Drone-maker DJI announced an update to its popular Mavic Air quadcopter today. The Mavic Air 2 costs $799 and will ship to U.S. buyers in late May. That's the same price as the previous model, and keeps the Mavic Air as the mid-range option between the more capable Mavic 2 and the smaller, cheaper Mavic Mini.

The Mavic Air is still plenty small, but new version has put on some weight. DJI tells WIRED that testing and consumer surveys suggested that most people don't mind the new extra grams in exchange for the considerably upgraded flight time and, presumably, better handling in windy conditions. Even better, thanks to new rotors, electronic speed controllers, and some aerodynamic improvement, DJI is claiming the Mavic Air 2 can remain aloft for 34 minutes.

###tk

The big news in this update is the new larger camera sensor. The Mavic Air 2 ships with a half inch sensor, up from the 1-2/3 sensor found in the previous model. That should mean better resolution and sharper images, especially because the output specs haven't changed much. That means new camera is still outputting 12-megapixel stills, but now with bigger sensor to fill in more detail. There's also a new 48-megapixel composite image option that we're looking forward to testing. 

On the video side there's some exciting news, the Mavic Air 2 is DJI's first drone to offer 4K video at 60 fps and 120Mbps. There's also four-times slow motion in 1080p at 120 fps, or eight-times slow motion in 1080 at 240 fps. Combine those modes with HDR video and you have considerably improved video capabilities in a sub-$1000 package.

More interesting in some ways is DJI's increasing forays into [computational photography](https://www.wired.com/story/google-pixel-3-camera-features/), known as Smart Photo mode. Flip on Smart Photo and the Mavic Air 2 will do scene analysis, tap its deep learning algorithm and automatically choose between a variety of photo modes. There's a scene recognition mode where the Mavic Air 2 recognizes some common shooting scenarios your likely to encounter with a drone, including blue skies, sunsets, snow, grass, and trees. In each case exposure is adjusted to optimize tone and detail. 

The second mode the Air 2's Smart Photo uses is dubbed Hyperlight, which handles low-light situations. To judge by DJI's promo materials, this is essentially HDR specifically optimized for low-light scenes. It purportedly cuts noise and produces more detailed images. The final smart mode is HDR, which makes a high dynamic range composite image from seven images.

###Automatic Flight for the People

If you dig through older YouTube videos there's a ton of movies that go like this: unbox new drone, head outside, take off, tree gets closer, closer, closer, black screen. Most of us just aren't that good at flying and the learning curve can be expensive and steep. Thankfully drones began automating away most of what's difficult and the Mavic Air 2 is no exception. 

DJI has quite a few new automated flight tricks to the Air's arsenal, including one borrowed from the company's high-end professional model, the Inspire. DJI's Active Track has been updated to version 3.0, which bring better subject recognition algorithms and some new 3D mapping tricks to make it easier to track people through a scene. DJI claims the Point of Interest mode—which allows you to select and object and fly around it while the camera tracks it—is better at some of the places previous versions struggled, like tracking vehicles or even people.

The most exciting new flight mode though is Spotlight, which comes from DJI's DLSR-toting Inspire drones. Similar to the Active Track mode, Spotlight keeps the camera on a subject, but allows you to retain control of the flight path. Think Active Track but you retain full flight control.

The range of the new Mavic Air is an impressive six miles. The caveat being you should always maintain eye contact with your drone, and you aren't going to see the Mavic Mini 2 at two miles, let alone six.

Despite a dearth of competitors, DJI continues to improve its lineup. The Mavic Air 2 looks like an impressive update to what was already one of [our favorite drones](https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-drones/), especially considering several features—the 60 fps 4K video and 34 minute flight time—are better than the more expensive Mavic 2 Pro.