After more than a decade of flying DJI drones and owning every Mavic model since the Phantom 2, I finally made the decision to upgrade to the Mavic 4 Pro. It wasn’t an easy choice. The looming threat of a DJI ban here in the United States had me hesitating for months. But after weighing the risks against the benefits, I decided the convenience upgrades were simply too significant to pass up.
Before diving into the details, I want to be clear about something: DJI has never sent me a product to review, sponsored any of my content, or even had a conversation with me about doing so. Every piece of DJI equipment I own was purchased with my own money for personal and commercial use. I’m a Part 107 licensed drone pilot who flies commercially, and that certification actually led me down an unexpected path—earning my private pilot’s license to fly actual airplanes, something I’d dreamed about since childhood.
DJI Mavic 4 Pro (BHPhoto): https://jerad.link/djimavic4procc
DJI Mavic 4 Pro (Amazon): https://jerad.link/djimavic4procca
Amazon Protection Plan: https://jerad.link/protectionplans
Check out my DJI Mavic 4 Pro Camera Samples Gallery
The Ban Situation
Let’s address the elephant in the room. It’s likely that some form of a DJI ban will go into effect in the United States. DJI has been trying to jump through every hoop the government has placed in front of them, but the outlook isn’t promising. I’m not going to dive into the politics or speculate about the motivations behind the potential ban—plenty of other creators have covered that territory extensively.
The reality I had to confront was simple: there is nothing on the market that comes close to what the Mavic 4 Pro offers at its price point. My choices were to either keep flying my Mavic 3 Pro Cine indefinitely or take the leap and see what happens. The Mavic 3 Pro Cine is an excellent drone. It checks every box for speed, image quality, and safety features. I’ve owned it since launch day and have no complaints about its performance. But over time, small inconveniences began chipping away at my enthusiasm for using it.
Getting DJI products has also become increasingly difficult over the past six months as this situation has unfolded. Even non-drone products like the Osmo Action 6 have had extended lead times, making the window of opportunity to purchase feel more urgent.
The Convenience Factor
The upgrades that sold me on the Mavic 4 Pro aren’t about image quality or flight performance—the Mavic 3 Pro already excelled in those areas. What made the difference were the quality-of-life improvements that save time and reduce friction in my daily workflow.
Faster Setup Time
With my previous drone, getting airborne was a multi-step process that consistently ate into my shooting time. The Mavic 4 Pro paired with the RC Pro 2 controller has dramatically streamlined this experience.
The process is straightforward: pop off the cover, unfold the props, and open the controller. Everything powers on and connects automatically. From cold start to flight-ready takes roughly 45 seconds to a minute and a half, depending on satellite acquisition. When I’m outside with clear sky visibility, that connection happens even faster.
But the real magic happens between flights. When I close down the controller and fold in the props, the drone enters sleep mode and powers itself down. The RC Pro 2 maintains a Bluetooth connection with the drone for approximately 30 minutes. This means when I pull the drone out again at my next location, the startup process is nearly instantaneous.
For my work shooting real estate and construction sites, this is transformative. I’m constantly moving between locations, and the old routine of powering up, waiting, powering down, and repeating was a significant time drain. Now I simply open the controller, unfold the drone, and I’m connected and ready to fly within seconds.
File Transfer Without Power
This might sound like a minor improvement, but it’s been one of my favorite upgrades. The Mavic 4 Pro has 512 gigabytes of internal storage, and like my Mavic 3 Pro Cine, I prefer using the built-in storage over SD cards for speed and convenience.
The problem with the Mavic 3 was that transferring files required powering on the drone. That meant unfolding it, finding a surface where the gimbal wouldn’t hit anything and the props wouldn’t crash into my table, waiting for it to boot up, and then connecting via USB-C. If I was at a coffee shop and wanted to offload footage, I had to pull out a full drone setup just to access my files.
The Mavic 4 Pro eliminates this entirely. I plug a USB-C cable into the back of the drone, connect it to my laptop, and start transferring. No power required. The drone can stay folded up in my bag. If all my batteries are charging or dead, it doesn’t matter—the internal storage is still accessible. It’s a small change that makes a significant difference in how and where I can work.
Improved Charging Hub
Battery management has always been a consideration for commercial drone operators. When you’re shooting larger properties and flying for several hours, you need your batteries charging at least as fast as you’re depleting them. Otherwise, you’re either waiting around or investing in additional batteries.
The previous Mavic charging hub relied on USB-C, which limited charging speeds to whatever your power source could provide—typically 100 to 150 watts from a high-capacity power bank. The Mavic 4 Pro’s charging hub supports both USB-C and a proprietary DJI connection that works with the included 240-watt charging brick.
The difference is substantial. I can fly a battery for just under 30 minutes, return, and find the batteries in the hub already charged and ready. When I’m working in the field with the charging hub connected to an AC outlet in my truck or an external battery bank with AC output, I can maintain continuous flight operations. The batteries charge as fast as I can drain them, which means I’m never waiting around and never forced to cut a shoot short.
Portrait and Landscape Switching
Content creation in 2025 means delivering assets in multiple orientations. Vertical video for social platforms, horizontal for traditional formats. Without a square sensor that allows for flexible cropping in post, switching between orientations in-camera is essential.
The RC Pro 2 controller makes this seamless. Rotating the display automatically rotates the gimbal and camera to match. I get a full-screen view in both orientations, which means I can see exactly what I’m capturing without losing screen real estate or working with a cropped preview. Previous controllers would show portrait mode footage on a landscape screen, leaving me guessing at framing and missing fine details. This upgrade provides the full view I need for precise composition.
Beyond Convenience
There are certainly other improvements to the Mavic 4 Pro—camera upgrades, sensor refinements, gimbal enhancements, extended runtime—that have been thoroughly covered elsewhere. If your primary consideration is image quality and you’re looking to save money, the Mavic 3 Pro remains an excellent option and has seen significant price reductions.
Where the Mavic 4 Pro distinguishes itself is in these daily-use conveniences. For drone operators who are constantly on the move and need equipment that responds quickly and integrates smoothly into a professional workflow, these quality-of-life improvements add up to meaningful time savings and reduced frustration.
Protecting the Investment
Given the uncertainty around the potential ban, I wasn’t comfortable making this purchase without some form of insurance policy. DJI Care, which typically provides coverage for damage and repairs, shows “not available in the US” within the drone’s software menu. That left me looking at third-party options.
Both Amazon and B&H Photo offer extended protection plans that cover scenarios where a drone cannot be repaired or replaced—including situations arising from a potential ban. If my drone has an issue over the next three years that can’t be resolved due to parts unavailability or service restrictions, I’ll receive a refund of my original purchase price.
After researching both options, I found Amazon’s plan to be significantly cheaper, with more documented experiences from customers who have successfully used their coverage to repair or replace DJI products. B&H’s plan is more expensive and had less available information about real-world claims experiences. For anyone considering this purchase, factoring in an extended protection plan is worth serious consideration as a hedge against an uncertain regulatory future.
Looking Forward
The decision to buy the Mavic 4 Pro came down to a practical assessment. I could either stick with aging equipment indefinitely or invest in a meaningful upgrade while it’s still available, protected by a solid warranty plan. The convenience improvements have already justified that choice in my daily operations.
Whether the ban goes through or gets resolved, I’m positioned to make the most of this drone for the next several years. And if the worst happens and support disappears entirely, I have a path to recover my investment and hopefully find a better option by then—or see this whole situation resolved.
For those interested in the results, I’m maintaining a gallery on my website featuring photos and video captured with the Mavic 4 Pro that I’ll continue updating as I fly more. Sometimes the best way to evaluate a piece of equipment is to see what it can produce in real-world conditions.
