DJI - Mavic 3 Thermal (M3T)

I intend to keep my Mini 2(non-SE) which I've had for 3yrs now even though I now have a Mavic 3 which is superior in every way by a long shot. The reason- My niche is urban/architectural photography, both with a handheld as well as drones. With most of the ideal places to fly in the city, discretion is key. I can put the Mini in the air and land it without drawing much attention, and it's the perfect size and weight for foot travel. The 12mp camera is sufficient for urban landscapes/skylines given proper composure and editing . The only real downfall would be the lack of collision avoidance , but I dont rely on that anyway. Another reason- Online prints aside, I've printed and framed 6 aerial skyline drone shots that are currently hanging in my home office, as well as another handful I sold to my wife's company's corporate office. All happen to be from the Mini 2, so...

If finances allow, keep the Mavic 2 and shoot for a Mini 4 Pro. If you have the slightest interest in aerial photography/videography, You'll hugely regret trading the Mavic for a M2. I say this as a Mini 2/Mavic3 owner. Mini 4 Pro tech in a Mini package would be sublime. But to be fair, if you're flying just to fly a drone, sure. The price is right.

What I would recommend… DJI mini 4k for the cheapest entry. It will let you get a feel for things and find out if you want more. DJI mini 5. If you’re going to spend money, then just go with the newest option. It has a lot of the nice features and it’s portable. DJI Air 3s. If portability isn’t an issue, then the air 3s is a little better. - Although there a couple of drones between the 4k and 5 pro, but the quality up grades are minor and don’t have many better features. Mainly obstacle avoidance, which the mini 3 is missing. You could spend money on a mini 4, but for a little more just get the mini 5p. After the air 3s, you would want to make bigger upgrades to the Mavic 3 and Mavic 3 enterprise series. Which is way more than you need IMO

I’ve used a mini pro and a mavic 3 but my favorite to shoot with is still my air3. The 3x zoom seem perfect fP those nice compressed shots while still shooting 4k 60 in all the tracking modes.

Hard to answer. Fpv I have seen good ones custom made. If you like brand consistency I would say DJI with avata 2 FOR FPV perhaps… but not excellent in camera if you want videography. If you want quality in video I would say mavic 3 or wait a bit I heard mavic 4 is coming. The choice maybe depends on what you want the most while bit of sacrifices on the secondary usage. Curious to hear what others advice tho

A Mavic 3 Enterprise is your best option. That budget should get you the drone plus a bunch of batteries. Depending on what accuracy you need, you could add on an RTK module as well.

You need more budget if you want to do both. Mavic 3T for thermal is good and in that budget but very little payload capacity. M30T for both but likely double that budget all up.

Hmm, a Mavic 3E or something should work. You just won't want to do big jobs with it. https://enterprise.dji.com/mobile/mavic-3-enterprise

I've basically stopped using my Mavic and use my Mini 3 Pro for most things now. Wind resistance isn't quite as good, but image quality is more than good enough and being under 250 g makes flying a lot easier (in Canada, might be different where you are). Some people assume 'bigger is better'. I've seen that in photography, where my Nikon D800 with huge lens gets more respect than a smaller camera. (So sometimes I'll being the bigger camera for show, use it for a few pictures while mostly using a smaller camera, and let people assume that the best pictures were taken with the bigger camera when in reality all the pictures came from the smaller easier-to-carry camera.)

Fly it a lot, remember the limitations of the obstacle avoidance, learn the flight characteristics, and above all, have fun.  I had the Air2S, then went to the Mavic 3 and Mavic 3E and now the Mavic 3T. Skipped the Mavic 2pro to get newer, as I use these for my small business side job. 

Fly it a lot, remember the limitations of the obstacle avoidance, learn the flight characteristics, and above all, have fun.  I had the Air2S, then went to the Mavic 3 and Mavic 3E and now the Mavic 3T. Skipped the Mavic 2pro to get newer, as I use these for my small business side job. 

I just took part in flying drones to map infrastructure and home damage in a bunch of super remote villages in South West Alaska. The whole area was smacked by the remnants of Typhoon Halong, huge storm surge up the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta and 100mph winds. We were using Mavic 3T’s. Our primary job is flying on wildfires, and these are great for that mission. They worked well for this as well. I’ll say the biggest bottleneck in our workflow was sending the imagery to the cloud for processing. We’re going to be looking at how RTK might increase processing speed in the future, and possibly do it local, rather than have to upload everything. Starlink is great, but it can only do so much. Near the end of our mission we started switching over to some service, don’t have my field notes on me and I can’t remember the name, that was taking full motion video and creating orthos from video shot at a 45° angle from about 50-100’. That was only my last couple days on the incident, so I’m not sure what the actual resulting product turned out like. Anker makes some really nice 25000mah batteries. They were handing those things out like candy. I was using them to run a Starlink mini and to keep my remote and phone charged. Super handy.

For commercial flight there is nothing comparable to the Mavic 3 Enterprise and Matrice 4 models. Once you get up to the larger Matrices then there are a couple of options that are closer but DJI has such a head start and lead on this type of flight that it will be a while until anyone can catch up. In my experience Autel makes a good drone and system but their support can be a pain if you experience issues which is more often than DJI. Skydio is in the same boat and neither have the famed mechanical shutter. For larger commercial use cases the Freefly, WISPR and Intelligent Flight offerings are getting much closer.