. First off the mavic 3 is much quieter than most. The other drones ive flown – i mean it is less than three feet away from me and i can talk and hear myself easily over the sound of propellers, its probably that the propellers the tone is lower its a deeper lower tone in frequency, so its more bassy, Whereas a lot of the other drones had a higher buzzy sound, but its impressively quiet, so its the air 2s same distance apart, definitely a much higher pitch. I feel like its a little bit louder, but im not really sure how much louder. But anyway, there you go Music, we have to start out by talking about the image quality and the differences between these two drones in theory, because the mavic 3 has a four thirds sensor, it should do better in low light with the air 2s only sporting, a One inch sensor, but some of my results were actually a little bit surprising as far as resolutions and frame rates go.

The air 2s can shoot 5.3 k up to 30 frames, a second in 10 bit d log, which is great. It can shoot 4k up to 60 frames. A second and full hd up to 120 frames a second. When it comes to the mavic 3. The mavic 3 can shoot 5.1 k up to 50 frames, a second. It can shoot 4k and cinema 4k up to 120 frames a second and you can shoot hd up to 200 frames a second, but also as part of that, where the air 2s has 150 megabits throughput for the video which gives you a nice amount of detail. In the video to be able to edit with the mavic 3 ups that to up to 200 megabits throughput and when it comes to video, while both of these drones shoot d log 10 bit, the mavic 3 definitely has the more flat more log like profile. Because, as you can see here, its just a much flatter image, whereas the air 2s has a little bit more color a little bit more contrast in there, they both will still give you lots of room to color grade and lots of room to push and pull The image around in post, but the mavic 3 wins overall theres. Also another difference, though, when you shoot in d log on the air 2s, you can use the iso to go all the way from 100 up to 1600, where the mavic 3.

You have two settings. 400 and 800, which are the dual gain settings so 400 for bright, light and 800, for you know darker conditions, and this is where it definitely is different and they will both give you great results. But when it comes to very very low light, you dont really want to shoot in log anyway, um it just doesnt generally work out very well. So if you shoot in the standard color profile, both of these will shoot from 100 iso all the way up to 6400 iso, and i did an extremely low light test here. Where i was at iso 6400, you can see both of the images are really noisy. I mean i would never use them this way, not surprising, considering it has a larger sensor and it does do better in low light, but the results were closer than i thought, but here in the extremely low light test again, you can see that at the same Settings at iso 6400, the mavic 3 definitely looks brighter, even though it has a ton of noise just like everything else. But that is an indication that it is giving you more light, so you should be able to run in the same conditions and run at a lower iso to get a good pleasing image. Video is not everything that drones do a lot of people myself included like to use drones for aerial photography, and these drones, while they both have 20 megapixel sensors, definitely differ in the amount of dynamic range.

The mavic 3 gives you 12.8 stops of dynamic range, which is just about a whole entire, stop more than the air 2s. Now the difference is going to be negligible, depending on what youre shooting, where youll see it most is where you have very dark shadows and very bright highlights thats, where the mavic 3 will win in the overall image quality over the air 2s. So if it isnt all about image quality, which the mavic 3 does win, not by as much as i thought, but it does win, it also comes down to performance. Both of these drones offer fantastic performance, but they differ greatly when it comes to some of the ways they can handle different environmental conditions. The air 2s gives us about 20, something minutes of flight time, depending on how youre, using it dji says, 31, but we all know that you never get the full flight time, but it does give you 20 something minutes of flight time per battery. It handles conditions. Well, it flew at 10 degrees, fahrenheit, no problem ive had it down around zero and its flown, no problem where the mavic 3 definitely brings a big bump in performance in battery life. Dji says 46 minutes ive been averaging between 38 and 40 generally, depending on how im using it and its also extremely cold, which doesnt help, but it definitely lasts a lot longer. You get almost a third, a third amount of flight time on 10 minutes.

Basically more flight time with the mavic 3., but thats, not the entire story, because the mavic 3 can easily fly at about 46 miles an hour pretty much all the time, and when i was messing with it testing with it, it flew. I mean its just a much faster, much more powerful drone, and you can tell in the way it flies and the way it handles it. It accelerates faster, it gets to places faster just because it is a larger drone and it will also handle more winds. Now not as much more wind as i thought here, you can see a clip i shot with the air 2s. The winds were blowing 25 30 miles an hour and in sport mode i was able to combat those um. It was a challenge for the drone, but the drone did fine and handled it now. The mavic 3 would handle those conditions a little bit easier just because it is a larger drone. It has more power and itll handle colder weather. Now my mavic 2 pro ive flown as cold as 40 below zero. I dont think the mavic 3 would have any issues flying that cold. Provided you take the precautions of making sure your batteries are warm before you try and take off, and you know theyre, not starting cold. If you want to get somewhere faster, the mavic 3 is going to win or, if youre tracking vehicles things like that. The mavic 3 is going to win.

The air 2s, though, definitely holds its own and still does a really good job, and then we come to obstacle avoidance now, my disclaimer on this is: you should never rely on obstacle avoidance. I fly with obstacle voids off. Most of the time, just because i find that it tends to ruin more shots than it saves drones, at least for me uh. But you know you should do what youre comfortable with. However, when it comes to obstacle avoidance, the drones do differ dramatically. The air 2s has forward upward, rear and downward facing obstacle avoidance sensors that work okay, um, definitely not as good as the mavic 3, which has 360 degree all of the time obstacle avoidance. If you want it, the obstacle avoidance on the mavic 3 is really impressive. Im gon na just fly it straight at us and thats all im gon na do and its gon na do everything else. It already detected us already detected us and moved to the left Music. The stick stick is full forward. It took a lot longer to go around, to figure out a flight path and get around me and then move forward was the the mavic 3 was like instantly around and just kept going now. There is something interesting that both of these drones, even when you have the obstacle voids, turned off, you can switch a setting that will give you the readout on the map and tell you how close or how far away you are from obstacles, even when its turned Off be careful with that, because you can accidentally fly it with obstacle.

Coins turned off thinking its on, but its not its just that the obstacle voice is still looking at the environment and reading the environment. Out on the display, like you see here now, obstacle avoidance plays a big role into things like active track, intelligent flight modes, because it helps the drone operate safely in the environment, its in when its under kind of intelligent flight modes not been able to test that, Because the firmware hasnt been released for the mavic 3, yet, which is another consideration if you use intelligent flight modes, you may just want to wait or if you cant wait, then the air 2s might just be the drone for you. For now now the air 2s has a lot of great intelligent flight modes. They all work really well, but again without sideways sensors. You have to be aware a little bit more of whats around the drone and its surroundings as its flying through those intelligent flight modes. So as soon as the mavic 3 firmware is updated and we get those intelligent flight modes ill be doing a video about it and itll be linked up in the corner here, and you can watch that right there. But i with djis, track record of their intelligent flight modes and their active track. I can only assume – and my best guess is that it will be improved with the mavic 3 and it will do a better job, especially with the 360 obstacle avoidance.

It definitely should give it more opportunities and better ability to track an object through different types of spaces when it comes to size and weight. This is where the use cases really start to differ if youre doing a lot of traveling a lot of backpacking. A lot of carrying everything on your back like i do, the air 2s is going to win because it comes in at 650 grams, but when you add even other batteries, the controller everything together. The air 2s is a much smaller package and will fit much easier into your camera bag, while also adding less weight. The mavic 3 definitely quite a bit bigger at 900 grams or almost 900 grams, but it also is just a lot bigger period. The batteries are much larger, and so, when you put the whole fly more kit into your backpack, its going to take up considerably more space than the air 2s. So if youre, somebody who travels a lot – and you want really good image quality – i think the air 2s wins hands down, just because its size form factor and the weight that it brings. But it still has fantastic image quality and before we jump into the price difference, which is significant, we got to talk about range a little bit now. Both of these drones will fly well beyond your visual line of sight. So i dont do range tests, because theres really no point they both will fly for miles without having any issue with range.

Now lets talk about pricing, because this is where these drones differ dramatically and then ill. Give you my opinion about which drone is the right. Drone for you, depending on your use case scenario, the mavic 3 definitely is an expensive drone if youre a hobbyist, its twenty two hundred dollars for the drone. If you get the fly more kit, which is what i recommend you do its three thousand dollars basically, so that is quite an expensive drone where the air 2s comes in at right about a thousand dollars by itself or 12 1300 for the fly more kit. So less than half the price of the mavic 3 and i think that you get about 90 – something percent of the performance of the mavic 3.. So my opinion is that if you dont need the utmost image quality and the just the best performance you can get in a compact and foldable drone, then the air2s is the best value drone on the market. For the imaging quality you get. The mavic 3 is really for somebody who makes a good amount of money using drones or you just absolutely budgets, not an option or but just not an object, and you just want the best image quality that you can get in. This sort of form factor drone right now there are links below and if you want to see, reviews and comparisons of other drones, including the mavic 3, with the skydeal, which will be coming when the active track comes out and the mavic 2 pro, then click or Tap right here because i put together a playlist of other drones that ive worked with and compared as always.

If you have questions, ask me in the comments below or join my live stream, wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoDXz4HLbg8