While its rival is falling out of the sky, DJI is hammering home its dominance in the consumer drone market with two truly stunning new devices — the DJI Inspire 2 and DJI Phantom 4 Pro. Get a handkerchief ready because you’re about to start drooling.
DJI Inspire 2
The Inspire is by far my favourite consumer drone ever. From its retractable legs to its badass design, I absolutely loved this drone. With the Inspire 2, DJI is improving what the drone can do without changing its killer aesthetic. Here are the highlights.
First up, it’s faster, with a top speed of 108 km/h. It can also accelerate from 0-80 km/h in just 4 seconds with a service ceiling of 16,400 feet above sea level.
To make sure you’re in control of the drone as you fly at these new breakneck speeds, the Inspire 2 also comes with obstacle avoidance and DJI’s flight autonomy system via two front-facing sensors and a pair of infrared sensors mounted to the top of the drone. Not only can it avoid obstacles in front of it, it can also detect if there’s a ceiling above it too.
With flight autonomy, the Inspire 2 can now utilise DJI’s computer vision system and automatic subject tracking features found on the company’s newer Mavic Pro and Phantom 4 drones. This feature is called spotlight and can be used to lock the camera onto a subject for smooth pans and follow shots.
Speaking of cameras, the Inspire 2 also comes with not one, but two cameras. The first is a dedicated 2-axis FPV camera that sits in front of the drone and can be used by the pilot to see where the drone is flying. The second camera is the Inspire 2’s moneymaker.
Customers can choose between the Zenmuse X4S or X5S camera when speccing their Inspire 2. The X5S is DJI’s micro four thirds camera that has interchangeable lenses with 10 different lenses to choose from (even zooms!).
What’s more, DJI’s Inspire 2 takes the video shooting game to the next level thanks to the drone’s new CineCore 2.0 image processing system. This system can capture up to 5.2K footage at 30fps at a 4.2Gbps bitrate. If you want juicy high-resolution slow-mo, the Inspire 2 will also shoot 4K in 60fps plus support for RAW video formats like CinemaDNG and Apple ProRes as well as compression formats like H.264 and H.265. It’ll also do 30-megapixel DNG RAW still images.
While shooting crisp high-resolution video is great, all that footage has to go somewhere and in the Inspire 2, it goes into a detachable PCIe SSD card with maximum read and write speeds of 6Gbps. It will still support microSD cards, though. The Inspire 2 can also stream smooth live broadcast footage at 1080i and 720p.
DJI has also managed to keep it in the air for longer with a new dual-battery system that bumps flight time up to 27 minutes. These two batteries also have battery redundancy and self-heating functionality so you can fly this drone even in extreme cold.
Want one? The Inspire 2 has prices starting from USD2,999 (around RM13,160) while the combo that includes the Zenmuse X5S and license keys for Adobe ProRes and CinemaDNG goes up to USD6,198 (around RM27,203).
For more info, check out the Inspire 2’s page on DJI’s website.
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Besides the pro-oriented Inspire 2, DJI also unveiled the latest addition to the Phantom family of drones — the Phantom 4 Pro. What’s new?
Well, the Phantom 4 Pro gets a better camera with a 1-inch sensor and a wide f/2.8 aperture. It also sports a mechanical shutter that DJI says will eliminate the “rolling shutter” effect. This CMOS sensor can also shoot 20-megapixel RAW still images and capture up to 11.6 stops of dynamic range so you get better aerial footage even when your scene has complicated lighting. This new camera can also capture photos in a 14fps burst. It’ll also shoot in up to 4K at 60fps
But that’s not all. DJI also upped the ante with the Phantom 4 Pro’s autonomous flying and obstacle avoidance. Now, the new drone also sports two rear facing sensors and infrared obstacle sensors on either side of the drone. This, in combination with the existing two sensors at the bottom and two forward-facing sensors, gives the drone 5 directions of sensing.
This lets the drone return home while dynamically avoiding obstacles if signal is lost. The Phantom 4 Pro will even retrace its steps until signal is regained.
With the Phantom 4 Pro, DJI has increased flight time up to 30 minutes on a single charge and flight speed (with full obstacle avoidance on) to up to 50km/h in P-mode.
What’s more, the DJI Phantom 4 Pro is now also sold with a controller that has a built-in 5.5-inch screen that DJI says is almost 2x brighter than most tablets. The controller will also automatically switch between 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz transmissions at take-off for more reliability.
The Phantom 4 Pro is priced at USD1,499 (around RM6,590) for just the drone and USD1,799 (around RM7,910) if you want to get the drone plus the controller.
For more info, head on over to the DJI Phantom 4 Pro’s product page on the DJI website.
