DJI had to postpone it's recent Mavic 2 launch because the user experience of the drone wasn't up to scratch.

But postponing a launch is one thing for sites like Pocket-lint, but it's quite another if you'd already printed a catalogue with the details inside.

And hey presto, DJI had already given British retailer Argos the outline details and an image of the Mavic 2 Pro and Mavic 2 Zoom for its famous catalogue (although not, unfortunately, with pricing). 

The Pro comes with a 1-inch sensor Hasslebad camera, so expect it to be north of £1,000. The Mavic 2 Zoom will be cheaper, possibly around £800. 

Yes, that really does say that you'll be able to transmit 1080p footage over 8km (around 5 miles). There's also a dolly zoom on the, er, Zoom version. According to the catalogue, both have a maximum speed of 20metres per second - around 45 miles an hour!

In a statement, DJI were quite upfront about the mistake, presumably because they knew this 'leak' was coming.

"This pre-printed catalogue was scheduled before we postponed our See the Bigger Picture event to ensure we can deliver high-quality, cutting-edge technology to our customers according to our standard of innovation.

"This early look just hints at the many exciting features and capabilities DJI will announce at the proper time.  We look forward to giving our fans an incredible drone experience as soon as we can."

The event was originally scheduled for 18 July. At the time DJI said that "user experience is our top priority, and we wanted to ensure we can exceed our customers’ expectations for our technology by the time of the event."

We're looking forward to bringing you all the official deets on Mavic 2 when we can

DJI will unveil its new mid-range drone in New York tomorrow and you can watch it online yourself.

The event will be livestreamed, so here are the details on how to view the action and what has been launched.
Watch the DJI Mavic Air launch here

The DJI event, dubbed #AdventureUnfolds, will be held on Tuesday 23 January in New York. It starts at 10am EST so here are the times you need to put in your diary, depending on your region:

    UK - 3pm GMT
    Central Europe - 4pm CET
    West Coast US - 7am PST
    Japan - 12am JST (24 January)
    See the DJI Mavic Air for £769

The event will be streamed live on a dedicated website: live.dji.com, or on the YouTube video below.

    The best drones 2018: Top rated quadcopters to buy, whatever your budget

What was launched during the DJI event?

DJI has unveiled the Mavic Air, a compact drone offering a 3-axis gimbal with a 4K camera. It's loaded with technology to give you plenty of controls even if you've never flown a drone before and it's also equipped with sensors to ensure that it's even less likely to fly into anything.

Like the Spark, the Mavic Air also supports gesture controls, although there's a compact controller available too to give you precise controls.

    DJI Mavic Air is official and it could be all the drone you'll ever need
    DJI Mavic Air vs DJI Spark: Worth the upgrade?

Quick verdict

There's a very good reason why DJI is the market leader of drones: its combination of high-tech features, flight modes and video/image qualit is an unbeatable combination. With the Mavic 2 Pro, that reputation is only enhanced once more.
Read full verdict
For

    Stunning footage
    Great still photos
    Obstacle avoidance is brilliant
    Flight modes work really well
    Super smooth flight - even in wind

Against

    It's expensive
    Remote requires phone to be plugged in
    App is still not the most user friendly
    Non-HDR shots can be grainy

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DJI is the choice brand for anyone wanting a serious drone. Regardless of your budget or what size of drone you need, the company more than likely has something that will fit your needs.

    Best drones: The top quadcopters

With the Mavic 2 Pro - and its built-in Hasselblad camera (the camera maker was acquired by DJI) - the Chinese companty clearly saw a gap in-between its popular Mavic Pro range and the larger, less portable Phantom 4 Pro Obsidian.

That's what the Mavic 2 Pro represents: a portable, foldable drone that's really powerful and takes great pictures.
Looks like a Mavic

    Foldable arms
    Folded: 214 × 91 × 84mm
    Unfolded: 322 × 242 × 84mm
    Weight: 907g

Looking at it, the Mavic 2 Pro is essentially a slightly bigger version of the Mavic Pro. The newer model is a few centimetres wider, longer and thicker than the Mavic Pro Platinum and it weighs over 160 grams more. But that's more-or-less it: folded, it's drone is not much bigger than a big sports drink bottle, which is great for portability.
Pocket-lintDji Mavic 2 Pro Review image 11

However, while the Pro 2 has a similar angular look and overall silhouette to the Mavic Pro, there are few indications that this is a very different drone.

Firstly, there's the large square camera housing attached to the gimbal on the front, upon which the Hasselblad name is proudly placed.

Secondly, look around all the sides and you'll notice quite a few more sensors. This is key to the experience of flying the drone. Rather than just have forward-facing obstacle avoidance, the Mavic 2 can detect obstacles from every side (including on top, where you shouldn't need it too often).

The battery takes up most of the rear half of the drone. It's released by sliding a catch on either side, then just clicks into place once you've charged it. You'll also find the power button here, with an LED indicator ring surrounding it to show you how much battery capacity remains.

Unlike the more 'sporty' Mavic Air, the Mavic 2 is only available in a rather serious grey colour scheme. The front arms come with the trademark Mavic stands to hold the camera off the ground, while the rear arms have more subtle grippy feet.
Pocket-lintDJI Mavic 2 Pro review image 6

While a lot of this will be familiar to anyone who's used or seen a Mavic drone before, because it's a sign of how well made these drones already are. This drone doesn't feel lightweight or flimsy, which is reassuring for a number of reasons: you know it won't just break in your bag; and you know the wind won't blow it away like a discarded helium balloon from a child's birthday party.
Sensing danger, shooting modes galore

    Omnidirectional obstacle sensing
    Active tracking and Quick Shot modes
    Hyperlapse feature

Part of what has made DJI's drones so successful is that they automatically take care of the basics for you. Tracking location, fighting against the wind and avoiding obstacles. With the Mavic 2 Pro, you get all those features at the highest levels available in a consumer drone.
Pocket-lintDJI Mavic 2 Pro review image 2

Not only do you get obstacle avoidance from every side, stopping you from crashing the drone, but you also get the APAS system - which can be enabled to ensure that as you're flying between obstacles the drone doesn't just stop moving, but adjusts its path to bypass those elements that might otherwise get in the way.

Without the APAS system, it does what every other obstacle avoiding drone does: it bleeps and tells you via the remote screen that it's near an obstacle, then stops moving towards it. With that, and the warning when wind gets a little too blustery, there's plenty built-in here to ensure you don't end up trashing you expensive flying machine.

As for that remote, it's virtually the same as the one that came with the Mavic Air, meaning you get joysticks that screw on and off, which can be stowed conveniently in their own dedicated silos, hidden by the phone grips. You also get a selection of cables for connecting to whatever smartphone you happen to own. There's Lighting for iPhones and USB Type-C/Micro-USB for Android phones of various ages.

We'd prefer to have a remote with a built-in screen, but we appreciate the space saved by having a compact, collapsible controller like this. Like the drone, it'll easily fit inside a bag, and will happily squeeze into a side pocket internal bag compartment. What's more, since you have a smartphone, you already have the drone monitor you need right in your pocket.
Pocket-lintDJI Mavic 2 Pro review image 9

Using the remote and phone app, with the basic automatic settings used, it's pretty simple to fly the Mavic 2 Pro too. Just hit the take-off button after GPS location is tagged, then the drone takes-off and hovers above the ground. The two joysticks do what they usually do: one controls altitude/height and the direction the drone points; the other controls the direction in which the drone flies.
Cinematic modes

What makes DJI's drones great is the slew of automated flight modes that take advantage of the advanced object tracking and motion sensors to produce some truly spectacular cinematic shots.

The aptly named Cinematic mode smooths out movement, acceleration and changes of direction to ensure you capture super-smooth footage. Combined with the highly effective mechanical gimbal to which the camera is attached, you get heavenly shake-free footage.

Similarly, the other modes - like the various QuickShot options - give you stable and often breath-taking footage. Most of these options are available on the smaller Mavic Air too. New is Dronie, which acts like a crane, starting close-up and then moving backwards, up and away while keeping a lock on the subject (it can automatically detect people within a frame, so you don't necessarily need to tap on the display to select anyone).

Other modes include the Orbit mode that circles around the subject in an elliptical path, changing height and velocity as it's going around. You also get Asteroid that shoots straight up in the air and holds its position while snapping photos of the entire surrounding scene to create a 360-degree tiny planet-style image.

It didn't seem to matter which shooting mode we choose, or what functions we asked it to perform, the drone did so flawlessly. There was no shakiness in the video, even when winds got quite blustery, and none of the QuickShot modes failed to record properly. We haven't had an experience this consistently good since we flew the much bigger Phantom 4 Pro Obsidian edition.
Pocket-lintDJI Mavic 2 Pro review image 8

Then there's the Mavic 2 Pro's 31 minute battery claim which is generous by our count. We couldn't ever get it to last 31 minutes on the North Wales coast, even when the breeze was relatively still. While recording 4K video capture, and testing the various preset flight paths, among other features, we got around 20-25 minutes on a full battery before it would warn us it was getting low. Still, for a drone, that's actually pretty good - but we'd recommend getting a second battery as backup nevertheless.
Shooting for glory

    1-inch 20MP CMOS sensor
    10-bit HDR and Dlog-M footage
    4K/30fps capture
    Adjustable aperture

The one thing that sets the Mavic 2 Pro apart from its predecessors is the lens and sensor on the front. This drone has a large 1-inch, 20-megapixel sensor encased in aluminium, and the optics are built in collaboration with Hasselblad. Even if you have everything stuck in automatic shooting mode, both stills and video look great as a result.
1/10Pocket-lint
Mavic 2 Pro camera samples image 1
Mavic 2 Pro camera samples image 2
Mavic 2 Pro camera samples image 10

With HDR (high dynamic range) mode switched on, resulting photos are detailed, colourful and have plenty of contrast - which is great for those who perhaps haven't yet built up experience playing with manual controls, or those not too comfortable in a photo editing suite.

Despite that, there's plenty of manual control here, including adjustable aperture control and the ability to adjust raw files, meaning those who are comfortable tweaking photos in Photoshop, Affinity, Pixelmator (or any other), can pull out the levels to make an image that looks they way they want, without any compression.

It's a similar story for video. The built in Dlog-M profile means those with colour grading experience can make shots look extra fantastic. And with it shooting 4K footage at 30 frames-per-second, you're going to get detailed, crisp shots as standard.

The end result in most conditions is great stills and great video. Sometimes in auto-mode, however, was the odd occasion where the camera struggled with contrasting light. Scenes where there was bright light in the sky, but the landscape beneath was mostly shadow, sometimes resulted in dark, grainy images (if HDR was switched off).
Pocket-lintMavic 2 Pro camera samples image 5

On the whole we've been really impressed with the video and stills photo quality to come from this Hasselblad-equipped drone. It's been a predominantly issue-free experience. This drone really doesn't need much work to get it producing professional looking imagery.

Still, DJI's app does take some getting used to, as we've mentioned more than once in the past. Changing shooting settings manually means digging into some fiddly menus littered with small text, which isn't something you really want to do on a mountain, in the cold breeze, while your drone is in the sky using up precious battery.
Verdict

There's a very good reason why DJI is the market leader of drones: its combination of high-tech features, flight modes and video/image quality is an unbeatable combination in the high-end consumer market. With the Mavic 2 Pro, that reputation is enhanced.

However, the DJI drone line-up is starting to get a little convoluted given the number of models and overlap between them. It's hard to see where the Mavic Pro fits into the mix anymore. Those who want a super-portable drone will surely go with the fully-featured, but much smaller - and ultimately cheaper - Mavic Air, while those wanting a more powerful device that still fits in a backpack will undoubtedly be more inclined to cough up the cash for either the Mavic 2 Pro or the £1,100 Mavic 2 Zoom.

If the Mavic 2 Pro's Hasselblad lures sound like the perfect match for you, though, then we wouldn't hesitate for a second in recommending this superb drone.

DJI Mavic 2 Pro deals
£1349
Also consider
Pocket-lintDji Mavic Air image 1
DJI Mavic Air

    View offers on DJI US | DJI UK

If you're not convinced you want to spend upwards of £1,000 on a drone, or you're looking to buy your first one without losing out on features, the Mavic Air is a great option. It has a lot of the same Active Track and Quick Shot shooting modes as the Mavic 2 Zoom, a very similar remote control, and it's much smaller and easier to carry around. What's more, it costs almost half as much as the bigger drone.

DJI posted a video on YouTube that shows more footage of the trip to Greenland with the DJI video team, Jimmy Chin and Kit DesLauriers. We had already seen some of this footage during the launch of the DJI Mavic 2 Zoom and Pro drones. The mysterious new remote controller that we have seen before, show up in this video as well (2:21). Initially, I thought this might have been the controller for the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise but since that launch happened last week and no new controller was shown, I am starting to wonder, will this be the controller for the highly anticipated DJI Phantom 5? Hmmm, now there’s a thought…

DJI – Expedition Greenland: Ski Mountaineering with Jimmy Chin

The video is quite spectacular. Especially the shots of Kit and Jimmy skiing against a setting sun are beautiful and show the dynamic range capabilities of the DJI Mavic 2 drone (or the Phantom 5 prototype?).

Here’s what DJI had to say about the short film:

    “The coldest corners of the world can also be the most beautiful. Watch as award-winning director Jimmy Chin and freeskiing champion Kit DesLauriers face the formidable mountains and frigid temperatures of Greenland’s western fjords. They must navigate unknown variables as they ascend to the summit, and then ski all the way down to the base. This short video is a blend of stunning scenery, dogged determination, and an expedition of epic proportions. Shot on the Mavic 2.”