okay so ive been going back and forth on this for like three weeks now and i just need someone to talk me off the ledge or push me one direction. background: im mostly shooting landscape and some travel stuff, not doing any commercial work, just personal projects and maybe some youtube eventually. budget is flexible but i dont want to overspend if i dont need to.

the mini 4 pro keeps coming up because of the under 250g thing which seems like it matters a lot depending on where you travel. but then the air 3 has dual cameras and the omnidirectional obstacle avoidance and the image quality looks noticeably better to me in the side by sides ive watched. but is it actually that much better or is that just youtube compression making things look more dramatic than they are.

also the air 3 is just physically bigger which might be a pain for backpacking trips. i dont know. what would you guys actually pick if you were in my spot

I went through exactly this debate last spring and ended up with the Air 3, zero regrets. The dual camera thing sounds like a gimmick until you're actually out in the field and you realize having that medium tele option completely changes how you compose shots. For landscape work specifically it's kind of a game changer honestly ? you stop just doing the wide establishing shot every time.

The size thing is real though, I won't pretend it isn't. It's noticeably bigger in the bag. But the omnidirectional sensing has already saved me from a pretty embarrassing tree situation so there's that. If you're doing a lot of international travel with strict enforcement I get why the mini makes sense but for most US/Canada/Europe stuff the registration is easy enough that the weight exemption stops being as big a deal as people make it.

the image quality difference is real, not just youtube compression. shot with both back to back at golden hour and the air 3 files just have more to work with in post, better dynamic range especially in the highlights. that said if weight genuinely matters for your trips the mini 4 pro is not a bad drone, like at all, people undersell how capable it is.