The experiences you’ve made (especially with the mavics) makes me pessimistic.
Nevertheless I’ve flown my first Spark for half a year (120 km) without any issues. No error in video recordings before, very good quality.
Hopefully you’re wrong with your assumption and defective devices aren’t frequent. Will keep you updated.
I think this is either the gimbal or the EIS which has problems.
The thing with DJI drones is that
when they work as they should they are very nice drones, but they seem to have have an abnormally big number of defective drones, especially the Mavic Pro and now the Spark it seems, so if you are lucky to get a good unit then you should be very happy, and that is also one of the reasons why i don't update the firmware if I'm happy with how a DJI drone performs.
All too often does the firmware upgrade itself introduce all kinds of problems to the craft.
Heck, people were even terrified of doing the firmware updates to DJI crafts since there was a not too small chance of bricking the craft from the firmware update process, and it needed to be shipped back to DJI to get fixed, at least that was how it was until they started with the firmware updates through the app, don't know if the chance of firmware bricking is less since the firmware upgrades started within the app?
Thats my feeling anyway about the abnormally high number of defective units, i could be wrong, but in that case i have had a very very bad luck getting 2 out of 2 faulty Sparks (maybe 3 soon?) and 3 out of 3 faulty Mavic´s only in the last year alone.
So thats why i think they have a very bad quality control or a non existing one, or they are in hurry getting as many units out on the market as fast as possible? Or maybe its how they do manufacturing in China?
Anyway, i myself just received an email from DJI saying that my second exchange unit is about to be shipped to me, we will see what happens, but I'm understandably skeptic.
I of course hope for the best.