Update, October 28th: Thanks to a fumbled store listing on Newegg.ca, we have images and specs for the soon to be announced DJI Mavic Mini. There is much yet to learn about the new drone, such as the official price and a launch date, but it appears many of the rumors and leaks have been quite accurate. Now we wait for October 30th to see what this new drone is all about! Stay tuned, we’ll have all the details on the new drone as soon as they are available to us.

DJI Mavic Mini photos from Newegg.ca

Original Post, October 24th:

We tend to avoid writing about random drone leaks and rumors around here, so we were thrilled to find some concrete teaser material on the DJI website that we can work with. Based on the email teaser, and the new page on the site, it seems inevitable that we’ll see a new DJI drone next week! 5 days, 21 hours and change is the morning of October 30th, 2019.

“Fly as you are” and the imagery of a person taking flight themselves, in a fixed-wing configuration, offers no clues to what’s going on, but it has been over 14 months since the last consumer drone from DJI, so we have to assume a new quadcopter is in the works.

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Speculation

We have one thing going for us, we can make predictions and sling speculation. Let’s start with the fact that it’s been a while since the last consumer drone arrived, that was the DJI Mavic 2 Pro and Mavic 2 Zoom in August, 2018. Both of these machines have price tags north of $1000, as did the Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 in May, 2018. In January, 2018 was the launch of the DJI Mavic Air and the DJI Spark hit the market way back in May, 2017.

Looking at the top of the DJI Mavic line, we recall the Mavic Pro launching in the fall of 2016, there were a few variations in the middle, but the true upgrade came in 2018. The Phantom line has had frequent updates through the years, but the Mavic Air and the Spark are without successors. We hesitate to consider the Mavic Air to be old and tired, but if we must be honest, we’d been hoping for V2.0 of the Spark since three days after we first flew ours.

Is that it, then? Is DJI releasing Spark 2.0?

The last handful of DJI releases have been camera gear, including the Osmo Mobile 3, Osmo Pocket and Osmo Action. That means nothing in terms of what’s coming next, but it’s fair to say we do not expect another consumer camera solution at this time. That being said, we had taken the DJI Osmo Pocket and attached it to some drones, the result was far better than we had expected, but we truly wished for a higher resolution camera on it. Remember that the 1-inch Hasselblad shooter had recently arrived in the Mavic 2 Pro, that’s the sensor we wanted in the pocket camera as well. Far be it for us to assume we made a difference, but we expressed these thoughts to some DJI executives back at CES 2019, and they were receptive to the idea of a higher-end sensor on a pocket solution.

GoPro did a really cool thing with their failed attempt at a drone, the camera Gimbal in the Karma drone was removable. You could then operate the Gimbal as a hand-held machine all on it’s own. Being that DJI now has several hand-held camera Gimbal systems, taking this approach opens some doors for new aircraft.

[newsletter title=”Don’t Miss Out!” description=”Sign up now to get the latest Drone news delivered directly to your inbox! We guarantee 100% privacy. Your information will never be shared.” alignment=”right”]I would be pretty excited for a new mini drone that is ultra portable, but large enough that it accepts the entire Osmo Pocket, or a new version of the Pocket, as its removable payload. Aside from the payload, there is a huge market for inexpensive drones, the DJI Spark is less now, but sold for $500 at launch. DJI could do very well to launch a sub-$300 drone right now, especially one with a 4K camera and 3-axis stabilized Gimbal.

One last thing, despite the fixed-wing flight portrayed in the image, we have almost no expectation for a fixed-wing consumer aircraft from DJI any time soon.

Reality

DJI is, perhaps, one of the best tech companies around when it comes to keeping their development a secret. We know there are rumors floating around, even some renders as to what a new machine could look like. These talk about a Mavic Mini that looks a lot like a short and stubby Mavic Pro. This would be perfectly acceptable to us, if real, but we’re just going to have to wait to find out.

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The latest consumer-friendly DJI drones:

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