DJI Phantom 4 vs Mavic Pro: Who can hold up in the wind?

Let’s face it; the Mavic Pro is much smaller than the Phantom 4, so does that mean it won’t hold up in the wind? Not at all. We put both of the drones through extreme winds using a powerful leaf blower and both did better than you would expect. One thing we noticed with the Phantom 4 is that in high winds, it tends to drift up much more than the Mavic Pro. We had to reshoot the video a few times because the Phantom 4 would just keep drifting up out of the camera view.

The Mavic Pro seemed to hold its position better, but the video didn’t look as stable as the Phantom 4. This is mostly because the Mavic has a narrower field-of-view, so any movements of the drone are more noticeable.

In most situations, both drones will handle the typical wind gust better than in this test, because real wind usually doesn’t have as much turbulence. This is more like what the drones would experience if strong wind gusts came along.

The main advantage that the Phantom has is that it has a higher top speed, so it will keep its speed better when going into the wind.

As for the video quality, as you know the Mavic Pro has a whole new camera that’s much smaller than the Phantom 4. The size of the lens on the Phantom 4 is similar to what you would find on a GoPro, where the Mavic is more like a high-end Android phone. It’s tiny, but surprisingly it works. The videos from the Mavic don’t come out with as much digital sharpening as the Phantom 4, but if you add some sharpening in post-production (or turn the sharpening up in the DJI Go app), the video looks (to my eyes) just as sharp. I personally don’t like how much sharpening the Phantom 4 has because it produces more strange artifacts in the images, but I found that those same artifacts don’t exist on the Mavic Pro!

Low light performance on the Mavic Pro is ok, but I think the Phantom 4 beats it by a hair. Both drones go up to ISO 3200, but I would try not to go past 800 or things will go downhill. This is the case for all small cameras, including the GoPro hero 4 and hero 5.

As I mentioned before, the Mavic has a narrower field-of-view (or FOV) compared to the Phantom 4, so shots that you take will look like they were taken with a 28mm lens on a full frame camera. The Phantom 4 isn’t as wide as the GoPro, but it’s still equivalent to a 20mm lens which is approaching the ultra wide lens category. I personally like the Mavic’s FOV because it allows me to get shots that are closer to the action without being “dangerously” close.

I don’t have an example to show right now, but one thing I noticed about flying the Mavic is that you can point the camera up when hovering and you hardly see the propellers at all! The Propellers also seem to show up less in forward flight.

The last thing you should know about the Mavic’s camera is that it doesn’t have a fixed focus like the Phantom 4. This means you need to tap what part of the image you want to be in focus while in the DJI Go App. Having a fixed focus is good and bad. It’s good because you can focus on closer subjects and the background will look slightly more out of focus like a DSLR. It can also make the subject that you’re filming appear sharper. The only bad part is, you have to remember to do it, or your images will come out blurry.

 

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