The Camera
The Mavic Air 2 was lauded as ‘DJI’s best drone ever’ at its time of release. It was loaded with features and had a new controller design that made it one of the easiest drones to fly.
The only downside really was the ½” 12MP camera sensor. Although it did have a 48 MP, it didn’t deliver ‘true’ 48 MP stills. There are smartphones out there that can deliver image quality similar to the Mavic Air 2, but for the price and feature set at the time, it was hard to pass up the Mavic Air 2.
Well, the new Air 2S definitely addressed the camera. The new drone features a 1” CMOS sensor at 20 MP. We don’t know if it’s the same Hasselblad sensor that we see in the Mavic 2 Pro, but the image quality is striking. The larger sensor not only brings higher resolution images, but it also delivers 12.6 stops of dynamic range and better noise handling, which was an issue with the Mavic Air 2.
The 1” sensor puts it on par with the Mavic 2 Pro, DJI’s highest tiered consumer drone, but keep in mind the Air 2S is almost half the weight at 595g and smaller in dimension as well.