Review: DJI Mini 4 Pro, powerful, foldable feature-rich drone, worth the price of the props

Last year DJI’s Mini 3 Pro was a massive leap forward, offering brand new features like a rotating camera that allowed for native vertical videos for the first time. This year the DJI Mini 4 PRO is back with a lot of the same tricks, but in true DJI style, they do rest on a great product and make it even better.

The first thing to confirm is the category of drone we’re looking at here, the Mini lineup is really the entry-level drone series from DJI, but the features suggest anything but entry-level, with features and performance often seen only from mid and top-end drones. One advantage a drone maker like DJI has is to invest the R&D in technology like ActiveTrack and to deploy it across a range of products to distribute the cost and deliver increased customer benefits.

The Mini 4 Pro lands in a special sub-250 grams category, which is important for some flight locations that restrict the use of heavier and larger drones.

While DJI has brought portability as a focus to a number of their drones, the Mini is the strongest expression of that, being foldable to a size not much bigger than your fist, it easily fits in the center console of your car, and is incredibly easy to slip into a bag to take with you more places.

The PRO in the Mini 4 name suggests this is the top model of a series of Mini 4 drones, but as yet, the Mini 4 PRO remains the only drone of this type. In DJI’s flagship prosumer lineup, the Mavic series, they offer the base Mavic 3, Mavic 3 Classic and now Mavic 3 Pro, which leaves the door open to a cheaper, less featured Mini 3 drone in the future.

One thing I struggle with is the recommendation, what you want to do is recommend this to all new drone owners, as the technology on board, makes it incredibly easy to fly, while offering great range, battery life and quality, but the price point will scare some away. For those that go elsewhere, I suspect that will be a temporary endeavour and eventually come back to the market leader.