DJI’s ‘Explore Vivid’ event teases a new drone launch set for November 2

DJI has published a teaser across its social media profiles showing off a glimpse of what is presumably its next-generation Mavic drone at 9am ET (UTC -4) on November 2, 2022.

The teaser, which reads ‘Explore Vivid,’ highlights a lens very similar to the Hasselblad-branded camera on DJI’s line of Mavic 3 drones. No other information is provided in the teaser, but based on a recent approval DJI received from the United States Deferal Communications Commission (FCC) for its original Mavic 3 drone, it appears as though this could be the rumored ‘Mavic 3 Classic’ drone that’s been circling the rumor mills for a while.

According to various reports, the Mavic 3 Classic will remain almost entirely unchanged from its Mavic 3 sibling, with the exception of the onboard camera array, which will drop the telephoto (162mm equiv.) and have just a single camera — the 20MP Four Thirds CMOS sensor with a 24mm equivalent F2.8–11 lens.

That camera module is capable of capturing 10-bit D-Log and HDR video at 5.1K/50p (DCI or UHD) 4K/120p and 1080/200p video in H.264 or H.265 at 200Mbps and 140Mbps, respectively. It’s also capable of capturing both Raw and JPEG stills.

If all of the rumors hold true, that means we could expect the same performance as on the original Mavic 3, but without the added versatility the telephoto camera module provides. In theory, this should help reduce the cost of the drone compared to its two-camera counterpart.

You can sign up to be notified about the livestreamed announcement on DJI’s dedicated product teaser page.