DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced M2EA Don't buy it / The big problem nobody is talking about

The DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced M2EA boasts impressive specs for the dual RGB and IR camera. But despite promising an awful lot, professional operators, people who have deliverables to a client for surveys and inspections will be very disappointed. I was. And nobody seems to be talking about it.

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#whirlybloke

[northof]

Thank you for this info. I have purchased one of these and wish I'd seen this first. Could you please post any info if firmware is updated?

[MadRC]

There is some confusions around this model.

It does not have an Optical Zoom. It’s fitted with 1/2” 48mp sensors and dji have implemented a 32x digital zoom.

This is what they call a Lossless Zoom is the sense they are using cropping and the additional pixels to achieve the “lossless zoom” but there is no optical element.

What your getting on the card is the full MP image and zooming in post should achieve the same or similar result. There is some sw magic done on the RC side when both and to capture that you want to store smart controller side not SD card side.

Overall what your getting on the card is what the actual sensor output is. What your seeing on the screen is a manipulation of that.

Technically DJI could ad the ability to store the cropped image but you can do that now on the smart controller side anyways.

[rotobic]

Your review is spot on. I also thought I was being stupid with the camera setup. In a country where this drone costs 5x the average salary, it is very expensive. I bought it for night surveillance of criminal activity and in this regard it is excellent. The mountable LED floodlight is impressive and very useful at getting ground teams to the perpetrators, it also scares the living sh!t out of them! It would have been nice to have ben able to use it for recreational activities too. The thermal camera has proved very useful for day or night game counting as well. Being able to de-activate the navigation lights for covert approaches is convenient too.

[zipperbluez]

As an owner and user of an Enterprise Dual and a Mavic 2 Zoom (for building inspection purposes), I've always been baffled by the omissions in Pilot vs Go4; but the problems you're pointing out in this video are beyond the pale. I was about to put together a proposal to my boss to purchase one of these for the company to replace the previously mentioned drones; but after seeing this video I'm having to consider other options, because other than the increased resolution of the thermal camera, this is a step backwards in every way. I am so disappointed; because the promise of this drone was so high - I thought it was going to replace both of my current drones and outshine them dramatically. The zoom issues alone - wow. From other videos similar to yours the RTK features don't work properly either; another upgrade I was looking forward to for precision flights in difficult environments. Thank you so much for your insight, you've stopped me from making a mistake I would have had to live with and be frustrated by for a while.

[jtomes]

Looking at the spec sheet for mavic enterprise advanced it has RGB 48MP camera with 32x digital zoom and no optical, so I think the controller just zooms in digitally and what you get on the output is the full 48mp image and full thermal

[sliggy]

What drone would you suggest to use for thermal imaging inspection deliverables?

[rafaelvicedo]

Hi Mr Bloke, thanks for your excellent review, after all this time using it with latest firmware updates as well as software...and the new mavic 3T in the market...do you recomend to buy the mavic 2 EA RTK for industrial solar panel inspection and building inspection for 2/3 of the initial price??? Thanks for your time

[MNDashcam]

I've got one and I do a lot of post-editing anyway so none of this is an issue for me. I had the Enterprise duel before and I upgraded to the advanced and it is a night and day difference in quality. The smart controller and the whole drone itself is so easy to pull out and fly that I grab it first before my mavic pro spark mini or any of my other drones.

[wjz]

This drone has many other software issues:
1. The minimum and maximum temperature of the infrared sensor cannot be changed. This is very important for search and resque operations.
2. There is no youtube streaming option in the smart controller.
I am waiting impatiently for the corrected versions of the software

[m.glocker]

Thanks a lot for the critical review! That will surely influence my buying interests as long as they don't solve the firmware issues. As far as I know the camera only has a 12 MP sensor and pimps the image size to 48MP with 4x pixel shift. What follows is layman-theorie but probably the optical zoom is no real lense-zoom with moving lenses but something like a "pixel-shift-zoom". That would explain that they always store the 1:1 pic on sd-card and one has to do the rest with post production. Greetings from germany and....keep on going !

[MNDashcam]

Finally a drone channel that's actually smart enough to blow out the GPS data 🤣 you have no idea how many other people I've told that they're showing everybody in the world where they live..

[jedijax]

Whirly, it all about using the correct tool for the job. The Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced simply does not have the onboard processing power that the Matrice 300RTK has. As a result, allot of the Matrice 300RTK + H20T combo functions are missing. The M2EA also does not have or claim to have any optical zoom that you refer to in your review. At the end of the day you will have high resolution images that you have to process in your third party software or DJI Thermal Analysis Tool with rjpg files. It is not recommended for high end thermal or survey applications. This product was intended to be a public service tool for search and rescue or security applications. Some of your frustrations might be corrected with firmware, but again you have to use the correct tool for the job. PS the RTK module does not work with the DJI D-RTK2 station either, it will only work with an NTRIP network. I don't think one product will ever be able to do everything for everyone. Your video is very informative and will help allot of people to make a more informed decision, and this is great.

[emeiron]

How does the new Mavic 3 Enterprise behave? Same problem there?

[krish]

are you aware if the Dual or H20T has this same issue? I was looking at renting for a thermal inspection job for next month but this is pretty suprising..

[alexander_adam]

Thanks for the content, what would you suggest as an alternate drone if m2ea isn't up to snuff?

[wesmurphy]

This is exactly why i returned it. I take 60-80 pics a day for inspection work. I dont have time to go in an edit that many pictures a day. Also I was blown away by the lack of functionality for this supposed upgrade to the enterprise. The Old enterprise zoom is better than this unless you are using IR

[GarageandGrill]

Great overview of the drone and I appreciate you sharing the short comings. Do you know of any updates since you posted this? Despite the issues is it worth the money vs the one that cost twice this one? Or can you recommend if not this drone what is the alternative. Thanks

[clocksurfer]

Point well taken, but in MY case, I don't need perfect saved images/videos of finding a person in water in need of rescue. I just need to find the person in need of rescue. Looks pretty good to me for $6, 500 USD.

[MrNibbleByte]

Because the optical zoom only crop the image. So you don't get any more detail than what's stored.

[oscarcymru]

Interesting Video, but I think you've done the product down where it doesn't necessarily warrant it. It certainly does have limitations (PoI. is one that I'd really like but there again, we know how and frequently do fly orbits, ellipses and other odd paths manually) but a full time commercial operator wouldn't be using the M2EA. It's far more designed to be a S&R drone, simple and fast to deploy. Those are its limitations. We've been thermal surveying for 3+ year (just before Covid 1) and we've used a Matrice with the XT2 Camera. When the bugs in the Matrice M30T controller software are sorted out we'll have one of those to replace the old Matrice.