Since the CES 2020, Autel had unveiled the Evo 2 and turned the drone world on! It seemed like the market leader DJI has finally met some challenges in the drone industry. But yesterday, DJI also stood up to the competition by pitting the newly-released Mavic Air 2 against the Evo 2! This competition is definitely something that hobbyists and professionals in this industry would love to see.

As a drone photographer myself, I would definitely like to see a drone that outperforms DJI’s. Before I lay my hands on the Evo 2, I watched numerous review videos about this new contender and was able to dig deep into its real performance beyond all the specs they boasted in their marketing pitches. The overall feature of the new Mavic Air 2 is a massive step ahead of the Mavic Air. Moving forward, I’ll share the pros and cons of the Evo 2 and compare them with the Mavic Air 2 based on my observation. Hopefully, this information will help with your purchasing decisions.

Pros

Camera Specs

I’ve listed all the camera specs of Evo 2 vs Mavic series above. It’s obvious that the Evo 2 6K version is aimed at the Mavic 2 Pro, while the 8K version is aimed at the Mavic Air 2 and the Mavic 2 Zoom. The DJI Mavic Air 2 uses the same sensor as Evo 2 as well as the 48MP photo resolution. However, it won’t be able to provide 8k footage. I believe that these specs of Evo 2 sound quite alluring to most professional pilots and photographers. 8K footage! 48mp resolution! But despite all the numbers, how do they really perform? I’ll give a rather detailed analysis if you keep reading.

No built-in geofencing systems

It’s another big cheer-up for most pilots who are tired of DJI’s NFZ limitation. Autel currently allows you to fly in the NFZ’s with a warning on the display screen. However, the NFZ’s are not visible on any map while flying to allow one to stay clear of them. People have diverse opinions about this. Some think it’s good as they can finally get rid of DJI’s babysitting NFZ, while others think that Autel’s marketing strategy identified a part of the market that resents DJI’s NFZ rules and has used their lack of NFZ as a selling point to differentiate their products. And, it’s highly possible that this will bring some potential safety problems. For me, I don’t actually mind if there’s any NFZ implementation, though it’s a bit annoying sometimes. However, it’s a safer act for most people.

Cons

HDR Video quality & Log Footage

For most professional photographers, we know that it’s pointless to talk solely about resolution. Features like dynamic range, bit depth, color accuracy are so much more important than resolution. So when Autel’s 8K drone came out, I was desperate to see how the footage and image it captures look like. It appears that the 4k footage out of 8k drone turns out pretty good (even though I still prefer the image color out of Mavic Air 2). But if you turn on the HDR mode, the image quality gets even worse. I think Autel is still struggling with improving their HDR technique. Their HDR video in low light is extremely noisy and the dynamic range is really not impressive.

EVO2 4K30fps HDR

Another bummer is that the log footage out of both the 8K and 6k version is so washed out that it’s really tricky to bring the colors back. Many YouTubers have already proved this. As the Mavic air 2 hasn’t been trickled down to people’s hands yet, I’ll post some footage comparisons between the Evo 2 and the Mavic 2 Pro here. I don’t really mean to demean the Evo 2, I just felt disappointed. At first, I was so thrilled about its launch as I thought it’d probably be a blockbuster that could overthrow DJI from the throne, but obviously it’s far from what I’d expected.

Mavic 2 Pro Vs EVO II Pro

In shooting an 8K video, you’ll notice that the image seems oversharpened so much so that it won’t match anything. Plus, the file is so big that it would most likely bring your computer to its knees. The file size of a 1-minute 8K footage reaches up to 1GB. Hence, I don’t think the 8K is really designed for average customers. Basically, people will likely use the 8k drone to shoot 4k videos. I guess I’ll just choose a 4K drone with a better price then.

Transmission System

Autel boasts a 9km transmission with 40 minutes of flight time. But as tested by some drone techie, it turns out that the transmission will likely be disconnected if you fly higher than 200m. The tested transmission range of the Evo 2 is only 5.2km in an open area. Obviously, it’s not as good as the Mavic air 2, which brings the actual 10km transmission range. Currently, the Ocusync of DJI still remains unbeatable in the drone industry. I hope the 10km transmission range would not be a hoax similar to Autel’s. But who knows? Let’s wait and see.

Latency

As tested by Flypath, the Mavic runs super smooth and responsively. As for the Evo 2, the latency is almost twice that of the DJI Mavic 2. As he controlled the Evo 2, it felt snappy. Furthermore, there’s little to no adjustments that can be done to handle it better in the air.

Latency comparison (approximation)

Intelligent features

Both the Evo 2 and the Mavic Air 2 have various intelligent features. The Evo 2 lacks all the fun features of the Mavic Air 2’s Quickshots. But the biggest allure of the Evo 2’s intelligent features is the Object Track and Orbit. Most of the Mavic Air 2’s smart features have been significantly improved from their previous iterations. The Mavic Air 2 is the first DJI drone to include the latest ActiveTrack 3.0 feature, and it appears to be a big step up from ActiveTrack 2.0. And 8K Hyperlapse is another blockbuster feature for Mavic Air 2.

Intelligent feature comparison

Software problems

I also noticed that there are still many software bugs that remained unfixed for the new Evo 2, such as the tilt problem, among others. And the intelligent features are still quite buggy. But I’m guessing that these problems will be finally fixed by them sooner or later.

Price

Even though the Evo2 boasts an 8k camera, its overall performance is still slightly inferior compared to the Mavic Air 2. With that being said, the Mavic Air 2 is worth only half the price of the Evo 2.

Price comparison

Conclusion:

Autel is doing a bit of a marketing play here by stacking up all the numbers to make their products look super fascinating to fight for more market share. But the truth is that they still have the potential to be more innovative. Hopefully, they will become a true competitor of DJI one day. For now, I still hold the opinion that DJI rules the market with superior drone technology.