is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
In 2023, DJI created a massive hit with the Osmo Pocket 3, a tiny steadicam with a far bigger one-inch-type sensor that dramatically improved the quality of video you could get with so tiny a gadget. Today, the company may be doing the same with its most popular portable line of drones — and with better battery life than ever.
The DJI Mini 5 Pro is the company’s first compact drone with a 50-megapixel one-inch-type sensor, up from 1/1.3-inch in the Mini 4 Pro. At 15.19 x 11.11mm, it offers more than twice the sensor area, which could mean capturing more light; DJI claims 14 stops of dynamic range.
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DJI tells us it could deliver even slightly better results than the one in the bigger and pricier DJI Air 3S from 2024, with “enhanced portrait performance” at close range, “improved brightness in shadow areas,” and that it won’t oversharpen vegetation like the Air 3S sometimes could. Plus, DJI is quoting two extra minutes of battery life from the Mini 5 Pro over the Mini 4 Pro without increasing weight beyond the all-important 250-gram mark, at 36 minutes vs. 34.
Or, if you opt for the company’s extended battery, DJI claims you can hit 52 minutes at a go, beating the old Mini 3 for the longest longest battery life ever in a non-industrial DJI drone. DJI won’t sell that extended battery in Europe, though, to help comply with laws around heavier drones.
Image: DJI
Otherwise, the DJI Mini 5 Pro, like the Mini 4 Pro before it, is mostly a story of catching up to the high bar set by DJI’s Air line. The Mini already had omnidirectional obstacle avoidance; now it gets the Air’s upgraded low-light version with forward-facing LiDAR so it can more easily return home at night, and can “memorize flight routes, enabling safe takeoff and return even without a satellite signal.”
The Mini 5 Pro can now climb twice as fast at 10 meters per second (22mph), just like the Air, and flies slightly faster horizontally (42mph vs. 36mph) than the Mini 4 Pro too. You also get faster 4K120 shooting like the Air, plus the same expanded ISO range of 12800 in normal shooting and 3200 in HDR and D-Log M.
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