P4P vs. Inspire 1 Pro

Hi all. Apologies if this is covered somewhere else, would appreciate some input if anyone has experience. I currently use the Inspire 1 Pro, with good results. I am considering switching to the P4P for a few reasons. These are principally:
1 - Increased resolution
2 - Battery life
3 - Easier to travel with P4P (got some trips on aircraft coming up) and easier to lug around
4 - Mechanical shutter

On the face of it the camera seems better, although I find it difficult to get a good comparison. Other than mapping I sometimes do videos/photos for inspection purposes (buildings), which either drone will do well I think. The Inspire as an aircraft is pretty good, with only the odd niggle.

Any thoughts much appreciated, Black Friday coming up!

Thanks

Nathan

P4P has worked great for me due to the features you suggested.
One more is that it gets the benefits of developments that come with the newer SDK from DJI that the Inspire 1 doesn’t.

My P4P also performs great for me. The only problem is that it has terrible absolute elevation accuracy because, I believe and have read several places, it uses its on-board barometer to estimate the altitude. So when the weather changes it pushes around the recorded altitude by 500’ in my case. But this is easy to fix. Please see my recent, I admit, long winded post on the 500’ Elevation Variation.

But I do not think badly of the P4P because it does not use the GPS altitude available from its on-board GPS receiver. In fact its just the opposite because the DJI engineers have been very clever. Here’s the why and how:

If GPS altitude is used to control the height position of the drone, then the accuracy can be quite poor, well over 10’, because it is much more difficult to compute the altitude accurately compared to the longitude and latitude. If the P4P flew a mission using the GPS altitude it would move around in height trying to track the errors. So you end up with the worst of both worlds, the pictures are not taken at the same height and the recorded height contains significant error.

On the other hand, if the height position is estimated from the barometer, then everything can work much better. During a typical 10-min mission the barometric pressure varies very little. So the drone flies level and records heights that have little variation. But the heights are not absolutely accurate, there is a baseline offset to all the heights. I am now correcting this error after the fact. My post contains the details.

I do my missions with 80%/80% front/side overlaps and get map results well beyond my expectations. I draw measurement lines across my house, across my driveway, over my barn and see relative elevation and distance values accurate to inches. And this is from a mission flown at 300’! I totally love using DroneDeploy with my P4P!!!

And I am new to this just like you, less than a month (I know without looking because my free Pro trial has not run out yet).

Hi @Peregrine,

Have you taken a look at our Drone Buyer’s Guide? There’s a comparison between different models and brands.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Christina