Almost as soon as the Air 2S entered the market, people were asking the inevitable question: How will it go in the tracking department? Specifically, will it look as good as Skydio 2? Someone has already done an excellent job of investigating this, so let’s go for a walk.
The new Air 2S has a lot of great features. Its new 1-inch CMOS sensor greatly improves the game compared to Mavic Air 2 and has additional obstacle avoidance sensors and an updated version of APAS Advanced Pilot Assistance Software to help detect and avoid obstacles. Sounds great on paper, but how does that translate to the real world?
Let’s find out.
DJI Vs. Skydio
Air 2S is $ 999. Skydio 2 is $ 999. Both claim to avoid obstacles and superior tracking skills.
The obvious question, of course, is who is better at doing this? Specifically, tracking a moving object while avoiding obstacles? This is a very good question, and people asked us this during our launch event for DJI Air 2S. I did not know the answer, because I have not yet had the opportunity to make this comparison.
Fortunately for us, someone did.
background
Skydio 2 has an extraordinary reputation for its tracking skills. The six 4K visual sensors together pack a 360 ° view of the world around it. The drone is constantly evaluating its environment and making decisions about where to go next. It even has predictive algorithms (or so we remember) that can figure out where the next object is likely to be tracked.
DJI drones, although the company doesn’t talk much about AI in marketing, are also smart. These drones also constantly map the environment in real time as they move through space.
Mavic Air 2, in my experience, was fine, but failed to get stuck on a moving subject. I’m not a fast runner, but if I increased my speed or made a sudden return to the ground, Mavic Air 2 would love me more times than not.
Skydio 2, on the other hand, has an extremely predictable way to stay stuck on a subject, unless they go and hide behind something. YouTube does not lack videos in which Skydio 2 manages trees, threads, clothes threads, etc. with flair.
Skydio 2 vs. Air 2S
It was an obvious comparison and we had plans to try it ourselves. But when we saw the video you’re going to see, we thought, Let’s just get this news out there. The creator of YouTube DCRainmaker makes an extraordinary comparison between the two here and I certainly could not have produced anything better. So check out the full video because it’s worth watching … along with a number of very unforeseen events:
Take away
Well, these are the first days for Air 2S. In fact, it is Earliest daily. Maybe firmware updates will help make things better.
But the reality is that without obstacle avoidance sensors on its sides, the Air 2S is not I’ll see the big picture in the same way that Skydio 2 can. Hey, it would be great if it could … but we just don’t see that they’re equal in the tracking department.
That being said, don’t reject Air 2S. As we point out in this long review, the drone has a lot of great features and is super compact for traveling or a day in the park.
What drone attracts you will ultimately depend on what you want to use that drone to achieve. If it’s for long-range flight, low-latency transmission and a lot of automated features that don’t track, choose Air 2S. But if you plan to ride a bike along a canal (or on a mountain trail), it seems – certainly from this video – that you could be happier with Skydio 2.
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