Mavic 3 Pro: Hands-on with the best drone for content creators

In late April, DJI launched its latest flagship prosumer drone – the Mavic 3 Pro. Constructing upon the dependable Mavic 3 airframe, this drone elevates the sport by incorporating a 3rd digicam into the already spectacular front-facing digicam platform.

Undoubtedly, the now discontinued Mavic 3 reigned as the highest drone of 2022. Regardless of being launched initially with a slew of unfinished or absent options, subsequent firmware updates rectified these points. Contemplating the Mavic 3’s excellence, I used to be keen to judge its successor’s efficiency.

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Might the Mavic 3 Professional be the most effective drone of 2023? 

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DJI Mavic 3 Pro

DJI’s newest flagship drone features a triple-lens camera array, omnidirectional obstacle sensing, and 30+ minutes of real-world battery life.

To seek out out, I examined it at a few of my favourite places in Anglesey, North Wales, U.Ok. Aiding me each in entrance of the drone and behind the controller was Katherine Betteridge, a gifted native artist and creatrix recognized for her outstanding work on land, water, and within the air.

So, how did the Mavic 3 Professional fare? Frankly, its capabilities left me astounded. Let’s start with its aerial efficiency.

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Given my many hours flying the Mavic 3, I discovered the Mavic 3 Professional’s acquainted really feel allowed for a fast and simple adjustment between the drones. Regardless of occasional odd flight traits and a barely unresponsive app interface, the Mavic 3 Professional felt like a sophisticated product, prepared for critical duties. I anticipate future firmware updates to deal with these minor points as DJI receives real-world flight information.

Every part simply labored.

The Mavic 3 Professional demonstrated outstanding stability in varied situations, from windswept copper mines to sheltered forests. This stability instills the boldness wanted to push the drone to its limits and seize desired pictures. 

Whereas the Mini 3 Professional buzzes round like a bumble bee throughout flight, the Mavic 3 Professional’s rock-solid efficiency and superior impediment avoidance system — which works simply as nicely, if not higher, on the Mavic 3 Professional because it did on the Mavic 3 — lets me fly it nearer to bushes and rocks with out hesitation to get in actually near the topic.

And if I wanted to get nearer, I would take my probabilities, disable the all-round sensor array, and pilot the drone to inside inches of rocks and bushes.

You’ll be able to solely do that with a drone that is steady each in flight and when hovering, and the Mavic 3 Professional is pretty much as good because it will get.

Battery life was additionally spectacular, with about half-hour per cost, outperforming opponents just like the Mini 3 Pro and Air 2S.

As for the cameras, I will let the output communicate for itself.

Observe that the opening shot of the drone within the cave was achieved as a handheld shot — flying a drone in a cave isn’t advisable. However sure, you’ll be able to handhold a drone (simply not with the propellers whirring). All of the photographs are from the Mavic 3 Professional utilizing the wide-angle and medium tele lens, and guide flight (no automated flight controls).

With the unique two-camera Mavic 3, most of my capturing is completed utilizing the 24mm equal wide-angle 4/3 CMOS Hasselblad digicam, as a result of the output from the ‘explorer mode’ 166mm equal tele digicam is nowhere close to pretty much as good. Getting usable outcomes from the latter takes planning, forethought, and enhancing 

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The Mavic 3 Professional retains the identical tele digicam as its predecessor, and that brings with it the identical points — the footage it captures is considerably usable, however requires a good bit of post-processing to realize respectable outcomes. Once more, DJI calls this digicam an ‘explorer mode’ digicam, the concept being that you just use it to scout for places when flying.

However for those who give content material creators a digicam, they’re going to attempt to create content material with it!

New to the Mavic 3 Professional is the 70mm equal medium tele digicam, and the output from that is glorious, enabling you to do a 3x punch-in in comparison with the primary wide-angle. You may get shut in with out having to take the drone nearer, which opens up new inventive prospects for content material creators.

Throughout my exams, the absence of impartial density (ND) filters on the supplied media unit proved to be a minor hindrance. ND filters perform like sun shades for the digicam, enabling higher management of lighting. That is essential for capturing video in shiny situations, as ND filters enable for extra exact shot changes. Whereas the wide-angle digicam options built-in aperture management — just like a watch’s iris adjusting to mild — the opposite cameras lack this performance. 

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Consequently, I discovered myself barely restricted when utilizing the medium telephoto digicam, and the ensuing photographs required extra post-processing to match the wide-angle digicam’s high quality.

Improvise, adapt, overcome.

Nonetheless, for those who’re shopping for the Mavic 3 Professional, I would extremely suggest getting the Fly More Combo kit that comes with ND filters, or shopping for high quality third-party filters which are more likely to hit the market quickly from producers similar to Polar Pro, Freewell, or PGYTech.

The dearth of ND filters apart, the Mavic 3 Professional is an distinctive drone. It boasts energy, stability, minimal noise, an impressive digicam array, and a battery life that considerably outshines its opponents.

In conclusion, the Mavic 3 Pro confidently — little question, no reservations — claims the title of the most effective drone for 2023. 

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DJI is leagues forward of its opponents, and this drone is a considerable enchancment over the Mavic 3. For these searching for a prosumer drone, look no additional. In case you’re a present Mavic 3 proprietor and have to get in nearer to your topics, then the medium telephoto digicam will ship precisely that in a platform that is in any other case acquainted to you, which may make this the right improve.

Nonetheless, a prosumer drone comes with a prosumer price ticket, and for those who’re beginning out, I like to recommend you construct your flying abilities with one thing rather less expensive, similar to the wonderful DJI Mini 3 or Mini 3 Pro. I take advantage of my Mini 3 Professional loads, and I am all the time blown away by how wonderful this sub-250g drone is.