- Here's the thing,

I'm a bit torn.

DJI's Mini 2 has been one of my favorite drones.

They have the perfect balance

between good enough image quality,

fantastic portability, and decent price.

And every single time when somebody,

especially a new drone pilot ask me

which drone they should buy,

the answer is pretty much always the DJI's Mini 2.

So DJI recently announced the Mini 3 Pro

and made a very strong case

that this drone should be your next best hobbyist drone.

It has a bigger camera sensor, 4K60, HDR video,

larger aperture, 48 megapixel photos,

obstacle avoidance sensor.

It is jam packed with new features,

but it's also a lot more expensive than the Mini 2,

so why am I torn?

Well, my review process was really a mixed bag.

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Okay, quick disclaimer,

I didn't have any ND filters for this drone,

they're not part of the Fly More Pro Bundle.

So some clips do look a bit choppy.

And since this aperture goes down all the way to f/1.7,

my shutter speeds were highly wild,

wildly high.

Don't let that cloud your judgment

when you're looking at video quality here.

Got it? All right.

Let's get into it.

Starting with the hardware.

Compared to the Mini 2, the Mini 3 Pro

is just ever so slightly larger.

It's a bit longer, a bit taller and a bit wider when folded,

but you will notice it when it's unfolded.

The wingspan is much larger,

which means this drone is not quite as nimble

as the Mini 2.

And you can definitely feel the difference

in greater inertia when you're flying this drone.

It is a completely new design

and it still achieves that 249 grams of weight

when used with the standard 37-minute battery.

Although it does go over 250 grams of weight

when you're using the brand new, bigger $95 battery,

that gives you amazing 47 minutes of flight time,

but, but I've been having a lot of issues

with all those batteries.

So whenever I would switch to Sport Mode

and just fly for fun,

or I'm trying to get to the point of interest quickly,

I would get a battery load error.

Especially during windy conditions,

and when the drone needs to work extra hard

to keep itself balanced.

It either just comes to a full stop

or it starts losing altitude like in this clip

that you're watching right now.

It doesn't look as bad since the footage it stabilizes,

but it's very anxiety inducing,

just looking at your drone with naked eye,

just sort of doing its own thing.

So, okay.

I just heard back from DJI

and they say that what I've been doing

is flying under extreme wind conditions,

which I do admit, there were days

when it was extremely windy,

but there were also days when it wasn't as windy.

And just by flying drones for like 7 to 10 years now,

you sort of developed this like sixth sense

when you kind of know if it's too windy or not.

And more often than not,

I was getting the battery load error

in the flights that it didn't seem

like it was going to be too windy.

So to summarize,

yes, the Mini 3 Pro can handle high winds,

but the battery in the Mini 3 Pro might not be able to.

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One new hardware thing are the obstacle sensors.

Mini 2 never had any,

but the Mini 3 Pro has a pair of front and at the bottom.

They create a tri-directional obstacle avoidance forward,

backwards, and below,

and open up options for autonomous flying.

Things like Hyperlapse, MasterShots,

ActiveTrack paired with APAS 4.0,

which means the drone can follow you around

and avoid trees and buildings and such.

But the thing you need to know about ActiveTrack

and APAS is that it does not work above 4K30.

And it also does not work in Portrait Mode,

which is a real bummer.

I personally rarely fly with sensors on,

but it is a good extra layer of protection,

most people really care for it.

It did successfully follow me

around walking into woods, backwards and forward,

but once I have switched to that profile Follow,

so it can follow me from the side.

It literally hit a tree like seconds later.

And this actually isn't my only crash

with the Mini 3 Pro.

While filming this ski lift right here.

I tilted my camera upwards

and that's when the drone just started

to descent slowly straight into the ground.

I wasn't able to stop it or change directions or anything.

I truly have no idea what happened here.

I shared the flight logs with DJI

and I will pin the comment as soon as I hear back.

Lastly, while I was sharing my flight logs with DJI,

I noticed yet another suspicious behavior

with the Mini 3 Pro.

While the drone was connected to my PC,

and it was extracting flight logs

with the DJI assistant app.

It started to overheat, just by having it running idle

and not in flight for longer periods of time.

It would start to overheat,

and it would eventually turn itself off.

So I talked to DJI about it.

And what they said is that

in order to achieve the 249 grams of weight,

they had to remove the internal fan from the Mini 3,

which does cost the chip to overheat when idle.

In flight, cooling is achieved with the help

from rear propellers to feed the air

into the set of holes right here.

DJI says, "There's nothing to worry about.

The internal thermometer will power off the drone

in order to avoid any further damage."

And it should have enough time for firmware updates,

wirelessly transfer photos using QuickTransfers,

but I still find this whole thing a bit awkward.

Okay.

I think it's time to move on and talk about the good stuff.

And that is image quality.

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So compared to the previous Mini 2,

the leap in image quality is immediately evident

and is achieved through a number of things.

First, there's the larger sensor

and the larger f/1.7 aperture.

Larger sensor just helps with overall image clarity,

and larger aperture lets more light hit that sensor.

So your night images are looking a whole lot better.

Here, I'm flying the Mini 2 with it's 2.8 aperture,

and I have to keep my ISO at 3,200.

With the Mini 3, that number is closer to ISO 800.

That's a big difference between the two.

Mini 3 Pro also has dual native ISO,

so your night videos really do look great.

I mean, it's still a small sensor,

so you know, it looks good.

Also the Mini 2 never actually had Cinelike profiles.

So the Mini 3 just has a lot more detail

to work within post production, too.

Few other things that improve this drone

is that it can now film 4K60,

and it can film HDR video.

Just know that HDR video only works up to 4K30.

There is a slight improvement in video quality

while filming in HDR,

but it doesn't necessarily make me wanna choose 24

or 30 frames per second instead of 60.

I mostly shot in 60 because,

again, I didn't have ND filters.

And also lately I just been shooting

in 4K60 for my personal drone work.

And I didn't feel like I was missing out

by not having HDR on,

and I just kept filming in Cinelike profile.

Mini 2 never reached 4K60,

so I'm really pleased to see it here.

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And the last thing that really makes

this drone stand out is the ability to film vertical videos

and photos natively just by rotating its gimbal.

I love this feature so much.

I love being able to film a 9:16 ratio

instead of cropping regular 16:9 video.

Even when it comes to photos,

I love being able to take vertical photos natively.

Before the rotating nimble,

you would have to take three separate images

that DJI app would more or less be able

to stitch together correctly.

Plus it's just way easier and more fun to frame up

and compose your photos that way

instead of doing the three image stitching.

It's a different mindset and I missed it.

Also this way, you get that native wide-angle distortion,

just as Lance Scott intended.

Okay. I really like this feature.

Lastly, there's also Digital Zoom on this drone

except it also does not work in 4K60.

I don't love Digital Zoom,

but it does mean you could do fun things

like valley zoom clips

or help you locate other drones flying near you.

Hey there, drone buddy.

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And when it comes to photos, I think they look really good.

Despite the large f/1.7 aperture.

There's really not a massive drop off in sharpness

even in the corner of the images.

It looks really nice.

JPEGs you get from the drone are sharp, rich, and vibrant.

You can take either 12 megapixel photos

or turn on the 48 megapixels photos.

And 12 megapixels photos look really good.

And honestly, I don't see a lot of improvements

when turning on the 48 megapixel ones.

It's actually quite the opposite.

So let's pixel peak.

So as you can see this example here,

the night photos actually show a little bit more noise

in the shadow here.

This next side by side photo reveals

a couple of things I wanna focus on.

First, I don't necessarily see a lot more detail

between the two.

Zooming in on the plants here on the side of the building,

these two photos look very similar to me.

Next, the two photos display colors differently.

The 12 megapixel ones lean more

towards the green hue,

and the 48 megapixel one leads more towards purple.

You can see it in the buildings in the back,

but you can definitely see it

on this road sidewalk down here.

I pick a cleaner photo over more pixels

any day of the week and Sunday.

I'm not using that.

Also just really enjoy editing raw photos

from the DJI drones, including this one.

Here's a challenging shot of the lifeguard chair

during a sunset.

But there's so much information to play with

for a nice clean edit.

And just to prove that point further,

I'm dragging the exposure slider back and forth.

Look how much you can get out of a single raw.

It is awesome.

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Okay, so this leaves us with one less thing to talk about

and that is the new DJI RC.

It's a remote controller with a built-in screen,

so you no longer have to use your phone.

It is a smaller version of DJI's RC Pro,

which itself is great,