DJI Mini 5 Pro’s Weight Problem: Are You At Risk?

So, this is a new DJI Mini 5 Pro, a unit that is very much not below 250g. I’ve heard lots of interesting things about this fact over the last couple of days, and I’m going to dive through and debunk all the misconceptions, explaining why this really does matter a lot more than you might think.

My Personal Purchase and Unbiased Review

First up, I bought this with my own money, and that will matter in just a second, especially when we talk about how DJI presents these units to the reviewers you saw on day zero, and some of the challenges with that process. So, I bought this myself. DJI had definitely not seen this video before I published it. Let’s just simply dive into it. This thing is a pretty awesome drone. I’m going to dive through all that stuff in my full review, including gauntlet testing and a beginner’s guide. I’ll also sprinkle a whole bunch of pretty cinematic footage shot on this drone throughout this video to keep things a little more exciting.

READ MORE: The Real Reason Your New DJI Mini 5 Pro is Overweight

The Crucial Sub-250g Classification

One of the key features of the DJI Mini series is its sub-250g weight. This is incredibly important for many countries when it comes to whether you’re allowed to fly it either without a license or without registration. Some countries require an additional license, and some require registration. In the vast majority of countries, you can still fly this just fine as long as you have one of those two things. For example, here in the EU, I have the additional licenses required to be able to fly this. But if I were to go to other countries and not have the right license to operate a drone over 250g, I could get into a lot of legal trouble. That’s no different than something like the DJI Air 3S or the DJI Mavic 4 Pro, or whatever the case may be – drones that are far heavier than this and require, in most countries, additional licenses or registration.

And hey, just a quick note: if you’re finding this interesting or useful, just simply watch it all the way through. That’s the only thing the YouTube gods care about these days, and it really does help out this video and the channel quite a bit.

The C0 Sticker and Weight Discrepancies of the Mini 5 Pro

So, let’s talk about what this drone is supposed to weigh. On the bottom here, it has a C0 sticker. This means it must be below 250g – not 250g exactly, but 249.99999g – in order to have this sticker. If it doesn’t, then they’re in trouble, and we’ll talk about that trouble in just a second.

The next piece is what DJI claims a drone is. What’s interesting is they claim it in like three different ways:

• Press Release: On their press release, at the very bottom, they say, “near 250g drone,” which means they already kind of know it’s probably not under that limit.
• Packaging: On the box itself, unlike past Mini drones, there is no mention whatsoever of 250 grams.
• Documentation: One interesting tidbit here is that inside the box, if you actually looked at all the paper junk they gave you, there’s both a C0 paper leaflet from EASA and a C1 paper leaflet from EASA. This is kind of strange when you think about it, since the label on the aircraft is C0.
• Official Website: The real kicker is DJI’s own site. Here, the takeoff weight says 249.9g, but then below that, it says, “product weight may vary due to differences in batch materials and other factors. The actual weight is approximately 249.9 g plus or minus 4 g and is subject to the actual product.”

The Unprecedented 4 Gram Variance

Now, the kicker here is that little bit where it says the actual weight is approximately 249.9g plus or minus 4g. No other DJI product has ever said that before. When it comes to manufacturing these products, you’re not going to see a 4g tolerance. That is an absolutely astronomical difference between these components when it comes to how they are made. We’re not talking about a piece of wood or furniture where you’re talking a couple of grams either way. We’re talking about a lot of very tiny components which will weigh exactly the same every single time. The most variable scenario is probably going to be the cells themselves in the battery. This is also the heaviest component in this entire unit, and we’ll get to that in a second.

In the past, they’ve had a portion of this little disclaimer there saying the actual product might vary a little bit, but the actual product has always been below 249g. In some cases, they had it down to like 246g or 245g, depending on which series we’re talking about. If you look at their high-end drones, like the DJI Mavic 4 or the DJI Air 3S, they specify a very exact weight. So, it’s kind of odd that a super heavy drone can have a precise gram weight, but then the lighter drone will be plus or minus like four grams. That just seems weird to me. After all, the DJI Neo at 135g has no variance warning either.

Legal Implications of Non-Compliance in Europe

So, then let’s talk about this label right here. In Europe, this drone indicates that it complies with a whole bunch of things that puts it into the sub-250g category. The way this label works is that DJI submits paperwork to EASA. EASA is basically the regulatory body over all of Europe. I’m using Europe as an example here because this is probably the most prevalent scenario where this matters, and a lot of other countries will follow EASA’s guidance.

Within that, there’s a piece of guidance called 2019/945, also known as R945, that regulates drones in particular. It was a landmark legislation that, in most cases, made it easier to fly drones within the EU compared to the patchwork it was prior to that. The point is that by having the sticker here, it means you don’t need an additional license in the EU to fly this drone.

However, I’ve seen a couple of interesting comments that say, “You know what? Even if it’s overweight, as long as I have the sticker, I’m good.” No, you’re not good at all. EASA is actually really clear about this. They have an entire FAQ section that discusses this very issue: what happens if a drone is not in compliance with its sticker. It goes on to say, “What could happen to me if I buy a drone with an invalid class indication label?” It basically says that you may expose other people to risk and you may be prosecuted by the law. Again, this isn’t super complex.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s really going to matter if you crash into someone with a 253g drone versus a 249g drone; the damage is likely to be the same. The key difference, though, is that you’re now in a whole different liability bucket because you’re flying a drone that you’re not authorized to fly. I can assure you any lawyer out there is going to very quickly figure out which drone you’re flying, look up on the internet to find out what the limits are, and discover you are now over that limit.

Responsibilities of Retailers and Distributors

But it’s more than just consumers. It’s also retailers and distributors. In fact, if you go up in their handy-dandy FAQ just two items above that, it explains that importers, retailers, and distributors of this drone are also required to ensure that it meets the compliance levels for those particular classification labels. There’s even yet another entire document dedicated to what happens when a retailer or distributor sells a drone that is not compliant with the label, as well as what happens when a retailer or distributor believes that a drone is not compliant with that label. I promise you all those things are already underway at this point in time for this drone. This means that if you’re a retailer, you’ve now exposed yourself to significant risk for selling something that is effectively illegal in the EU, at least as it’s classified.

Legality of Flying in the EU

Now, is it illegal to fly this in the EU? No. So again, as long as you have the right licenses in place, you can fly this as much as you want because you have a license that exceeds this particular sticker.

The Weight Discrepancy: My Mini 4 Pro vs. Mini 5 Pro

So then, let’s look at where this weight is coming from. I’ve got here my handy-dandy DJI Mini 4 Pro. In this case, it weighs 249 g on my scale just fine. Now, some of you are like, “Hey, your scale isn’t calibrated.” Look, if you’ve been to Reddit, you know by now that there is not a single person who has posted a picture of a Mini 5 Pro that is below 250 g. In fact, the only people that have posted drones that are below 250 grams are reviewers that were seated with review units on day zero, so launch day. Uh, now in that case, I put those people into basically two rough camps.

Uh, the first camp is those that simply never bothered to weigh it. Though, it’s kind of strange because in all my past reviews, I’ve talked about the most important feature on this drone, which is the fact that it’s, in this case of the older ones, sub 250 g. So, it’s kind of odd to sort of skip that. But, you know, things happen. You get busy, whatever. Okay. The second category is those that did weigh it and then showed it was 249 g. 249.9 g to be very, very precise. That is peculiar to me and basically kind of implies one of two things.

Drones were sent out to dozens, if not hundreds of reviewers globally that were all 249.9 g, or they had a batch of drones that just happened to be 249.9 g. There are, of course, many ways to reach that weight. While I would definitely not blame reviewers for this particular one because they’re just reviewing the product that was sent to them, I do find it interesting that not a single reviewer had a drone that was above 250 g. Yet, inversely, not a single real consumer has a drone that’s below 250 g.

Now again, back to where this weight is interesting coming from. As I said before, my Mini 4 Pro, on the scale right here, weighs 249 grams. Good, right? All is well. This one here, the new Mini 5 Pro weighs 253 g. I think it’s interesting to note, though, that when it comes to weight, these two drones, while they may share the same name, the sensors, and all that kind of stuff has changed. The camera, the gimbal, and the props have undoubtedly changed. You can just see that by looking at them, including the battery. So if we look at the old battery right here, the old battery was 77 grams when I put it on the scale versus the new battery is 70 grams, so it’s already 7 grams lighter. They already took out 7 grams of weight on this to make this thing fit, and they still couldn’t make it do that. This is despite the fact that the battery life claims remain exactly the same. I am skeptical of those battery life claims at this point in time in my flying. I’m not getting anywhere near that. But, you know, I’ll keep on trying and usually I’ve gotten relatively close, and I am nowhere near close to those claims at this point in time. But ultimately, there’s no one single component you can blame on the Mini 5 Pro because again, everything inside is different in some way, shape, or form, and thus has different weights.

Implications for Consumers, Retailers, and DJI

What does this mean going forward? Well, a couple of things depending on which category you’re in.

For Consumers

Number one, as a consumer, this means that unless you have the right licenses for this, you are liable for all sorts of bad things happening in the event that someone were to stop you. Now, is someone going to stop you? Pretty darn unlikely. But when they do stop you, it’s likely because you’re already in trouble for doing something, just like heavily compounding the amount of trouble that you could be in.

For Retailers and Distributors

Next, when it comes to working its way up the chain there, you’ve got the retailers and distributors. Starting off in the EU, this puts those retailers and distributors in a significant legal bind immediately. Uh, and I’m going to bet that a lot of those will cease to sell this unit at this point in time. Next thing then, comes DJI. Again, DJI makes incredible drones. There’s no real denying that. I just wish they would have found a way to make it 4G lighter so this whole discussion didn’t even have to happen. Nonetheless, my guess is this classification label will get revoked by EASA and probably pretty fast as well, making this drone illegal to fly in the EU unless you have the right licenses.

For DJI

Further, I’m willing to bet that EASA may even put in place all sorts of interesting safeguards going forward to ensure that the drones that they see as part of the certification process actually reflect real life. And I’m sure in those hundreds, if not thousands of pages of policies on EASA’s site, there are probably things that cover what happens to manufacturers that are dishonest about the weight of their drone.

The US Market

Now, finally, for those of you in the US, this doesn’t really matter because you can’t buy the drone anyways, right? That’s not going to change. We all know that. That’s not going to change at this point in time. DJI is effectively continuing to wind down their operations in the US, based on all the things that you’re already familiar with. So, the 250 g limit there, despite being a very real limit, doesn’t matter in this particular drone because you can’t buy it anyways.

My Hope for Future Designs

Ultimately, I just wish it would have taken a few minutes off the battery life, if that was the main thing, made the battery just a few grams smaller, so I didn’t have to worry about this when I go to different countries now, being compliant with the laws in those countries.Anyways, I will have a full review of the features on this here shortly, as well as just kind of a beginner’s guide and all the other information that you want to know about this particular drone will come up here soon. With that, thanks for watching this video.

Photos courtesy of EASA / DC Rainmaker