How come Mini 3 Pro can achieve so much higher flying time at the same weight?
[EDIT is it 31 or 34 minutes with the Mini 3 Pro?]
Is 31 vs 28 minutes so much? That's 10.7% more claimed time, but I've never heard of a reviewer putting them to a side-by-side test. So what is the difference really?
Although 'made in china' claimed battery capacity should be suspect to everyone by now, we can compare what the manufacturers claim:
DJI Mini 3 Pro battery 80.1 Grams, 2453 mAh. 7.39V, 18.1 Wh
Autel
Nano+ battery 82.3 gr. (my scale), 2250 mAh, 7.7V, 17.32 Wh
So the DJI battery claims 4.50% more watt hours at 97.3% of the weight, for a power to weight advantage of 1.0557x over the
Nano+ battery.
With a 5% difference these are in the same performance class, and only controlled experiments could provide an accurate comparison.
Where could the 5% remaining difference come from?
In descending order of significance, I estimate:
- the current drain of processors, sensors, camera, radios
- the flight controller's ability to minimize power losses in flight corrections
- the ESC providing power to the motors
- the motors themselves (tradeoffs between cost, robustness, power and efficiency)
- the prop blades
Someone with both units could put them into a hover side-by-side, in a no-wind situation, then countermand the low-battery landing, and see when they drop (onto a mattress).
It's likely DJI has considerably more engineering resources to throw at the problem.
It's unlikely you have the ability to make improvements to the
Nano+ flight time but you can adapt your flight planning to your hardware and situational possibilities.
