The DJI Mavic 3 has been out for just under a year, with its 12MP telephoto lens along with a 28x Hybrid Zoom made in collaboration with Hasselblad. This fancy pro-grade drone is able to capture 20MP photos and 5.1K videos thanks to its Micro-Four-Thirds CMOS sensor and has an impressive flight time of up to 46 minutes.
If you want our full thoughts on this drone take a look at our DJI Mavic 3 review.
You might say this sounds like an amazing drone, and you'd be right, but all those features do come at a cost, and that cost is currently a whopping $2,049 / £1,729 – so it's a hefty price to swallow. But that could all change due to recent rumors that suggest the flagship will soon get a more affordable little brother called the DJI Mavic 3 Classic.
Leaked photos and an FCC filing suggest the launch of the Mavic 3 Classic is now imminent. Which can mean great news for those aerial enthusiasts, as the price will most certainly be less than the current DJI Mavic 3.
FCC filings usually appear a few weeks before an official product launch, and a test report for the DJI Mavic 3 Classic(picked up by DroneXLreferences the drone by name - so we can be sure the drone will be called the DJI Mavic Classic, also an additional filing refers to the changes DJI has made from the existing DJI Mavic 3 and Mavic 3 Cine, showing how closely the Classic will be related to those existing models.
According to earlier leaks from the reliable DJI leaker @DealsDroneaccount on Twitter, the main difference will be that the Classic version will commit to the Mavic 3's telephoto camera and only offer a single 20MP Four Thirds CMOS sensor for video and photos - which to use doesn't seem that much of a downgrade on this already -professional-grade drone - so you could actually get a really good price to performance ratio out of this new drone, which is always nice.
DJI Mavic 3 Classic pic.twitter.com/kEa5Xrgkc3September 3, 2022
Suggested pricing, or any of features it might be missing from its big brother the DJI Mavic 3 are unknown, but according to the same leaker, @DealsDroneclaims that the drone will be launched in "late October" and will be sold in a bundle with the new DJI RC controller, which arrived alongside the Mini 3 Pro earlier this year.
To get the price down DJI will have to make some cuts somewhere and without knowing any official information it is hard to speculate what might come to fruition however, If I were to guess I would say they will cut down the massive 1TB SSD found on the Mavic 3, and instead opt for a 256GB option on the Mavic 3 Classic, this would be a good reduction in price, while not entirely giving up storage freedom to do multiple flights in a day.
Obviously, the next issue would be recording codecs, if DJI were to slash the internal memory I can also see them limiting recording codes such as Pro Res from Apple to make the DJI Mavic 3 and Mavic 3 Cine the go-to options for truly serious areal cinematographers. Other options could be reducing the optical zoom to 10x rather than the bigger 28x of the Mavic 3, then we could see a decent price drop to around $1,500 / £1,300 - which would fit right in-between the currently DJI lineup of the DJI Air 2S and Mavic 3
All of those combined with the lack of a telephoto lens make for a compelling argument for the new DJI Mavic Classic – but please take into account that now official information from DJI has been announced and that the above is our own personal speculations.
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