I tested DJI's latest flagship drone, and it's straight from the future (with one caveat)

Over the past few days, I’ve been testing the newest drone on the block, DJI’s flagship Mavic 4 Pro. As the latest in DJI’s Mavic Pro line, it is without a doubt the best consumer drone that I’ve flown.

If you’re reading this in the U.S., note that the product is not yet available there. But park that thought for now. I’ll get back to it later.

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First, let me tell you more about the Mavic 4 Pro. These are the drones that first brought us a two-camera aerial platform, then a three-camera platform. The idea is that you have some of the best possible cameras that can be attached to a drone, and the best possible platform for taking that camera to interesting and unique locations to get the best shots possible.

The drone itself is a beast. Measuring a hefty 12.9 × 15.4 × 5.3 inches — without the props — and weighing a hefty 2.3 pounds, it’s a huge drone by even the Mavic Pro standards. But despite its size, it’s very nimble, capable of speeds up to 56 miles per hour.

A big bird like this needs a lot of power, and DJI used monster 6,654 mAh/95.3 Wh LiNiMnCoO2 batteries that offer, on paper at least, up to 51 minutes of flight time, 45 minutes hover time, and a maximum flight distance of almost 25.5 miles.   

In testing I got around 45 minutes of mixed flight time, which feels like forever when I was flying. At one point I found myself thinking “the battery must be getting close to the end now,” only to find that I had 20 minutes left.   

These are big batteries, so DJI put effort into speeding up the recharge times by including a Mavic 240W power adapter, and a Mavic 4 Pro Parallel Charging Hub, which can charge one battery in around 50 minutes or all three batteries in about 90 minutes. 

It does this by initially prioritizing the battery with the lowest charge, but as soon as all three batteries hit the same charge level, the hub switches to parallel charging. The hub also doubles as a 100W power bank, using the batteries as a power source. 

Let’s get to the star of the show – the camera gimbal. This time DJI abandons tradition and does with a refreshed and very modern looking ball-style 3-axis infinity gimbal featuring 360° continuous rotation. 

There are three cameras on the gimbal: the main one is a 28mm equivalent 4/3 CMOS Hasselblad wide-angle camera sporting a brand new 100-megapixel sensor and the Hasselblad Natural Color Solution (HNCS) for exceptional color fidelity. It has an f/2.0 to f/11 aperture range allows for amazing low-light and bright-light capability.

Next up is the 70mm equivalent tele camera equipped with a 48-megapixel 1/1.3-inch sensor and f/2.8 aperture. Last, but certainly not least is a 168mm equivalent tele camera featuring a 50-megapixel 1/1.5-inch sensor and a f/2.8 aperture.

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All three cameras support Dual Native ISO Fusion, a technology that is used to blending high and low ISO captures, stacking up to five RAW frames to get the highest possible image quality.

While all three cameras support 4K/60fps HDR video recording, the Hasselblad main camera offers 6K/60fps HDR video and a broad dynamic range of up to around 16 stops, which means that it is perfect for capturing shots that have both bright and dark elements. The medium tele and tele cameras offer dynamic ranges of 14 stops and 13 stops respectively.  

Both the Hasselblad main camera and the medium tele camera support 4K/120fps video recording, while the tele camera records in 4K/100fps. And for ease when it comes to editing, all three cameras featuring support the same 10-bit D-Log, D-Log M, and HLG color profiles.

Memory cards are also a thing of the past — despite the drone having a slot for a microSD card — as DJI offers the Mavic 4 Pro with 64GB and 512GB storage configurations. The 512GB Creator Combo version Mavic 4 Pro also supports recording video in an ALL-I 4:2:2 high quality codec. For most, that won’t mean anything, but if you know, you know that this is a big deal when it comes to video quality and ease of editing.

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When you have a bit of kit that weighs close to two and half pounds that can fly at over 50 miles per hour, safety is paramount, and this is why the Mavic 4 Pro has six high-performance, low-light fisheye sensors with a low-light sensitivity of only 0.1 lux (that’s the light level on a cloudy night). There’s also a forward-facing LiDAR sensor, and a downward-facing infrared sensor.

These sensors are run by dual processors which give the Mavic 4 Pro the highest possible environmental awareness resolution, and omnidirectional obstacle avoidance at speeds up to 40 miles per hour in low light.

In the event of something going wrong, such as the drone losing comms with the controller or GPS satellites, the drone memorizes flight paths when there’s enough light so it can return to home autonomously without GPS assistance. 

The Creator Combo I have been testing also came with a new remote control — the DJI RC Pro 2. This has been designed from the ground up for professional-grade aerial filmmaking and features a high-brightness 7-inch LED rotatable display, an enterprise-level multibeam high-gain antennas for the most reliable video transmission possible, 4-hour battery life, and 128GB of built-in storage. 

You can also record audio from the controller (not from the drone – that would just be an annoying buzz!) using the built-in mic, or alternatively pair the controller with a DJI Mic.

So, how does it fly? When I review a pre-release drone, I expect issues and for things to be sketchy because it takes time for the firmware to mature to the point where things become smooth. I had no such issue with Mavic 4 Pro — this thing was amazing on day one and continued to be throughout my testing. The flight characteristics are excellent, the maneuvering smooth and totally responsive, and the safety features all work without any problems at all. 

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I have come across what I feel is a bug where the drone cancels some autonomous flight mode videoing activities because it kept thinking it was seeing an obstacle despite being 90 feet up away from anything. But I’d rather an over-twitchy obstacle avoidance than one that ignored a tree of the side of a building, and I expect this will be fixed in a future update, anyway. 

For such a big drone, it’s incredibly easy — dare I say, relaxing — to fly. It’s fast, nimble, and extremely responsive. And the controller is very intuitive, with everything laid out intelligently.

The only issue I encountered with the controller was some lag when taking photos and video, and this was accompanied by a message about optimizing the image, so I hope that this will be smoothed out at some point.

The cameras are also just out of this world, handling low-light and bright-light with ease, and delivering stunning photos and video under conditions that would have other drones struggling to get a half-decent shot. It’s an amazing drone, packed with potential.

ZDNET’s buying advice

Is this the drone for everyone? No. Most people will be more than happy with what a drone like the Mini 4 Pro, Neo, or the Air 3S has to offer, and they’ll be saving thousands. The Mavic 4 Pro is a drone for professionals who want to take their aerial photography to the next level. 

Remember when I mentioned that it’s not available in the U.S. yet? Well, that’s the case for now, and it’s related to recent tariff increases. While the Mavic 4 Pro will be available to order in the U.K. and E.U. (the DJI Mavic 4 Pro Fly More Combo costs £2,459/€2,699/AU$5,359 while the standard bundle with the DJI RC 2 controller is £1,879 GBP/€2,099/AU$3,099), there’s no pricing or release date for the U.S.

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DJI said on the matter: “Like many global companies, we have had to adjust our market strategy as local conditions and the industry environment have evolved. While we do not have a timeline for when we can introduce the product to the U.S. market, we are closely monitoring the situation and actively exploring every possible solution.”

So, there’s no DJI Mavic 4 Pro for the U.S. market, for now. And that’s a shame. But like I said already, this drone is much more than what most people need in their lives.