DJI MINI 2 SE
You get almost all the features of the DJI Mini 2 but for a lot less
At this price point, it’s hard to be mad at the DJI Mini 2 SE
Spoiler alert: the DJI Mini 2 SE is a superb sub-250g drone with an excellent gimbal and brilliant flight capabilities. The price is just right for the feature set. And from a flight performance point of view, it’s almost identical to the DJI Mini 2, and it only falls a little bit short in video capabilities – a small price to pay for significant savings.
We were super impressed with the flying capabilities of the DJI Mini 2 SE. Not only does the drone have the same flying prowess as its more expensive sibling, the Mini 2, but it also has Level 5 wind resistance (up to 10.7m/s or 38 km/h) and ±0.1 m vertical and ±0.3 m horizontal hovering accuracy (with vision positioning). This, combined with the superb three-axis gimbal performance, ensures that the DJI Mini 2 SE stays where you left it in the air.
There are three flying modes: Normal, Sport and Cine. You’ll need to set the drone in Sport to reach maximum ascend, descend and flight speeds, whereas, in Cine mode, flight speed is limited for more stable video capturing.
The drone also has a few different return-to-home (RTH) modes. Smart RTH uses GPS to find its way back to the controller; Low Battery RTH is triggered when the battery has just enough juice to make it home and the Failsafe RTH option backtracks the drone’s flight path if it loses connection to the controller (up to 50 metres).
Despite the cheaper price, the DJI Mini 2 SE inherited many of the Quickshot modes of the Mini 2, including Helix (the drone ascends around an object in a spiral fashion), Circle (spiralling movement at a set altitude) and Boomerang (it ascends and then descends along an elliptical route). You can also shoot Sphere, Wide Angle, and 180° panoramas using the aircraft.
Interestingly, it uses the same 12 MP 1/2.3-inch CMOS sensor as the Mini 2, the latter of which can shoot videos in 4K, whereas the Mini 2 SE can only shoot 2.7K footage up to 30 fps. Sadly, the DJI Mini 2 SE hasn’t got a True Vertical Shooting option either – as found on the DJI Mini 3 Pro – so you’ll need to crop the videos if you prefer to post vids on Instagram/TikTok.
The DJI Mini 2 SE is a superb drone for beginners. It offers plenty of user-friendly features, such as Quickshots video modes, Auto Takeoff and Landing, return-to-home modes and more. Better still, it allows you to shoot photos in RAW format. There are a couple of small trade-offs, such as the lack of 4K video resolution and no True Vertical Shooting options, but at this price point, it’s hard to be mad at the DJI Mini 2 SE. You get what you pay for and then some.