DJI - Matrice 4 Series (4T/4E)

M350/M400/ Matrice 4E are the ways to go in my eyes. Mavic 3E shortly behind them, most affordable but least robust platform.

IDK, I just got the M4E and it's pretty great. If the ban goes thru, it will only affect new offerings from DJI/ Autel. (If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone here will point it out)

I first flew a drone when I was 50, I'm now 52. I've gone on to get the "category Specific" (EASA) competence and is now a working commercial drone pilot/operator, both for my own drone business (mainly photo/video and various documentations (thermal and non-thermal)) and have recently been approached to potentially work regularly as a drone pilot for a large drone company offering advanced/high-end drone services, piloting Hexadrone Tundras, Matrice 300/350/400 etc. (fingers crossed!). For my own company I currently use a DJI Air 3S and a DJI Matrice 4T, but started out with a DJI Mini 4 Pro. So "yes", you most definitely can do it. I haven't crashed yet - logged about 150 flight hours in 2025. Safety first, be professional and never chance it. Good Luck!

For fields of that size I would really look at something like an M4E if you value your time. It is expensive but ludicrously fast for this type of task.

Whether it’s worth it or not is a value proposition based on time vs. money for the operator. I’m just pointing out if time is valuable, the time savings of using a drone designed for this type of capture can be very significant. I have a similar use case with sort of informal mapping that’s not done very frequently and it’s been well worth the cost to me personally.

"10x faster than quadcopters, flies at 22m/s"...so 1x faster than a Matrices 4E? Also love the whole comparison section that is just pure lies. And comparing to N-1 gen products.

All their comparisons have sources like "yeah we lied". How is the MAP61 camera much better than a DJI P1 or even the one on the M4E?

If the constraint is speed + precision, I don't think photogrammetry is the best way to go. From a distance it looks like a good idea, but don't forget that going from photogrammetry to geospatial data requires a lot of processing, which will take a long time if we're talking about a volume of 20km of road. Furthermore, no, precision is achievable with a good drone like the M3E M4E M350..., but to ensure/justify precision you'll need to set up GCP (i.e. place targets on the ground that you'll survey using GPS) before the flight. So in the end I'm not really convinced that the time saving is there. For trees, yes, it's a problem, but if the roads are of normal width, a drone flying at 10/15m to stay under the canopy will easily be able to take the full-width road. If your markets are large and mainly road-based, consider the option of vehicle-mounted lidar, or vehicle-mounted slam. You'll get speed, live point clouds and precision. But it's expensive.

Well soooo cattle or at least mine can be scary or silly stuff one moment and then the next stubborn AF! I use drones to find lost heads or round up one or two strays sometimes but moving a herd isn't going to happen anymore they have gotten used to me flying around them. But it could work for him... You might get a Matrice 4T

Holy duck, we just bought a matrice 4e and felt like we got robbed, happy in our decision now!