Today, the new DJI Mavic Air was announced to an absolutely astounded crowd. Designed to be put into a coat pocket and carried anywhere along with the remote, your phone, and all the other stuff you normally bring with you, the new DJI Mavic Air also brings with it a lot of technology.

DJI has cherry-picked all the best features and stuffed them into the Mavic Air.

Dedicated joystick controller; Gimbal stabilized 4K camera; Robust obstacle avoidance; Plentiful intelligent flight modes

Touchy camera controls; unless you're in Cinematic mode

One part Mavic Pro, one part Spark, all delicious

Great compact design; Clever obstacle avoidance system; Fun autonomous features

Average image quality; Short battery life is limiting; Wi-Fi connection can be flaky

When DJI releases a new drone it's a big deal. And the Mavic Air is no different. But it's not that big. The foldable drone is actually surprisingly small but it can still shoot incredible video and capture incredible stills like its big brothers.

Sleek design; small and foldable; 3-axis gimbal; internal memory; excellent controller; QuickShots to capture amazing video

Expensive

The Mavic Air is DJI’s most impressive drone yet. By combining the best bits from the Spark and Mavic Pro, it’s made a cracking gadget for both beginners who want stunning aerial travel videos and those who just want to fly a nimble drone full pelt around the local park. It’s such a good all-rounder that it’s actually hard to recommend getting either the DJI Spark or the Mavic Pro ahead of it, unless price or battery life considerations put you off. Once you’ve added a controller to the Spark, the Mavic Air is only £190 more – and the video quality, portability, extra range and longer battery life more than justify that. The recent Mavic Pro Platinum does promise lower noise levels and 30-minute flight time, which are two of the Air’s main weaknesses, but at £1200 it’s a significant jump up. Which leaves the Air as our current favourite flying, autonomous 4K camera. It’s an amazing gadget that slips into a hiking backpack and can shoot videos that would have, until recently, required serious flying skills and a film studio budget. Now, where to take it next...

Incredibly portable; Very good video and stills quality; A cinch to fly;

Battery life still quite restrictive; Quite noisy when nearby;

Incredibly portable; Very good video and stills quality; A cinch to fly;

Battery life still quite restrictive; Quite noisy when nearby;

A tiny folding drone

Hard to crash; makes pretty video

Shakes in cold weather (Update: DJI fixed the issue

In the past couple years, you could ask a drone to be two things: good or small. But never both. The Mavic Air changes the game. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the Mavic Air wins the game, and things will never be the same.

Hard to crash; makes pretty video

Shakes in cold weather (Update: DJI fixed the issue

Drone came broken from dji, do not buy! Their customer service team does not care about their coustomers even if they spent $1000 on a broken drone... very disappointing from such a reputable company. Take second thoughts before buying drones from this company (dji)