Review of DJI Mavic Pro vs GoPro Karma

It is no more than 1-2 weeks that DJI and GoPro announced their new foldable and ultra-portable personal camera drones, DJI Mavic Pro and GoPro Karma. Immediately everybody started talking about how fantastic both drones are.  With so much hype surrounding these two products, we’ve decided to do a comparison of features and specs to see how the DJI Mavic Pro and GoPro Karma stack up — at least on paper till we get in our hands the real thing.

Design

One of the main features that differs from all other drones, is that both drones fold up for easy storage and transport. The Karma’s arms fold in, when the Mavic Pro’s propellers fold up as well, giving it extra compactness (the size of a water bottle, DJI says).

Folded up, the Mavic Pro has dimensions of 83 x 83 x 198 mm, when the Karma folded measures 89.9 × 224.3 × 356.2 mm. As for the weight, Mavic Pro weighs 734g and the Karma weights 1006g. So the Mavic Pro is 1/3 lighter from the Karma, something important for speed and battery duration and smaller for easy carrying and storage.

Features

Since we have already said that the Mavic Pro is lighter from the Karma, I guess if we say that Mavic Pro should be faster, shouldn’t be wrong. And it is true, as the Mavic Pro can fly at the max speed of 40 mph (65 kph) while in Sport mode, when the Karma has a maximum speed of 35 mph (56.3 kph). An other important feature is the flight time. Mavic Pro, lighter, can fly for 27 minutes, when the Karma can fly up to 20 minutes only. And the third important feature is the distance that a drone can fly. From what we know, the Mavic Pro can fly for a distance of 4.3 miles (7 km) away from its controller, when the Karma has a max distance of 1.86 miles (3 km). Both drones feature a gimbal for 3-axis stabilization. The Karma has a range of motion of -90° to 0° up and down. The Mavic Pro has a wider range of motion of -90° to +30° (pitch) and the ability to roll. The Mavic Pro remote controller is equipped with an LCD screen which shows essential flight info. It can be paired with your smartphone for powerful auto-flight features and a live 1080p video feed from the drone. The Karma controller reminds us the old video controllers for the design. It features a 5-inch, 720p touchscreen with a live video stream. The Mavic Pro uses a host of sensors and cameras for its FlightAutonomy obstacle avoidance system, object tracking system, and gesture control system. The Karma lacks obstacle avoidance and “Follow Me” features. Mavic Pro’s auto-flight features are geared towards people who want to operate a drone without necessarily having the skills to fly a drone. Karma has some automated features, including the ability to travel between two points, but it’s geared much more towards manual controlled flight.

So we see that and in most of the features the winner is the DJI Mavic Pro.

Camera

Camera is an extra feature that is important in such an expensive and good quality drone. So I guess you can wait only the best here. The Mavic Pro is equipped with a built-in camera. The Karma needs to be installed a separate GoPro camera to the front, adding some additional size and weight, making it even more heavier. Both cameras, Mavic Pro and GoPro HERO5 Black are 1/2.3-inch, with 12-megapixel CMOS sensors. Both can capture JPEG and RAW photos, both can shoot video in 4K. Of course we don’t know the quality of both images in real life, so we wait for the first samples to see ourselves.

Price

The DJI Mavic Pro costs 1299.99$ at Gearbest and it includes 1 x Aircraft, 1 x Transmitter, 4 x Spare Propeller, 1 x Intelligent Flight Battery, 1 x Charger, 1 x Power Cable, 1 x Connection Cable and 1 x Set of English Manuals. The GoPro Karma costs $799 for the drone and controller, but it requires an additional camera. A bundle that includes the GoPro HERO5 Black costs more than 1000$.

Conclusion

The DJI Mavic Pro comes with stronger specs in most of the categories, much better intelligent flight features, and a good price.  GoPro although is a very good and strong company in cameras, mainly action cameras, spent months hyping up the Karma as a major expansion into a new business, stepping into the ring with camera drone heavyweight DJI, but the official Karma unveiling on September 19th was quickly dwarfed just days later by DJI announcing the Mavic Pro. You can use the coupon code: RC18OFF.