How to Charge DJI Mavic and DJI Mini Batteries?

The Mavic Mini is DJI's smallest, lightest Mavic drone yet, but it has an impressive 30 minute flight time. In all actuality, it's closer to 25 minutes of flight time, but that's still pretty good! One of the new features of this drone is that you can charge the battery packs with simple Micro USB cables as well! Previously, you'd have to have a separate external charger for the Mavic Air, Pro, etc.

I was surprised when I saw that DJI also added a charging hub to the Mavic Mini Fly More combo. Other Fly more combos have had charging hubs in the past, but the Mavic Minis hub is different. It also doubles as a carrying case for the batteries since it's so small! You can also use it as a USB battery bank and use your batteries to power anything like a power bank could.

How to Charge the Mavic Mini Batteries

When it comes to charging the Mavic Mini, there are two different ways to do it and both depend on which Mavic Mini package you bought.

Regular Mavic Mini Kit

If you have the regular Mavic Mini, you charge the DJI drone by inserting the battery and plugging in the Micro USB to the back of the drone. You can use a wall outlet, computer, or portable power bank to charge the Mavic Mini - so there are plenty of options here! Unfortunately, though you can only charge one battery at a time.. which brings us to the fly more kit.

Mavic Mini Fly More Combo

If you have the Mavic Mini Fly More Combo, you have the two-way charging hub included in the box. The Two-way charging hub is just as the name suggests, you're able to charge the batteries via Micro USB on the side of the hub, as well as use a USB-A cable (the larger rectangular one) to charge another device! The ability to power a device in a pinch is a great touch, and charging the 3 batteries can be done in succession without you needing to swap batteries in order to charge the next one. Love it.

There is one thing though.

I do have one gripe about DJI's handling of charging the remote control...

How to charge the Mavic Mini's Remote Controller

This is where things get confusing for many Mavic Mini owners. The Mavic Mini Controller doesn't have a Micro USB port on it like the drone, and the battery hub does. So how the heck do you charge it?

DJI Doesn't do a great job of letting you know how to charge the remote controller. They tell you to use the Micro USB cable, but the lack of a Micro USB port is concerning. Well, it turns out that even though there isn't a Micro USB port, you can still charge the drone with the Micro USB cable. Yeah, I don't understand why they are doing this either.

The USB OTG port on the controller, the port that you use to connect your phone to the controller, is where you plug in the Micro USB cable to charge the Mavic Mini Controller. This is weird for a few different reasons, but after digging into why DJI did this - it makes more sense. But I still am not a fan of it.

Charging the Mavic Mini with Micro USB, which way do you plug in the Micro USB cable?

Since the USB OTG port is square, and the micro USB cable... isn't... which way do you plug it in? Well, the way I remember it is that the longer part of the Micro USB cable goes toward the back of the controller. If you plug in the micro USB cable any other way you may damage the connection.

But WHY, DJI?

The need to use an OTG cable while flying the drone makes sense since your phone and remote controller need to talk to each other and send data back and forth to each other. USB OTG allows both devices to switch from host to device, and let more data transfer between your device and RC. OTG USB is also powered, my hunch is that they needed this cable since you have the ability (on the DJI GO 4 app) to charge your phone via USB connection from the remote controller. And your device and RC have to be able to send data to each other, so the OTG cable allows that to happen.

But why not have a dedicated Micro USB port or, even better, USB-C port for charging?? I don't know why, but hopefully, DJI listens and gives us a simple way to charge the remote without risking damage each time. Or at least give us some more direction on how to attach the Micro USB cable to the OTG port without risking damage at least.

The Phantom 4 Pro has a dedicated charging port, but you cant use USB if you forget your charger. Which would you prefer?