DJI Mavic Mini vs Hubsan H117S Zino Camera Drone Comparison

Spec Comparison of the DJI Mavic Mini and the Hubsan Zino H117S Camera Drones

Here we have two similarly priced camera drones by DJI and Hubsan, let's see how they compare to one another.

The price point is very similar between the two drones, at around $450 to £499 depending on what offer you get and if there are any sales online.

The release dates between the two drones are just over 1 year, with the Mavic Mini being released in late 2019 and the Hubsan Zino being released early 2019.

Physically there are some huge differences with their diagonal length being 213mm for the Mavic Mini and 317mm for the Hubsan Zino when they are both folded up in to their smallest size.

The dimensions tell a better story and help us work out each of the drones volume, with the Hubsan Zino coming out at well over twice the size.

The Mavic Mini volume is 654cm³ and the Hubsan Zino is 1458cm³ in three dimensional size. You can convert these to litres, so the Hubsan Zino is just under 1.5L in volume and the Mavic Mini is similar to two cans of soda or pop combined.

The weight of each drone is drastically different too, so although they are both portable drones, they are no way equal. The Mini being 249 grams and the Zino is 700 grams at take off, nearly 3 times the weight of the Mavic Mini.

Continuing with this bigger size, the field of view on the Hubsan Zino is also bigger, at 89° FOV, compared to the smaller 83° degrees for the Mavic Mini.

If you want to get more in shot from the same location in the sky the Zino wins this feature comfortably.

The Hubsan actually has a slower top speed compared to the Mavic Mini, showing 36kmh for the Zino H117S and 10kmh faster for the Mavic Mini which is capable of 46kmh.

Here are a few more advantages of the Mavic Mini, which is capable of 4KM transmission distance, which is 3km more than the Zino at 1km distance.

The Mavic Mini also comes out on top for flight time too, of 30 minutes total, compared to 23 minutes for the Hubsan Zino camera drone.

Both utilise a 3-axis gimbal to stabilize their camera for taking photos and video footage.

Photo and Video Comparison of the DJI Mavic Mini and the Hubsan Zino H117S

In terms of cameras and video footage, if you're looking at getting in to film making with a drone, there are some similarities with these two aerial photography drones and not many differences.

The first difference is that of video bitrate, the Hubsan is capable of video bitrate of 60 mbps compared to 40 mbps for the Mavic Mini.

The next difference in terms of the camera is that of the image sensor size, the Hubsan uses a slightly smaller 1/3" image sensor whilst the Mavic Mini uses a 1/2.3" 7.66mm diagonal length image sensor size.

From there there are pretty similar camera drones in terms of photography and video work. They both take 12mp photos and save them as JPEG.

There is no RAW features for either of these drones when taking photographs.

They both share the same slow motion frame rates of 60fps at 1080p and have a handful of auto shoot modes and drone flying modes to help with creating cinematic type footage.

They both save files as MP4 and in H.264 and neither have zoom functionality, but this can be achieved in post by selecting a higher resolution and cropping the footage down to 1080p.

One more difference is that the Hubsan can take 4K videos and the Mavic Mini can take 2.7k which needs to be upscaled to 4K if you want to compare them both.

Summary

If you want a pocket drone, the Mavic is your best bet, it's tiny, pocketable and the controller and drone combined come in smaller than the size of the Hubsan drone itself.

The Hubsan has a fantastic camera and combined with the gimbal can give 4K footage at a very affordable price. If size isn't an issue then this is a very capable drone at a very good price.