Leaked images of upcoming DJI Mavic Air 2 indicate release date is not far off

This year is expected to be pretty big for DJI in terms of releases — with most expecting the drone maker to release follow-ups to the Mavic Air, Mavic 2 Pro & Inspire 2 before 2021.

Now, thanks to a series of leaked photos published by infamous leaker OstitaLV on Twitter, we have a look at the first one we’ll see this year, the follow-up to DJI’s Mavic Air.

Of the five leaked photos, the two above provide the most insight into what we can expect from the upcoming DJI drone.

Let’s breakdown what we can learn from the above images:

It’ll be larger and simply called “Mavic”

This is not only visible in the leaked photos but also makes sense from a marketing perspective.

When the Mavic Air was released in 2018 it represented the smallest, most-capable drone DJI had to offer.

Flash forward to 2020, and DJI now has the Mavic Mini — a sub 250g drone — putting them into the same position as Apple when they released a MacBook lighter than the MacBook Air.

The obvious solution is to scrap the “Air” moniker but still keep the Mavic Air’s sub-$1000 pricing.

Looking at the photos we can see that while the unreleased drone is certainly bigger than the Mavic Air, it doesn’t appear to be as big as the Mavic 2 Pro/Zoom.

And, looking at the underside of the drone, we can easily see the word “Mavic” is printed.

This seems to imply that DJI will market this drone as a standard Mavic 2, situated slightly below the Mavic 2 Pro/Zoom on price (and maybe performance).

All “new” design

Gone is the black, red or white body of the Mavic Air as DJI attempts to standardize its design scheme across all its consumer drones.

The new Mavic drone will utilize a design that looks somewhat like a cross between the Mavic 2 Pro and Mavic Mini.

From the Mavic 2 Pro it gets the downward-facing sensors (including an LED landing light), as well as the folding low noise propellors.

From the Mavic Mini we don’t see any specific features, but the overall design scheme and color of this new drone is heavily influenced by DJI’s newest and lightest drone.

ADS-B receiver and controller

DJI has been pretty consistent with its controller design ever since the original Mavic Pro.

Due to the addition of ADS-B hardware in all-new drones the controller of the Mavic Air 2 will likely be bigger.

This was confirmed in a leaked photo showing the controller with a new top mount for smartphones rather than DJI’s traditional bottom clamps.

We’ll have to wait and see

Due to the increased frequency of these leaks and the overall finalized look of the products it seems DJI might not be far from releasing its first drone of 2020.

Stay tuned for more info regarding this exciting new drone.