For what I have seen and heard the
mini 1 is still better then the 2. The new remote is not as handy. The photos are great on the mini just no raw like the 2. So that not major if your basic into minor corrections and 4K is really not as important unless your a professional. You can make 1080 look just as good with editing.
Now the 2 does handle better in the wind that's the up side
So I have heard if you have to 1 DO NOT UPGRADE to the
mini 2
Just what I've seen and heard from some actual flyers not profession YouTube editing clips to upsale it.
This is just some input not wanting to start a riot all. lol.
Now owning both. There's a couple points (numbered in case further discussion) I want to touch on.
1) The Remote , while it would no longer fit nicely into my pre existing shoulder bag that I was using, it does hold a lot more juice, and I can much more quickly get it set up and put away. My phone even with its case on fits into it just fine, and it feels a bit more natural having the screen above the controls. But alas for a product called the "mini", it's heavy and large. I can understand why they just decided to recycle the
Air 2 controller, especially with the change to Ocusync (which is an absolute noticeable upgrade over my mini and haven't dropped video in such a short range as I did with the mini). I can also get it charged without having to remove the phone's cable (not a big deal, but convenient).
2) The photos are far from 'great', mainly coming from a professional photographer. The jpegs are a tad over processed and when you view the image at 100% all the details are quite chunky as one way of putting it, which comes to no doubt being a small 1/2.3" sensor, however my old Pentax Q10 from 2011 or so produces a much cleaner result (granted there are more lens options for the Q10 including the prime 8.5mm f/1.9). Though when shooting the Q10 beyond f/2.8 it starts to show a very similar level of quality loss due to diffraction that mirrors what I saw in the jpeg of the mini, so lens is one factor but the processing done on the in-drone chip is another factor. The
Mini 2 jpegs are better, the details are a little cleaner or at the very least masked better to look more like subtle grain rather than chunks, and the raw files improve details beyond that as well. Still not a 'great' camera, but the
mini2's rendering of both jpeg and raw is definitely noticeably better than that of the first mini (which can probably be improved by a firmware update if they choose to, since I fault most of that to software).
3) 4K , I would agree with you to some respect that 1080p will look just as good in the end uploading to 1080p (and most of my uploads end up as 1080p even with shooting at 4K initially). And 4K downsampling to 1080p would be even better for color redention (if no crops or zooms are done), plus the idea of doing the dolly zoom effect. Most of which may fall more under your category of 'professional'. But what is a very big game changer is not the 4K resolution, but the bit rate going from 40Mbps ( a rather dated cap especially for 2.7k ), going to 100Mbps. While 100Mbps isn't really that high end, it makes a difference (mainly professionally) and I would have been happy with the 2.7K if they just had it recording at 100Mbps I could have easily faked an upsample to 4K without discernable quality loss, or had a very stellar 1080p downsample in post from that. So while the 4K is nice and it catches them up with the rest of their competitors, the bit rate is where they needed to focus the most attention, especially as they were already advising people to buy V30 microSD cards which can handle upward to 240Mbps just fine, let alone 40Mbps or 100Mbps.
I would also agree that for the most part, end user consumers don't really typically have the hardware to do much useful editing of 4K video footage, especially in something that is a heavy CPU toll to decode (H.264 format, great compressed size, but takes a bit of CPU to decode in an editing software, and then to encode back). 1080p is much more suited for some plethora of filters or such (or anyone attempting to use Davinci Resolve free version on a computer from 5 years ago). But you can still get crops and dolly zoom effects from 2.7K just fine, just not as dramatically.
4) Wind resistance is definitely a plus, didn't realize how much I would need it in my region til there's been week here and there where it's only a few mph above what the drone could handle comfortably without fear of it getting drifted away. So that's much more of a matter of where you want to fly, since I can see basic consumers having a big problem with that.
I also noticed that the
mini 2 is quieter , not by much but enough that it felt subtle and calm as one way of putting it.
Regarding not upgrading if you already have a
Mini 1. Guess that depends on what you use it for, as you said, general consumers should still be happy with it, sans needing to be pickier about wind forecast. Or course if you're made of money...
Some of the
Mini 2 advertised features are not really much to sweat about, for example the Panoramic modes they offer will only shoot each frame at 3Megapixels, the resulting stitched image is at most 9 megapixels, less than the resolution of a single shot. You get a better result shooting manually (which is better now with the raw ability), but that's usually something that professionals already do, that consumers need help with (Microsoft Image Composite Editor btw is free and pretty consumer friendly, just make sure each frame overlaps the previous one by about 20% for the best results).
Likewise because the SDK is out already for the Mini, the Litchi Beta app which supports it for $25 (as opposed to a whole new $450~600 drone), does the Panoramic feature quite well, it's configuration is just not as user friendly (setting the degrees of coverage, rows, columns, etc manually). And each frame is shot at the full 12.4Megapixels, so the stitching will actually yield a large resolution image. It won't do the stitching in the phone but you can use Microsoft ICE for that. So even though it's in a slightly lower quality Jpeg, you're going to end up with a better panoramic stitching using a Mini + Litchi Beta than you will from the
Mini 2 built in (Though I understand most consumers are just going straight to social media with their panos, and not print).
Also in regards to the
Mini 2 pano, the app actually crashed on me midway thru a 180 degree panoramic capture, and was RTH shortly after the drone itself finished up the last 3 shots (kept shooting while the app was crashed).
Also some of the advertised features on launch day never made it into the actual product. On the DJI Blog/Buyer Guide comparing the
Mini 2 to the Mini, they stated the
Mini 2 had 4K Hyperlapse, it does not, and they only recently corrected that typo. I believe they said the same of Live streaming at 720p, and that too is no where to be found on the
Mini 2.
But long story short, as I short of concur with you thinking about what general consumers may notice or not notice, if you already have a Mini and not really made of money, hold onto it, the Litchi Beta app among others that support the mini still offers more than the
mini 2 in terms of functionality. But if you don't have the
mini 1, or want to take advantage of financing (assuming credit score lets you), the
Mini 2 is definitely a better drone to get if it was a matter of either-or with only that 50 price difference.
Main thing I would hope for the Mini is that they do get a firmware update that at least improves upon the bit rate even if they don't give 4K, and that maybe in roughly a year when most people would have exhausted their Care Refresh (I think 2 is the max years you can have on one drone?), that someone manages to come out with a firmware hack to unlock a lot of the software locks (which 4K is supposedly a software lock on the Mini).
But since my plan to use the
Mini 2 is both for fun, and because I want to use it for potential clients, having 4K out of the box already, and DNG raws were a desired must (without having to go shell out for a
Mavic 2 Pro, or deal with the bulk that comes with it). The idea being that I can just carry a tiny little bag with the rest of my photo gear when it's like you know... this could work with a drone...
