The DJI Mini 5 Pro’s Battery Is An Absolute Game-Changer
Photo credit: Rafael Suarez
Amazon Drone Deals: DJI Mini 5 Pro Fly More Combo with DJI RC2 now for $1,099!
Hello again, my dear pilots! I hope that by now you already have your hands on a beautiful new DJI Mini 5 Pro and are enjoying the pleasure of flying for 52 minutes on a single battery (unless you live in Quito like me, and your high-altitude flight is a still-impressive 43 minutes).
I’ve had the DJI Mini 5 for about two weeks now, and I’m still in the honeymoon phase. Will it eventually start failing somewhere in the next week or within the next five years? Probably. My old, trusty Mini 3 Pro just gave me a scare two days ago when I flew from an 8th-floor balcony and it took a full five minutes to lock onto the satellites. Even then, we could blame that on a high Kp Index. But anyway, we are not here to talk about Kp indexes; we are here to talk about looong flight times.
The Agony of the “Low-Battery” Warning
Ever since the first commercially available drones (like the Parrot AR.Drone), we pilots have all suffered from “low-battery syndrome.” It always happens just when you find the perfect shot, especially if you want to record a cool video or start a long hyperlapse. This is one of the reasons DJI started selling their famous “Fly More Combo” with the Phantom 3. They claimed the Phantom 3 could fly for 23-25 minutes, but we all know those times were far from reality, especially when the drone starts beeping that it has no more battery and has decided, on its own, to return home.
A Real-World Revolution
After seeing so many lost opportunities for great footage, DJI is now pampering us with their latest advantage in the DJI Mini 5 Pro: the 52-minute battery.
Back in 2019, I flew almost 10 miles to record the protests here in Ecuador with my Mavic 2 Pro.
The process wasn’t easy: take off, fly as high as you can, switch to sports mode, go 5 miles straight, capture what you can (usually 3-4 minutes of video and photos), and fly back as fast as a cheetah chasing a gazelle. On every single one of those flights, the drone came down in forced landing mode, screaming at me with the battery as hot as a Texas sidewalk in summer.
Well, not anymore. This new battery tech not only gives us more juice to fly farther but also comes with a new hub that lets us charge all three batteries in just under two hours.
More Than Just Flying Farther
With these extra minutes, we can not only fly farther, but for the hyperlapse addicts among us, we can create wonders. I made a 10-minute-to-10-second hyperlapse, and when it finished recording, I still had 30 minutes of power left! For the people using their drone as a photogrammetry tool, it will help them work faster and with fewer battery swaps.
The truly interesting thing is how it changes your flying habits. When I fly my other Mini drones, I usually use one or two full batteries per session. With the Mini 5 Pro, I used one battery, and that single battery lasted me for at least three different flights over two separate nights.
DJI Mini 5 Pro two types of batteries. Normal battery and Battery Plus
DroneXL’s Take
Now my friends, that is the kind of experience we deserve from a company this big. This isn’t the usual Apple or Samsung marketing of “you have to buy this new phone just because we released one.” Yes, with the annual Mini releases, it’s starting to feel a little like that. But with the Mini 5 Pro, we are getting real, tangible, quality-of-life advantages that make the upgrade genuinely worth it. And for me, that all starts with the battery.