DJI Mavic 4 Pro review

Price and availability

The DJI Mavic 4 Pro is available in three packages, all of which can be ordered now.

The basic £1,879 / €2,099 / AU$3,099 bundle offers the basics: the drone itself, a single battery and a DJI RC 2 touchscreen twin-stick controller. Moving up, the £2,459 / €2,699 / AU$4,039 Fly More Combo (DJI RC 2) comes with the drone, three batteries, a battery charging hub, a DJI RC 2 and a shoulder bag. Finally, the deluxe Creator Combo comes with an upgraded drone that has 512GB of internal storage, three batteries, the charging hub, a new DJI RC Pro 2 controller and a shoulder bag. It costs £3,209 / €3,539 / AU$5,359.

The RC Pro 2 can also be bought separately, priced at £879 / €999 / AU$1,529.

You’ll have noticed I haven’t included any US pricing here. That’s because it’s still yet to be confirmed by DJI, almost certainly due to the high tariffs on Chinese imports recently introduced by Donald Trump’s administration. US-based buyers might have a hard time picking up a Mavic 4 Pro for a while, I suspect.

Design and build quality

• 1063g weight and 257.6 x 124.8 x 106.6mm when folded
• Powers on automatically when unfolded
• USB-C port and microSD card slot plus internal storage

In line with previous Mavic drones from DJI, the Mavic 4 Pro is a relatively large and heavy drone. On the plus side, that means better flight stability and more battery capacity than smaller drones such as those in the DJI Mini series. On the minus side, it means the Mavic 4 Pro is subject to more stringent rules about where it can be flown. 

In the UK, where I live, a drone weighing 250g or over must not be flown with 50m horizontally of uninvolved people, and never above them. It must also be kept at least 150m away from built-up residential, recreational, commercial and industrial sites, which obviously puts some quite severe limits on where it can be flown. If you do want to fly it closer to uninvolved people, you can take the mostly self-administered A2 CofC training course and exam, which usually costs around £100. Passing this allows you to reduce the distance to 30m.

I don’t think these restrictions make the Mavic 4 Pro unrecommendable in the UK, unless you’re planning on doing the bulk of your flying in heavily built-up environments. If you are, I’d suggest buying a DJI Mini 4 Pro (or something like it), as it’s under 250g and therefore subject to fewer restrictions.

When not in use, the Mavic 4 Pro folds down to a trim size, with an included cover keeping the cameras and propellers protected during transport. I was sent the Fly More Combo bundle for review and found the included shoulder bag to be the perfect way to safely transport the drone, controller and spare batteries. It’s a high-quality bag with great padding inside, and makes the Fly More Combo well worth the extra money in my view – especially given that it also comes with two additional batteries and a fast charging hub.

It’s a well-made drone, with solid construction. It seems more sleek and streamlined than the Mavic 3 Pro, which possibly aids its wind resistance and increases flight speed. One design upgrade I particularly like is the way the drone powers up automatically when unfolded; there’s no need to hit the physical button anymore. It trims a few seconds off the pre-flight routine. 

The Mavic 4 Pro comes with both built-in storage space and a card slot for expansion; the standard edition of the drone, which I reviewed, has 64GB of internal storage, of which about 42GB is available for use (the pricier version that comes with the Creator Combo has 512GB of space, 460GB of it usable). A door at the drone’s rear opens to reveal its microSD slot and USB-C port that can be used for recharging or data transfer.

I was also sent a sample of the new DJI RC Pro 2 controller to test, and it’s excellent thanks to its larger touchscreen, which is also able to rotate 90º into a portrait aspect. The way the controller powers on and its thumb sticks pop up automatically when the screen is deployed is also a big time-saver. 

Flight performance

• 6654mAh battery delivers up to 51 minutes of flight 
• Full omnidirectional anti-collision system including LiDAR
• FocusTrack and MasterShots modes included

Despite weighing over a kilo, the Mavic 4 Pro is a nimble and responsive aircraft that makes surprisingly little noise in flight. DJI has worked hard on reducing the angry bee buzz of its drones over the years, but I was still quite taken aback with how unobtrusive it was here.

Battery life has been significantly improved over the Mavic 3 Pro’s 43-minute maximum. Here, each 6654mAh battery delivers up to 51 minutes of flight. That’s a best-case scenario figure, and real-world use is a bit less, but I found it reassuring to know I had so much time to play with while flying.

The batteries recharge quickly too. With DJI’s 240W power adapter a drained battery can be fully charged in around 50 minutes. Recharging via the drone’s USB port, which supports 100W input, takes about 115 minutes.

Flight safety has been improved too. DJI’s obstacle-sensing vision system, which detects potential objects and prevents the drone from crashing into them, has never really been great at night – until now. The Mavic 4 Pro is the first full-size Mavic model to feature front-facing LiDAR, which works alongside six low-light vision sensors to greatly boost object detection in the dark – brilliantly, the feed from these cameras can now be viewed in the corner of the controller screen while you’re flying. Oh, and the Mavic 4 Pro can also take off and return to home without a GPS signal.

The drone comes with DJI’s excellent tracking capabilities, which allow it to keep its camera trained on vehicles, boats and people while moving – either via manual control (FocusTrack) or autonomous flight (ActiveTrack). It’ll utilise its obstacle avoiding talents here too, either stopping or navigating around potential hazards while moving. It also comes with MasterShots too: a mode in which the drone will fly along a preset route to capture a range of shots of a subject.

Camera performance

• 28mm, 70mm and 168mm equivalent cameras
• Captures up to 6K video at 60fps or 4K at 120fps
• Gimbal rotates and tilts to offer a wide range of camera angles

Like the Mavic 3 Pro, the camera module here features three separate cameras, allowing you to switch between three different fields of view (FOVs). These focal lengths offer a great deal of creative flexibility, and in the case of the tele lenses allow you to ‘get closer’ to subjects without disturbing them.

The main camera is Hasselblad-branded to denote its premium, top-of-the-bill nature, offers an FOV equivalent to 28mm (slightly tighter than the 24mm of the Mavic 3 Pro’s main camera), adjustable aperture (f/2 to f/11) and a large 4/3 type sensor capable of 100MP photos, 6K video up to 60fps and 4K video up to 120fps. It also delivers up to 16 stops of dynamic range, according to DJI.

Then there’s a medium telephoto camera with equivalent 70mm FOV, fixed f/2.8 aperture, CMOS sensor capable of 48MP photos and 4K video at up to 120fps, and a telephoto camera with 168mm equivalent FOV, f/2.8 aperture, CMOS sensor delivering 50MP photos and 4K at up to 100fps. 

All the cameras support up to 10-bit 4:2:2 video and HLG, D-Log and D-Log M colour profiles, and because they’re mounted on a new gimbal able to fully rotate, can all be used in social media-friendly 9:16 portrait mode as well as the standard landscape mode. This gimbal really frees up motion in general, with a larger tilt and roll range than any previous DJI Mavic, Air or Mini drone.

This is the best-equipped, best-performing camera I’ve seen on a consumer drone bar none, and capable of capturing professional-quality images in almost any situation. It’s true, I suppose, that owners of the Mavic 3 Pro might see precious few reasons to make the upgrade: the focal lengths and FOVs are roughly the same here and while raw image quality is slightly superior, the 3 Pro’s was already excellent. It does come with full D-Log colour, too – while the 3 Pro topped out at D-Log M.

But the biggest camera improvement comes in the form of that more flexible gimbal, and it’s particularly handy if your primarily creating content for 9:16 social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts.

Should you buy it?