so my mavic pro 2 has been doing this slow roll drift thing for a while now, maybe 6 months, and at first it was only noticeable in longer clips but now its pretty obvious even on short shots. the horizon just slowly tilts like half a degree over about 20 seconds and then corrects back, kind of like its hunting. calibration doesnt really fix it, ive done the gimbal auto calibration probably 10 times at this point.

drone never crashed, at least not hard. i did have one tip over on landing a while back but the gimbal looked fine after. im wondering if the ribbon cable is starting to go or if one of the gimbal motors is getting weak. ive seen replacement gimbal assemblies on aliexpress for like 80 bucks but no idea if those are any good. DJI wants like 200+ for a repair estimate which honestly seems like a lot for something that flies fine otherwise.

anyone replaced their own mavic gimbal or know if the cheap replacement parts are trash

the drift you're describing sounds like an IMU issue inside the gimbal itself rather than a mechanical problem, the gimbal has its own small IMU separate from the main flight controller and those can get flakey over time especially if the drone has ever gotten wet or had any temp extremes. the ribbon cable thing is possible too but usually that causes more erratic behavior rather than that slow hunting pattern.

on the aliexpress gimbal assemblies, ive seen mixed results. some people say they work totally fine, others say they're slightly off spec and you end up with worse performance than the original even if the drift stops. if yours is just drifting and not physically damaged i might try a full IMU recalibration first, not just the gimbal calibration but actually going into the advanced settings and doing the full aircraft IMU cal on a very flat surface. sometimes that helps weirdly.

i just replaced the ribbon cable on my mini 2 last month for unrelated reasons and honestly the repair itself isnt that bad if you're comfortable with small electronics, lots of good teardown videos out there. but the mavic pro 2 gimbal is a bit more involved than the mini series. if the cheap replacement actually includes the gimbal IMU board and not just the motors and arm assembly you might be okay but a lot of the budget ones skimp on that part and then you're back to drift issues anyway. i'd double check what exactly is included before buying