The gimbal is also really easy to direct, with dials on either side of the controller to do this and it's possible to get some really smooth panning with it should you wish. In our hands-on time with it, it was incredibly precise, and certainly takes the stress out of landing if you haven't got the confidence to get it back yourself.Īs we've mentioned, you can simply use it with the supplied controller, but we'd urge you to hook your smartphone up to it – the feed you get back is incredibly cool, and at 1080p, the level of detail is impressive. There are clearly marked auto controls to get the drone in the air, as well as returning it to where it took off - the Mavic Pro will take photos with its downward facing cameras and using this with the GPS data, will know exactly where to return too. Even in some windy conditions when we took it up further than the treeline it still remained pretty perfectly balanced – though it did warn us of the adverse wind speed. The controls are incredibly tolerant of your inputs, while it remains perfectly stable in midair when you take your hands away from the controller.
No need to fan the rotors out as the force generated when the motors whirr up will do this for you.įor new users, this doesn't have to be as daunting at this sounds. Ready for take-offĪll you have to do now is pull out the two arms at the front, the two from behind, a double-press of the power button (this avoids it being knocked/pressed when it's in your bag and draining the battery) and you're ready to take to the sky. This means the controller is very easy to set-up once you've released the two antennas at the top (these click nicely back into place when being stowed away), and you're ready to go. This was set-up by opening the two hinged side panels at the bottom of the controller where you can snuggly place your smartphone in-between the rubber grooves (you'll probably want to remove it from its case for a better fit), while there are a range of adapters to make a hardwire connection to the controller – no Wi-Fi pairing here.
While it can be simply used with the bundled controller, with all the flight info you could wish for displayed onto the built-in screen, we had it partnered with an iPhone 6S and the latest DJI app installed, allowing us to take full advantage of the gimbal controlled camera feed displayed on the screen, along with a plethora of telemetry round the edges of the frame and also the controller itself.
We got to try this out of ourselves, taking control of this pocket rocket just outside Lisbon. Ultimately, the greatest barrier to entry with drones has been intimidating controls, and DJI is trying to change that with a simpler and just-as pocketable solution.