so i finally feel like ive flown mine enough to give a real opinion instead of just repeating what every youtube reviewer says. bought it back in the spring mostly for travel and some casual landscape stuff, came from a Mini 2 so i was curious if the upgrade was actually worth the price jump.

short answer: yeah probably, but with some caveats. the omnidirectional obstacle avoidance is genuinely useful, i had a close call near some tree branches last month and it just... stopped. which was nice. the Mini 2 wouldve been a pile of parts. image quality is a clear step up too, especially in lower light ? the 4/3 sensor difference is real and not just spec sheet noise.

BUT. and this is a big but. the battery life is still kind of disappointing in wind, i lose maybe 20-25% range on a moderately windy day which in my area is basically every day. and the RC2 controller has been a little glitchy for me, sometimes takes forever to connect on first boot. not a dealbreaker but annoying.

anyone else running this one long term? curious if the connectivity thing is a known issue or just my unit being weird.

the RC2 slow connect thing is definitely not just you, ive seen a bunch of people mention it on reddit too. mine does the same thing, usually on the first flight of the day it takes like 45 seconds longer than it should to establish link. after that its fine. someone said it might be related to the cache filling up and doing a DJI fly app refresh helped them but honestly i just got used to powering everything on a minute or two before i actually want to fly and it hasnt been a real problem since.

agree on the battery in wind by the way. i fly near the coast a lot and on anything above like 15mph i basically shave a whole battery cycle off my planned shots. kinda wish DJI would just be more honest about wind-adjusted flight times in the specs instead of giving that perfect calm day number that nobody ever actually gets.

im actually trying to decide between this and the Air 3 right now so this is super helpful, thank you. main thing holding me back on the Mini 4 Pro is the price honestly, like if im spending that much i keep second guessing whether i should just go Air 3 for the dual cameras. do you use the zoom at all or is the single lens thing fine for what you shoot?