DJI intros quieter Mavic Pro Platinum drone, adds 'Sphere' camera mode to Spark

DJI on Thursday made several updates to its drone line, the biggest being the Mavic Pro Platinum, a new model that refines its predecessor's performance.

The Platinum offers 11 percent more flight time — up to 30 minutes — along with a 4-decibel noise reduction, DJI said. The name stems from its new shell color.

The drone's technical improvements derive from new electronic speed controllers, as well as redesigned propellers, the latter of which can also be fitted on the regular Mavic Pro.

The compact Spark drone is getting a new "Sphere" shooting mode, located under Panorama options, which will add a fisheye effect. Access will require a future firmware update and a new version of DJI Go 4 for iPhones and iPads.

Lastly, the Phantom 4 Pro is getting a new color variant, dubbed the Obsidian. The only differences are a matte gray shell, and a magnesium gimbal that's electroplated and fingerprint-resistant.

The Mavic Pro Platinum and Phantom 4 Pro Obsidian will both ship in September, at prices of $1,099 and $1,499.

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2 Comments

linkman

said about 6 years ago

4 db? Where's the Blue Thunder whisper mode?

macwise

said about 6 years ago

The Mavic is an amazing drone for so many reasons, but the biggest single dependency - the camera - is absolute shit. The camera itself has pretty high potential, but the NR algorithm DJI has employed causes the videos to be so blurred and smeared that they are completely unusable. The only way to disable the NR is to turn sharpening to +1, which then creates massive, horrible noise artifacts, which when coupled with the compression artifacts, causes the grain to "dance" in unison across the entire frame (or at least wherever the image is exposed lower than middle gray).

Until DJI breaks out noise reduction (NR) and sharpening into two separate controls, this drone is kind of a dud. And it's too bad, because it's an incredible piece of machinery.