HUGE Firmware Update for DJI Mini 4 Pro & Air 3!

What’s up, guys? Welcome back to another video. Today, we have a pretty significant firmware update that we need to cover, and it’s about both of these drones, the DJI Air 3 and the DJI Mini 4 Pro.

This Firmware Update for both of these devices kind of brings them up to speed with everything that DJI has been doing lately, which is to kind of uniform all of their products and bring all of these latest changes and improvements to all of their drones in their lineup.

So, across the board, whether you’re using a Mini 4 Pro, a DJI Air 3, or a DJI Mavic 3 Pro, you should be able to enjoy all of their latest safety features. So, you don’t really feel like your drone is falling behind or left behind by DJI, so I’m really happy to see that.

DJI Air 3 and Mini 4 Pro Firmware Update

So, there are some features that we have on both of these drones, and they are getting them both with this new firmware update. So, I will start with those that are repeating themselves on both of these drones, and then we’ll focus on the ones that are strictly specific to each drone.

As usual, if you want to get the latest firmware, make sure you’re running the latest DJI Fly application, then make sure you update both your remote controller and your drone.

Now, the first change that both of these drones are getting with their new firmware updates is called Vision Assist. You might have heard about Vision Assist already because it’s a feature that has been recently added to the Mavic 3 Pro and the Mavic 3, and it’s an amazing feature.

I would say that’s one of the best new improvements that we’ve seen on any DJI drone lately. Vision Assist is using their Vision positioning sensors on the front and on the back of the drone to give you an idea of where your drone is positioned within its surroundings.

Let’s say if you’re doing an orbit shot and you’re flying sideways, you don’t really see what is next to your drone, what is on the left or what is on the right side of your drone, and even behind it. So, with Vision Assist, you can turn it on by simply swiping left on your map, which is in the lower left-hand corner of your screen.

You can simply swipe, and you will see a new screen that shows you in black and white what the drone sensors are seeing. So, these sensors here are obviously pointing forward and a little bit to the side, and the ones here on the back are doing the same but from the back side and also a little bit on the left or on the right.

So, you can use any of these four views to see the surroundings around the drone, which is super cool and super useful if you want to be sure that there’s no obstacle that you’re going to hit while flying manually.

So, this is super cool and handy to have, and you can use it both on the Mini 4 Pro and on the Air 3. So, Vision Assist is great, and both of these drones are going to get it.

Now, the next feature that both of these are going to get is Active Track 360 Auto. Now, if you remember, the Mini 4 Pro has an Active Track 360 mode, which is really cool and makes some advanced moves really simple with just a swipe around the screen; you can make the drone go and automatically rotate around yourself while tracking you.

And those maneuvers are really handy to have while you’re not actually using the remote controller yourself. Well, now not only that, the Air 3 gets that same feature on it as well, and you can use it with both cameras, the 1X and the 3X camera on the Air 3, which is amazing, not limited to just one of the cameras, for example.

So, both cameras on the Air 3 can take advantage of Active Track 360. But now we have Active Track 360 Auto, which is kind of like an AI way of letting the drone decide what it wants to film around you while still keeping you in the middle of the frame, of course.

But it’s kind of like using the drone and letting its brain decide how it wants to track you. So, if you go to Active Track and select Auto and you press go, you will see that the drone will start following you, most probably from the back at first, and then it will start rotating around you.

It will follow you from the side, then it will go into Helix mode, where it spirals up and still keeps you in the middle of the frame. Then it will go back to following you from the back. It’s a really nice way of spicing up your footage.

So, even if you don’t press anything on the remote, the drone will do it automatically. So, if you want to have more dynamic shots but you don’t really know how to do that or you don’t want to use the remote, maybe your hands will be busy while you’re being tracked.

If that’s the case, you can just press on Active Track 360 Auto, and the drone will do it for you. You will not have to worry about different maneuvers; you will not have to worry about different directions.

You just let the drone do its thing, and you can simply rely on its smart brain to do it for you. And I think the results are pretty good.

Now, the next feature, which is shared again for both of these drones, is the fact that now both of them can have their downward-facing sensors turned off, which will facilitate taking off or landing from cars and boats.

We’ve seen that this feature is very much needed for those risky situations where you quickly want to land or you quickly want to take off from a moving object.

You don’t want to rely on these sensors on the bottom because they slow down the landing procedure of the drone, and obviously, every second is precious when

you’re on a moving object, especially on a boat. All you need to do is go to the advanced safety features and then turn that feature on or off.

The next feature is strictly for the Mini 4 Pro, and the reason is that we already have it on the Air 3, and that is that you can now use the Mini 4 Pro with the Goggles 2, the Goggles Integra, and the RC Motion Controller 2.

Meaning that if you want, you can take advantage of flying your drone with the RC Motion Controller 2 and use the goggles to navigate around the space if you don’t want to use the main controller or you simply want to get a taste of what FPV feels like.

You can use that and fly like this. Unfortunately, you cannot use the regular controller with the goggles. The only way to use the goggles and the drone is by using the RC Motion Controller 2.

So, if that’s something that you want to take advantage of, you need to buy the RC Motion Controller 2. It’s a lot of fun. It’s not something that I’m doing a lot, and should I say at all.

But for someone who is kind of scared of FPV, you don’t want to really go into FPV but you still want to get a taste of what it feels like, it could be a great way to enjoy the drone that way.

And finally, we have two little things that are strictly for the Air 3. The first of them is that photo mode now supports digital zoom on the 24mm wide-angle lens.

You can now zoom between 1X and 3X digitally. And on the 70mm medium telephoto lens, you can now zoom between 3X and 9X. Now, personally, I would probably stay away from that feature if you don’t really want to make the quality a little bit worse on your photos.

But if you really want to zoom in and take a look at what’s going on and want to take a photo of that without having to digitally zoom in later in post, you can do that from the zoom wheel on the remote controller. It’s really easy to do that.

You just need to be aware that you will be losing some quality while digitally zooming that way. And the final feature that is again only for the Air 3 is that the medium telephoto lens now supports sphere panorama.

So, those panoramas that take a lot of photos, I think about 137 or 138, something like that. It takes 5 minutes to create that panorama, but the drone can handle it.

And it can take those photos in both JPEG or RAW format. So, it’s really up to you how you want to take advantage of that feature.

You can do it now with the medium telephoto lens, which will give you that specific compressed look that only a drone with an additional camera can give you.

Those are the latest changes coming via a firmware update for both of these drones, the Mini 4 Pro and the Air 3. I think DJI is doing great with their firmware updates lately, and I’m seeing a lot of familiar features trickling down to their cheaper models.

If you can even call them cheaper, but the bigger models are sharing more and more features with their smaller siblings, so I’m really happy to see that.

So, a big thumbs up from me for DJI for that. That’s pretty much it for today’s video. Thank you so much for watching. Drop a like if you have enjoyed it, and subscribe for many more videos like this one.

Happy holidays, everyone. Stay safe, and I’ll catch you soon. Ciao.