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DJI Unveils the Mavic Pro, a Foldable and Ultra-Portable Camera Drone (petapixel.com)
It didn't take long for DJI to respond to GoPro's voice-controlled Karma drone. Today, the company has unveiled the Mavic Pro, an ultra-portable drone that can fold up into roughly the "size of a standard water bottle," DJI says. Of course, it also features a high-resolution camera and several autonomous software tricks. PetaPixel reports: Despite its petite form factor, the drone packs a punch: there's a 4K camera on the front, a visual navigation system, a 4.3-mile (7km) range, and a 27-minute flight time. By comparison, the Karma has a range of 0.62 miles (1km) and a flight time of 20 minutes. The Mavic Pro can be operated with a remote controller for long-range uses, or simply with your smartphone if you're not planning to fly it far. For the latter, the drone can go from folded up to in flight in less than a minute. In the Mavic Pro is a new FlightAutonomy system, which uses 5 cameras, GPS and GLONASS navigation, 2 ultrasonic rangefinders, redundant sensors, and 24 computing cores to serve as the drone's "brain and nervous system." Using FlightAutonomy, the Mavic Pro can follow positions and routes while avoiding obstacles at 22mph (36kph), allowing you to create advanced flights with minimal input and flying skills. What's more, the drone can even be controlled with your physical gestures, making it easy to shoot an aerial selfie if you so desire. A new compact remote controller has been designed for the Mavic Pro, and it features an LCD screen with essential data, dedicated buttons (e.g. Return-to-Home, Intelligent Flight pause), and a OcuSync video link system that provides live view at 1080p resolution. DJI is also announcing DJI Goggles to go along with the Mavic Pro. Wearing the goggles allows you to fly the drone with an immersive 85-degree view in full 1080p, viewing the world through the eyes of the drone. The DJI Mavic Pro will be available starting October 15th, 2016, with a price tag of $749 for just the drone and $999 with a remote controller bundled in. The DJI Mavic introduction video can be viewed here.
That Karma drone from GoPro is dead on arrival then. Karma is small, and has a camera that can be used with a handle on the ground. BUT it missed a lot of the collision avoidance and expert features like tracking objects visually.
Mavic is *smaller*, *cheaper*, has all the smarter modes and collision avoidance stuff. It's from the market leader, another plus. Flight time is longer for the Mavik, and flight distance is further I think. GoPro didn't talk about the range, so I assume its pretty crap. Oh and Mavik supports VR headsets.
That leaves the removable gimbal. You can unclip it on the Karma and attach it to a handle and use it on the ground. *BUT* since the Mavik is small enough to be carried in one hand, then its only a firmware upgrade for DJI to turn the folded drone into a hand held gimbal. Since you could simply use the drone as a handle its so small.
Incidentally, if you have an older Phantom 3, just buy the Litchi app, and it adds visual tracking and a bunch of other smart stuff to the drone, instead of upgrading. That's another thing, the DJI has both a little screen AND uses a smartphone, the GoPro uses its own system. But that means you can use your better faster smartphone and use third party software like Litchi to upgrade it.