Comparing the DJI Mavic 3 against the $12,000 Sony AirPeak drone

Although the Sony AirPeak is no longer a big secret, there still isn’t really a massive amount of information out there on how it actually performs in the real world. This isn’t really all that surprising, as $12,000 drones (plus camera and lens) aren’t exactly all that popular or common amongst most drone pilots. But in this video, Jeven Dovey gets together with Sony creator Craig Coker to talk about the Sony AirPeak drone’s capabilities.

But just talking about things like this doesn’t really do much good unless you can compare it to the types of drones that mere mortals like most of us might use. So, he puts it up against the DJI Mavic 3, which by many people’s standards is a pretty advanced and expensive drone, to see how the two compare. Looking at it side-by-side with the AirPeak, though, it’s kind of a toy. An impressive toy, but a toy nonetheless.

Of course, that doesn’t make the Mavic 3 bad or even worse than the AirPeak. Even if we set the budget aside for a second, many other factors are going to influence which drone is better for you, such as the size, portability and flight time, not to mention ease of setup when you actually get to your location, see something and want to be up in the air as soon as possible. Jeven covers all of these topics and more in the video, but here’s a quick index if you want to skip straight to a specific part.

• 00:00 – Sony Airpeak vs DJI Mavic 3
• 01:49 – Size & Weight
• 04:10 – Swappable Gimbal
• 05:03 – Portability
• 06:04 – Flight Time
• 08:00 – Tuning The Drone
• 09:11 – Lens Camera Options
• 10:35 – Controllers
• 12:36 – Obstacle Avoidance
• 13:27 – Quality Vs Portability

There are distinct advantages to the Sony AirPeak over the Mavic 3 – and one would hope so for a drone that costs almost six times as much money – but they’re really only advantages to hardcore dedicated filmmakers who have very specific needs with a flying camera. For most of us, the Mavic 3 is probably more than fine.

Yeah, it’s a beast. I’m sure we’d all want one, but do we really need one?