DJI Mavic Air 2 vs. Skydio 2 Autonomous Drone!

hey everybody its norm from tested and
today we're going to be reviewing and comparing two of the most interesting
and exciting accessible consumer drones on the market today the DJI Mavic air 2
that was just launched last month as well as the sky do 2 which is the second
generation autonomous drone that was launched late last year we finally
haven't had time during this lockdown to do some flying and compare these
head-to-head now the state of the consumer drone market is interesting in
that it's really mature these days and by that I mean the past five years or so
DJI has really dominated the marketplace they've really pushed a lot of
competitors out because of their fast iteration in just releasing so many
products and iterating on the technologies that make these drones fun
to fly great camera platforms and safer to fly and you can fly for longer
periods of time in fact a lot of the technologies that you know we found so
magical about drones eight years ago first are testing them including GPS
space stabilization and wireless video transmission on to your phone and gimbal
based camera systems all those really all commodity features on drones these
days and what DJI has done to really keep them at the top of the market has
been improving on things like form factor and industrial design the first
phantom drones now have given way to things like the whole Mavic line which
fold up very compactly are easy to throw into a backpack and allow for you to fly
more often because you can take it to more places while still having the
benefits of those strong brushless motors we now very long battery life at
over 30 minutes as well as improve video signal transmission with their new ah
Qun 2.0 technology lists can really you can fly it miles away and the Mavic air
2 is really interesting and where it sits in the Matic lineup right in the
middle so it's a much more robust drone and more powerful drone than the Mavic
mini doesn't have as good of a camera as what
you'd find on the Mavic pro 2 but this is no slouch and DJ has really done some
nice improvements on this including improving yes the camera it's now a 1/2
inch camera which is an improvement it does 4k 60 video recording 4k at 60
frames per second and finally now has built-in ND filter mounts so you can buy
aftermarket ND filters from DJI attach them on and get a little bit of motion
blur a little more cinematic like look in your filming or in your photography
the camera still folds up as usual there are a bunch of cameras all around it for
obstacle avoidance eye and obstacle avoidance and subject tracking is that
new frontier for drones these days and where the new technology is being fitted
in and that's where something like the sky do – really shines because this is a
drone platform like with the sky do r1 that is face all around autonomy and the
ability to fly it and let it fly by itself and not have to worry about it
while it's navigating and mapping the world in real-time now scaleo has made a
bunch of improvements in the second-generation model first of all
it's a completely new form factor there's no longer that frame around it
it's a very rigid frame milled frame in here with a different camera arrangement
still very wide lenses that can have a great overlapping field of view to see
almost every single nook and cranny around it as well as now a 3 axis gimbal
for the camera system a much improved camera sensor and optics that also like
the Maverick air 2 four cords at 4k 60fps
it doesn't quite fold up it's not quite as compact as the nav ik air – but still
fits very easily in a standard backpack or in the hard carrying case that comes
with and it has a battery that attaches via magnet on the bottom so it pops off
very easily easily replaceable you charge it with the battery on here
with a USBC port and it has a SD card for expandable storage but really the
thing that makes sky do too compelling is that autonomy engine that lets you
put it up in the air and turn on a variety of tracking modes and flying
modes whether it's orbiting around a track subject that can see just press it
on the screen on your phone or something like an augmented reality cable cam
system where on your phone you can tap points in space Point a and point B and
then the sky do two would fly between those points while still tracking a
subject now still connects your phone over Wi-Fi so range is a little more
limited but you can extend that range with a new feature new accessory which
is the sky do beacon for 150 bucks and this is I would think I would say an
essential accessory for the sky do two because it not only extends the range
you have for flying but also improves the accuracy of subject tracking so when
you have this in your pocket it's not gonna lose track of you you even if it
doesn't have line of sight with you on it's computer vision camera it also
works as a remote control but it's not to stick remote you actually use this
more as motion controller like a gesture based wand or laser pointer you really
just pull in the sky and move where you want the drone to move and it will
immediately very responsibly fly to that location and then with this screen here
you can tap and make micro adjustments or kind of set where it is oriented
relative to you and how far it is away from you as well as doing things like
have it do a drone e where it flies very far away from you and comes back a lot
of automated features very accessible with this beacon but there are plenty of
other differences between these two drones and who they're right for because
of their flight characteristics and their features and the image quality you
get out of them and I wanted to bring in someone more to experience flying drones
that's tested video producer Gunther Kirsch was a licensed drone pilot and
both he and I are able to go out into the field
and spend a couple days testing these and capturing footage so here's a
conversation that Gunther and I have about the differences between these and
who they're made for let's take a listen so now I'm joined by Gunther Kirsch
tested video producer and drone aficionado Gunther how you doing doing
pretty good how are you good it's been awhile since we've talked to each other
and we actually were able to meet up in person in the air of lockdown to go
drone flying now a little bit of background you are certified drone pilot
you have a long history flying DJI drones both the home hobbyist ones as
well as the more high professional runs like the inspires so you were excited to
try the Mavic air and the sky do ya I really love their newer line of Mavic
cameras pneumatic Pro is one of my favorites and the mamak air 2 is
becoming one of my favorites too so what I want to do is pick your brain and have
conversation about your thoughts on flying both of these you're able to take
a week with them and take them out into hikes and I want to break down our
conversation into like the three FS of flying drones one flight feature set and
then also the footage itself because the whole idea is to build a film cool video
or take great photos with these let's start with flight and we'll start with
thematic air 2 we were flying primarily with the transmitter the physical
controller and what did you think about the flight characteristics and the
handling of automatic air – I think it's great you know DJI has really perfected
this over the years and the two different flight modes normal and sport
are really handy I found myself mostly sticking with normal flight mode because
I'm gonna be filming with it most of the time so the normal has a lot of object
avoidance built in as well as it's just kind of a smoother flight so you know if
you're trying to get a really nice steady long drone shot having it in
normal modes totally fine I find most of the time – when I don't like a shot it's
because it's too jerky or it's too fast so
the normal mode especially as you're closer to objects the normal mode force
forces you to go slower and be smoother which is only a benefit and then like if
the if the drones like way far off after a shot I throw it in sport mode fly it
back to me at 40 miles an hour and it's there in a jiff and then I throw it back
in normal mode and do some more filming something I'm always surprised by with
these you know the first time they introduced like a sport mode is just how
powerful and fast it is like it go it just zooms and if if you're you know
flying it at tree level or you know close to human height level it just goes
by so so fast much faster than you know 25 mile an hour ish that were used to
for these type of drones but the way you use it in terms of getting it back to
you when it's far off distance when you don't necessarily need the obstacle
avoidance features turned on and sport and it's such an easy toggle it's just
switch it for normal sport on the transmitter that's a really smart way of
using it no I know a lot of people think of sport drones or sport mode as maybe
in a kin silly and certainly you can turn off that's the settings are just
the setting up so you get the attitude flight mode but this is not a fpv style
drone right and honestly I don't have much experience when it comes to fpv
flying at all that's like a whole different ballgame and I know DJI sells
some sort of fpv adapter but from what I understand that's not what this is for
its for prosumer you know semi-professional film makers vloggers
travelers people who want to document and in a somewhat cinematic way show off
from an aerial perspective what they're doing and Mavic air too is perfect for
that and they've really over the years in iterating because they iterate so
quickly the the speed controllers or responsiveness the wireless signal of
course we did find instances where we're flying behind buildings we lose the
video signal the HD video signal which you can adjust to be lower resolution
for for better lower latency but it feels like the culmination of almost
now a decade's worth of making drones where you don't have to feel like the
Mavic because it's so much smaller than what the inspire is or what the phantom
used to be you know the the compromises are fewer and fewer it still feels solid
up high up high altitude with wind yeah you know I think I ran into some I think
I only lost video signal once and it quickly came back and generally speaking
the Maverick air 2 is completely foolproof the only gripe I've had with
DJI over the years is their software and like you said the iterations that
they've gone through and I've arrived to at this point with you Mavic to air it's
it's just so easy to use I didn't have hardly any issues when it came to
software I connected my phone instantly there were just no issues like I said I
lost video signal maybe once but generally speaking flight stability
overall ease of use was so fantastic in this and that's that that's what draws
me to it as well as you know all the other benefits that we'll discuss later
yeah and ease of use I mean it's interesting you mention that because
ease of use is what sky do is 100% going for the sky do two and they've reduced a
form factor a ton you know this is almost like compared to the first gen
sky do this is like the sky do air right it doesn't have that big frame around it
for the camera the placement of their wide-angle cameras for the object
avoidance is more integrated into the chassis now it doesn't fold right so
there's the it's this is the form factor you're gonna travel there was a hard
case that comes with but unlike the Mavic it doesn't fit into something like
tuck in that fits into bag as as easy as the Maverick does the sky do it doesn't
do that but this is much smaller and I do like things like making the battery
magnetic so that's really easy to attach to and if it does crash it immediately
turns off but the flight characteristics of this while you can control manually
it's all about that automated flight which is you know when we're talking
about features that is it's big big defining feature the the obstacle
avoidance and subject tracking and you know in
fact when you buy it it doesn't even come with physical transmitter this
physical transmitter is an aftermarket accessory you can buy from them for 150
bucks and is essentially the parrot made one but I'd never found myself really
defaulting to this as the way to fly the phone app being able to then turn on you
know track me select the subject and make that the target or use a to stick
version controls that was more than sufficient for the sky do yeah I agreed
the whole purpose of the sky do is to not really use something like a
transmitter it's nice that they include it as a little accessory because if it
was my only drone it would be nice to have that feature set as an option but
using it I found myself always defaulting to the beacon and the phone
app which worked flawlessly and I have to hand it off to Scotty Oh to as you
said the industrial design of it the physical design of it is actually really
impressive especially since this is only their second generation I mean it's kind
of impossible really to compete with DJI when it comes to that but they've done a
darn good job and it feels solid it feels really nice it looks great too
like you said it doesn't it doesn't collapse down as neatly as a maverick
does but I didn't I wasn't bothered by it for what it is the beacon that might
be my favorite thing about the sky do and if there's an accessory to buy I'd
say don't buy the transmitter buy the beacon because like you can use it
essentially as a laser pointer where you point to it in the sky and you can drag
it and the drone flies there while maintaining at all times the obstacle
avoidance so I can position it so the drone now the interesting thing is you
can't like precisely position you know where it is relative to you you can set
distance away from your subject it's like a you know distance one two three
four or five like that kind of thing and that's kind of their mindset right it's
less of finding this precise point in in space that you would be using a
transmitter fine and more about generally in this area this angle
relative to you face the subject this way and then turn on
these tracking features like orbit like stationary tripod like you know this the
the camera – them the zipline system that go from point A to point B while
tracking you the whole time those are the things that the sky oh really excel
at and not once they have to worry about it crashing where if I tried to have
that mindset with the Mavic I felt like we're gonna back my head I was always
worried it was gonna crash and in a few times we did youdid we track yeah we
learned our lesson with the maverick yeah it's tracking is pretty good but
yeah the sky do is it's it's magic it's it's crazy how well it works
I took it through some trees with like you little tiny spindle II branches
hanging down and it manages to detect them and you know sometimes I I got
frustrated that it wasn't even better but I had to remind myself how magical
it really is yeah you it just takes all the pain out
of flying a drone and all the worry – no I think we're have to work with it like
I think when you said you felt frustrated I've had that moment as well
where I wanted to go like between trees in a certain way right right that almost
handheld shot and that might be expecting too much of it because then
I'm like taking it's AI capabilities for granted and I think exactly they do this
man doing the same thing right they're doing this not being a real time and
they to some extent there they have to play it a little bit safe because you're
moving as well and it needs to catch up you know and keep pace with you and keep
distance with you and so it makes sense in some cases it's gonna go around a
tree rather than trying to go thread the needle but again it never crashes and it
just stays with you whether you're on a bike whether in our hike walking there's
no problem it's gonna do that orbit or when we test it with Adam when he was on
his one wheel electric skateboard stayed with him the whole way including after
he crashed he got before the drone crashed yeah that's what it'll be you'll
find myself like as I'm like waving around the wand like not paying
attention to where I'm walking and I stumble
but yeah like I'd give one tip there is a hight floor adjustment or there's this
safety feature built in where defaults it won't go below a certain height on
the ground and as soon as I turn that off I found as I was walking through
these low-hanging trees and like I said super impressive just small space it was
able to like get down to kind of person height and then navigate through those
areas a lot better and you know you can kind of you know like okay I see a hole
there I bet if I position it there with the beacon and then walk this way it'll
kind of go through that hole and sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't
but generally speaking yeah we you can't take that sort of a eye for granted it's
you know even though you don't have the fine precision control the the benefits
of not having to worry about anything outweigh that and it still feels very
much in both these cases there it's still the early days of AI they're using
these deep networks to train the eye to recognize the silhouettes of human
figures and I think sky do has they solved the human tracking with a running
bicycling walking no problem and they're still working on things like you know
tracking a dog and I think they just got cars a year and a half ago whereas on
the Mavic side I feel like there are more failure points when they you do
subject tracking like crossing paths it will lose tracking I ran into a lot of
issues yeah with that at times it wouldn't even pick up people if there
was a high contrast situation and like you said you have two people cross over
if two people cross over it's not going to register it that well yeah yeah and
it's relying on their cameras those visual cameras to do that computer
vision and to do it as fast as you're recording or as fast as these drones are
flying a battery life also a big difference and this is one case where I
think again DGI with their speed controllers in the fact that they're not
having to run this intense you know world mapping processor we got so much
more battery life out of the Mavic air to two point we're flying side-by-side I
was playing a sky do you were flying a Mavic and the sky day was burning out
like after about 18 minutes or so I'd set it
down it's rated for like 20 to 23 minutes and it was like really hot the
battery was hot because it's running this processor in here where's the Mavic
you were just happily flying going for over half an hour
yeah the battery life Fugit it just feels like you don't have to worry about
it anymore I remember the early days with early DJI drones where you know
you'd get it to like 30% battery and you'd start panicking you're like I
don't know if it doesn't get back in time a little crash but with the mafic I
let it get down to like you know like 15% which is pushing it a little bit and
you just have plenty of time you don't have to worry and it's in 30 minutes in
flying a drone it feels like a long time I want to talk about that there's like a
almost like a time distortion effect when you're flying a drone especially
when you're paying attention and you're keeping line-of-sight and you have to
like think about every control like 15 minutes to 20 minutes feels much longer
and even though you're getting these shots that are maybe like 30 seconds to
admit it usable at most when you're doing these slow pans maybe one of the
reason the sky do felt like it was trading faster and it definitely is
shorter battery life was because I'm not using all that mental energy worried
about flying it it's just hovering there and in that sense I just wanted stay up
for 10 15 minutes and just keep on rolling let it roll let it roll that's a
fair point yeah you do get kind of in the zone when you're flying the drone
and the sky do you know that's the benefit it takes you out of that and it
does feel like time flies a little bit high but the Mavic the battery life is
just insane it kind of blows my mind how long that thing will stay up in the sky
and I on some of the footage I went on a hike and I was I found myself having to
catch up with my girlfriend Mika and my dog Neuman because the drone was just
out there for so long you know I was expecting to fly up land it put a
battery in but I had to walk down the mountain half the time to catch up with
them and it's very usable you have to stay focused right like this is good
good practice in general when you're flying you want to maintain a lot of
site you want to keep your attention to it
but the autonomy of sky do is a little more forgiving that way well you can
feel like oh okay let it keep on tracking me I'm gonna catch up with my
group on a hike whereas if you're flying manually with the DJI you're staying
there you're when you're flying you are flying that drone yeah the the sky do
flying experience after I got the hang of it was actually really nice hand take
offs and hand catches you know you can just walk up the trail slide the thing
on the on the app takes off you go walk around for a little bit Oh someone's
coming I don't want to serve them or oh the battery's running low bring it back
to you tell it to land and just catch it and you're ready to go
you know swap a new battery in and out whereas yeah the Mavic it lasts a long
time it's kind of like a little bit more of a commitment right right and I think
their software reflects that we're on the sky do when the moment you launch it
it starts recording video that's the default option because they know every
second of footage is gonna be usable and good or if mapping it's more of a
traditional photography and videography style where you're positioning it
recording then kind of doing you're doing your
shot that you had in mind and speaking of those shots there are now more camera
features they both support nd filters that you can buy aftermarket wise and
one of the interesting things because you film a lot of video you know we film
for protested and when you think of filming video you think of 24 fps and
maybe a 180 degree shutter for a cinematic look and we tried that with
the ND filters so you can get that shutter down to one fiftieth of a second
one sixtieth of a second and I actually did not like the blur I saw in the image
quality that much with a low shutter I like the crispness of a high shutter
image on drone video yeah I agree you know if you want to get that
cinematic you know 24 PE cinema blur it does it it doesn't look great as you're
zooming past trees and things like that you wanted a little more crisp and
honestly like defaulting to shooting into 60 P at times to kind of get that
forced crispness is kind of nice in a certain regard because then
you can just slow the footage down in post which right slow drone slow-mo
drone footage looks great yeah 1080p 60 is I get a nice sweet spot 2.7 K 60 a
sweet spot for filming drones with with this type of footage and then also the
nd filters I think maybe are better suited for maybe photography right
you're gonna do a longer exposure right alright or a sunset shot you want to get
some streaks in there or like then then the nd filters work but don't no need to
be super aggressive with that and there there are some really dark tinted ND
filter that you can buy for these yeah we experimented with the heaviest ND
filter and it kind of just forced the auto exposure to open up the shutter for
a little too long so if you kind of find the sweet spot with using I think us
1/16 that nd is what we were using a lot for bright sunny days and that kind of
seemed to be like really nice because it toned it down just enough and kept the
shutter quick enough to where things seem crisp yeah yeah and we're out the
point with these drones where not only is a processing good and being iterated
on for processing the images and crunching those pixels but also the
cameras themselves the image sensors and the lenses are pretty good and these
these are professional-grade like images that you're gonna get like you know
mounting a mirrorless camera or DSLR on a heavy drone and it's not even the
image called it you're gonna get on a the Mavic Pro right which has that one
inch sensor the first Mavic air and this sky do had the same size sensor that one
and two-thirds inch sensor but the Mavic air too has a larger sensor at one half
inch and it's good the 4k images look good it does HD are native so not just
for photos but HDR video can process that in real time you do get less on the
manual configuration options when you do that and you do see some noise you know
because a lot of times you're flying in these bright days and you're trying to
get you know bright days it's not aren't noise free because in the shadows under
where trees or casting shadows where people are standing you're gonna see
noise and that's just a part of you know what
you have to deal with with these type of drones and this these sensor sizes yeah
it's a small trade-off for everything you get in these little drones the form
factor the ease of use and like you said you are gonna be most of the time flying
this especially because of legal regulations in bright daylight which is
fine you know like a little bit of noise in the shadows easily adjusted with a
little bit of a color grade and even even the noise that is there it's not
that bad you know you're not gonna be putting this in a Hollywood film right
you know if you put this up against an re ya you're gonna notice it but it's
probably going on YouTube it's probably gonna go through some sort of post
process processing and some sort of compression – so for what it is it's
it's awesome it's a small trade-off so who are these drones for do you think
like you know under $1000 $800 for the maverick air – $1,000 for the sky do if
you had to pick one up right now right what would which one would you pick and
what would you use it mostly for I'm I love so many things about the sky do I
think it's an amazing piece of technology and and filming equipment –
but if I were to buy a drone it would it would be the Mavic it's mostly just
because I have a decent amount of experience flying drones so it not the
second nature but I just don't have that apprehension when flying them that I
worry about crashing them so much anymore
whereas if you're someone who's pretty new to droning or just don't really want
to worry about it the fact that you're flying like $1000 thing in the air if
that worries you a lot then the sky do is something more tailored towards your
needs if you're also someone who's more into action sports you know if you do a
lot of biking or trail running or snowboarding things like that then I
would say this guy do is kind of a no-brainer especially because you have
the wand to control it while you're doing a busy active activity but for
someone like me who's done a lot of flying over the years and you know I
have a good idea of what I want to capture the Mavic is more tailored
towards my preferences yeah yeah absolutely and that portability that
battery life I think the battery life is a big thing here and one of my
biggest wishes because I am totally the person who is gonna go for the sky do I
don't want to have to worry I can put my thumbs on the sticks and manually
control it but I just want it set in the air and mess with the different tracking
modes and trust that it's not gonna be able not gonna crash into a tree I love
that but not getting really 20 minutes of flight time like you're only gonna
get two or three shots that you need and four people are going out you know
whether it's for a production shoot like us taking this out to film Adam on
location or someone when it's possible to go on a bike ride your bike rides are
not 15 minutes long you want you know a good hour of footage and different types
of footage and in that case you're gonna get more batteries and and then it
starts to add up true but you know the sky do has come in very handy in a
couple productions as you know as people have probably seen in this video so I
can't knock it at all you know like I've been busy off shooting something where
you know I don't have the time to deal with you know even though the Mavericks
pretty easy there's like a little bit longer of a setup process and this guy
do was just instant you threw it up in the air and we were getting shots and
litter I think it was literally like the last 10 minutes of one of our really
long shoot days and you know that's all you needed just those 10 minutes so that
battery was totally fine in that case so it has it has its place for sure
absolutely it's amazing technology and what a cool iteration on both of these
right for the magic air – as well as the sky do – that you can get a drone of
these capabilities for under a thousand dollars thanks Gunther thank you for
checking in and talking about drones with me
hopefully we'll build the catch up in person more and fly more in the future
but hopefully you guys out there get a good sense of what these drones can do
if you're in the market and if you have time these days under lockdown to go to
go flying on a hike or a bike ride and we'll back with more reviews next time
you

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