After first appearing aloft last week in unauthorized photos during public workouts, a pair of developmental drones purportedly from DJI’s new Mini 4 product line have resurfaced again in a new flurry of leaked images.
The original still shots and video footage and the new eye candy feature what are described as test versions of DJI’s Mini 4 Pro drone, as well as a larger “industrial” variant sporting rotor arms elevated at an angle from the body.
Both the previous and latest sneak previews – as well as pretty much all major leaks of DJI products under development over the past year – were uploaded by @Quadro_News sleuth Igor Bogdanov, who has made spoiling the company’s eventual unveiling events a full-time activity.
The new leaks included a photo of what was described as the “DJI Mini 4(Pro)” – that parenthetical designation raising questions about why DJI would be preparing a top-of-the-line Pro version prior to coming out with a standard model first.
Read: DroneDJ previews leaker’s photo of rumored DJI Mini 4 Pro project
Whatever the reasons, the image – apparently shot from a window or terrace above the public test flight location – contains a distinctly whiter colored drone (compared to the habitual gray hue) lying immobilized on walkway ledge, a controller and computer sitting nearby.
A second still shot shows what’s described as “the industrial version DJI” drone – apparently a meatier variation of that same Mini 4 tech – with two of the craft piled atop one another before being hauled away after testing.
Those latter drones bare a considerable resemblance to an in-flight shot Bogdanov published last week of a mystery craft with Inspire-esque elevated arms.
Bogdanov began this week’s batch of DJI leaks with a video compiling what might be described as the re-boxing of the Mini 4 Pro “industrial” test drone, and pre-flight preparations of the smaller, whitish craft – all against the audio backdrop of a particularly insufferable revisitation of a 2002 pop song.
The video closes out with a long shot of two developmental Mini 4 drones that DJI figured were safe to fly in the wild – after all who’s ever going to spot them as unreleased gear from a wildly popular aerial tech producer, right?
August 17 Update
With this recap of his leaking torrent scarcely posted, Bogdanov immediately dated its timeliness with another photo of DJI’s “industrial” Mini 4 Pro.
To remain current, we now update readers with the fastest-leaker-in-the-West’s newest find:
As always amid DJI’s torrid pace of new drone releases (and even more abundant leaks while those are still in beta form), the question arises: Why does the global leader have so many new products in the pipeline that risk creating significant tech and price overlap with the plethora of existing gear?
DroneAnalysts’ David Benowitz offers an explanation for the apparent shelf-crowding rate of introductions.
On the one hand, it may involve an extension of what Benowitz described in this article as DJI’s strategy to both satisfy and advantageously balance demand and pricing tolerance of respective consumer and enterprise buyers.
More importantly, though, Benowitz says that with increased sophistication of the drone sector, DJI has honed ever closer to Apple’s approach of creating distinct product models that both appeal to and financially permit users to work their way up the line to satisfy their evolving needs without major price or tech leaps.
“Just like with Apple, the lines between products (in Apple’s case, between Air and Pro) is quite blurry when looked at from an analyst’s perspective, but to a consumer they will likely approach it more simply,” Benowitz tells DroneDJ, using the rumored development of a Mini 4 Pro on the heels of the Air 3 as an example.
“They will see that they are an ‘Air’ customer or ‘Mini’ customer and approach the line and be upsold to the top,” he says of the relatively easy transition from one model to another when use cases require. “For DJI though, it is a bit more clear. Mini is the sub-250g drone. So regardless of features or specs, even if it matches Air 3 at a similar price or even is a bit more expensive, there will be an added value to that in itself, due to the regulations.”
DJI, we never doubted you.
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