Tracking Modes of the HoverAir X1 Pro

There are essentially three core ways the HoverAir X1 Pro can track you. The first is to simply use the drone by itself—no additional things, just a drone. Tap, and it follows you. Simple, right? That’s the way we’re going to use it.

You can also use your phone to control additional settings and get a bit of a preview, or you can use the beacon to effectively do the same thing. I’ll cover all those in my full Review, but for the gauntlet, we’re just going with the clean, simple version of just the drone itself. For the mode I’m using, I’m opting for the new cycling mode in narrow. There are two options: narrow means it’s going to follow the exact path and not take any shortcuts, versus open, which might smooth things a bit more and take shortcuts. We don’t want that—we don’t want to hit a tree. Off we go!

Tree Tunnel Stage

As you can see from a height standpoint, it’s not that high right now—it’s just a couple of meters above me. Everything in the tree tunnel should be good so far. Still, this is where I kill a lot of drones, especially bigger ones. Smaller drones tend to do a better job of this for whatever reason. I think it’s because smaller drones just know not to do stupid things, whereas bigger drones often go off and do dumb stuff like going up into the trees, swinging out to the left and right, and all the things that kill drones. Right now, my speed is about 28 km/h, so roughly 15–20 mph or something like that. So far, so good. We’re going to make a turn up here to the left in just a moment. We’ll bring the speed up a little bit—we’re about 30 km/h now, so 20 mph. It’s definitely a little higher than I would have preferred, but so far, so good. It’s only got another 100 meters before we turn off and make it into the next stage—the transitionary stage—a stage that has downed a lot of drones for no good reason whatsoever.

Transitionary Stage Challenges

Let’s see how we do. Sometimes with people over here, we may have to reset things a little bit. Yep, we’re going to make an adjustment to the stage. What I’m going to do here is wait for the people to move out of the way. Hey, future me from the tree section right here—if you’re finding this video interesting or useful, just watch it all the way through. That’s the only thing the YouTube gods care about these days, and it would mean quite a bit to me and the channel (which is, I guess, just me). Thanks for watching! Here we go—off we go, and then to the right into the transitionary phase. This transition also takes down a lot of drones for some reason. They’ll hit one of those two signs right there, and my tire is feeling a little flat all of a sudden. Okay, so we’re going to have to go off-roading up here to get around this dog walker. We’ll go over here—easy peasy stuff—but the DJI Flip managed to hit that tree over there just an hour ago. Something that shouldn’t be all that difficult to follow here, but sometimes drones do weird things. I’ll get myself back on the path up here, and we’ll transition into the high-speed section.

High-Speed Section

Here we go in three, two, one—yeah, we’re off! Okay, we’re going to slowly bring it up to about 40 km/h or so. Right now, we’re at 30 km/h, so 20 mph, going through 33, 35, 38, and we’ll bring it up to 40 now—41, 42. It starts slowing down because we’ve got people up here, and I know from past testing that 44 km/h is the limit on this road. Back on the course here, you can see it’s following me with no problems at all. That said, I’m going to fast-forward through all this because, honestly, it’s a little bit boring and repetitive. Instead, we’re going to jump ahead to some of the more exciting and complicated stuff.

System Errors and Dolly Tracking Mode

“Bottom camera communication failure, please restart the device. System error, please restart your device.” This is one of the problems with the HoverAir—it always has a lot of excuses, errors, and random things that happen for no obvious reason. So, we’ll try again. Okay, next step—we’re going to put it in Dolly tracking mode. Dolly tracking means it should stay in front of us and film from ahead before it might eventually fall behind. We’ll see how well it works out here. There’s a little bit of a breeze, but it’s really not too much, to be honest. I’m going to start off a little slow here because speed is definitely a factor in Dolly track mode. But watch what happens as I get going a little faster. It’s doing really good right—whoa! Dude, what are you doing, little buddy? Trying to kill me? It’s doing really good right now—up until the very moment I say that. Every time I give these drones a compliment, they go off the rails. Okay, you can see it’s on this little flip—it’s going to follow me now. So at this point, it’s basically just tracking from behind. For fun, if I slow back down again, let’s see what happens. We’ll transition back to Dolly track—slow down a bunch. Let’s see—will it make that transition? No, it will not.

Deep Dark Woods Challenge

Up here is the start of the deep dark woods. I’m going to put it into follow-flat-mid mode, and let’s give this a roll. There we go—it’s in mid. I put it on flat for the altitude, so it should stay basically below my head, which means it should be safe. If I can cycle through it, it can follow through it into the woods. Now, this little branch here could be a problem right there. We’ll see how it handles that—it doesn’t even blink, it just goes straight through. By the way, at this point, the DJI Flip had crashed three times in the last 40 meters. So yeah, we’re going to go this way. We’re going to start yolo-ing through here, and it’s going to get incrementally more difficult as I keep riding—both for me, maybe the mud, but also the route itself. We may make it even more challenging if we need to. If this thing doesn’t easily crash into something, we’ll just add more and more complexity to it.

Increasing Complexity

So, we’ll go over here—a little soft in there. This is too easy—we’re going to go somewhere else. Hang tight! Let’s see if we can do it right. It’s done it running, so let’s see if it can do it while cycling. We’ll go slow at first—don’t worry. This is hilarious—this is a true test of how well it can follow directions on my precise path using that narrow mode, and this is definitely impressive. There we go—good job! Now we’ve got the next section across the street here. We’re going to pick up speed a little bit, just for fun. I appreciate that they put down some new bark on this—it makes it a little easier to go faster right now, no mud. Here comes a sharp turn—will it cut the corner and find death? This tree right here could be tricky—oh, easy peasy, mac and cheesy! It’s got this.

Pushing the Limits On The HoverAir X1 Pro

We’re going to go backwards a lot faster though—because why not? Easy again, demonstrating this thing is absolutely the king when it comes to tracking. Even the Skydio couldn’t pull off that kind of stuff—it would’ve been caught up by its minimum thresholds on either side. But now we’re going to pick up the pace a little bit, and this is where following directions is even more critical so it doesn’t try to shortcut anything. This probably doesn’t look super fast, but it’s trying to get its best shot—me too! There we go, back across into the arguably tighter section, I think. Certainly the more complex section. Oh, this is amazing—come on, you can do it! You’ve got like 30 meters left. That’s tricky—tricky for me on a bike. There we go—can it do it? 10 meters left—did it clear it out? That is astonishing—easily, by far, the best tracking drone out there, period.

Final Thoughts

Oh, it even came towards me—yeah, I’m talking about you! Good job, little buddy—high five! There we go—good job. That is amazing. Now, the thing is, tracking is only one piece of a drone—especially if that drone ends up in multiple pieces. In terms of whether or not to buy this drone, I’ll have a full review coming up that covers all the other pieces. While this thing is amazing at tracking like this, it’s not super awesome at most other things. So, this is really a drone you want for tracking more than anything else, versus the DJI world, where it’s the best for everything else but so-so—and getting better—at tracking. So again, a separate video on this as a general drone, including some of the quirks you saw earlier, like it wouldn’t take off and gave random error messages—all that kind of stuff. But in terms of the gauntlet, this thing reigns supreme.

A Little Secret

Here’s a little secret: this is actually the second time it’s done this. I did this a couple of months ago and never finished editing it. I’m happy to say: one, it’s still the same drone, still alive, with a couple more scratches; and two, it did exactly the same thing as the first time around, but even better. The first time, I didn’t do this on the bike—I just ran it—but now it nailed it on the bike, and that is super cool. So anyways, there you go. Thanks for watching, and have a good one!

New Lossless 2x Zoom Feature

The first of the three new features is a lossless 2x zoom. This provides a crisper 2x zoom than before, though the previous version remains available. Previously, you could press the joystick or use on-screen controls to zoom in slowly to 2x. Now, there’s a new option at the bottom: tap the middle icon, and it jumps straight to 2x before recording starts. Once recording begins, you can’t tap that option. Let’s look at the first example.

Here’s a desk: on the left, the previous 2x zoom where I manually zoomed in, and on the right, the new lossless zoom. At this angle, it’s hard to tell, but once cropped in post-production, the difference is huge—especially with the text on that drill. You can clearly read “Makita” on the right; on the left, it’s just a blur. This is a significant improvement, bringing this camera closer to my ideal, like a Pocket 4—imagine an Air 3 or A3S camera system slapped on top. I’ve always wanted a clean zoom, and now I largely have it.

Next example: this trainer. At first, you think, “Yeah, it looks better, I guess,” but it’s close. Crop in, though, and the difference shines—especially around the chain and cogs to the right. The new zoom is much clearer compared to the old one. Another big deal.

One more example before the wild part: this Ikea plant. Initially, it looks decent, but check the ceramic’s little dots—casting imperfections. They’re far clearer on the right than the left. Zoom into the dust-covered fake leaf, and the dust is much more visible on the right, as is the pot below. Here’s the fun part: you can zoom 2x more, reaching 4x. Of course, then you’re back to the quality loss of before, just cropped further. It adds flexibility. I usually crop in post-production rather than on-camera, but sometimes I crop upfront when quality isn’t critical.

One catch: this isn’t available in Dlog or HLG modes. You still have 10-bit mode—that’s what I used here—but toggle Dlog or HLG, and the 2x option disappears.

Breathing Correction Option

Now, the second feature: a new breathing correction option. This isn’t about your breathing—it’s the camera’s, especially when focusing on something close. You might notice the screen “breathe” as it adjusts focus. The new option, off by default after the update, corrects this by tweaking the field of view when you tap to refocus on nearby objects. It’s subtle and hard to spot, but it’s ideal for scenarios like showing a product—holding it up, removing it, and bringing it back.

D-log Mode for Streaming

The final feature is Dlog mode for webcam or streaming output. This gives you all the flexibility of D-log footage while streaming live—pretty handy.

DJI Pocket 3 Firmware Update Process and Usage

You might wonder when I use the DJI Pocket 3 camera versus others, in a non-sponsored way—I’ll get to that. But updating the firmware? Super easy. Open the DJI Mimo app, connect your DJI Osmo Pocket 3, and it offers the update. Download it, and it’s done in about two minutes—quick and simple.

I haven’t talked much about this camera here, but I use it a ton in three main scenarios: trade shows, interviews, and similar settings. Paired with the DJI Mic, it’s my go-to—works flawlessly for things like the Tour de France. I supplement with my phone for higher-quality B-roll. In the studio, it’s great for quick shots of trainers—place, shoot, move, repeat. I’ve also used it on multi-day trips as my main camera, not an action one. It’s not waterproof, with an exposed SD card, and it’s shaky when running. But it’s durable—I’ve dropped it biking at high speeds, and it’s survived concrete crashes with visible scars. Rain? Handled days of it and still works. With DJI Care Refresh, I expected to kill it fast, but over a year later, it’s alive.

For action—body cams or selfies—I use the GoPro Hero 13 Black or Insta360 One X2. This camera’s for other footage. Hopefully, that clarifies things. If you found this useful, you know what to do with the clicks—it helps. Have a good one!

Testing Setup

With a firmware update released just yesterday, things supposedly changed. DJI claimed they increased the tracking speed, though they didn’t specify the new speed in the release notes. We’re testing on a dead-end road, which makes it quick and easy to repeatedly test and determine exactly how fast it will go before heading into the woods for real-world testing.

Pre-Update Baseline Testing

In regular mode, flying around without tracking anything, the DJI Neo drone moved at walking speed. For context on how slow this was, I could walk basically next to it. The phone display didn’t show the speed, but it was pathetically slow.

In simple follow mode, using the phone as my tracking device, we started at 15 kilometers per hour. At 20 kilometers per hour, the drone started to slowly fall behind. At 25 kilometers per hour, while it was visually tracking me, it began losing ground. At 30 kilometers per hour (almost 19 mph), we completely lost tracking, so roughly 22 kilometers per hour was the limit in completely open space.

Using the RC2 controller to show the speed, we topped out at 20.5 kilometers per hour. In sport mode, we reached 25-26-27 kilometers per hour. When demonstrating sport mode tracking pre-Firmware Update, at 20 kilometers per hour it maintained tracking, but at 26 kilometers per hour, I was already moving away from it, and it would eventually lose me if I maintained that speed.

Post-Update Performance of the DJI Neo

The firmware update listed “optimized positioning performance and increased flight speed during tracking,” though without specific numbers. Testing manual control with the phone, there wasn’t much improvement – I was still walking basically as fast as it was going, even in cycling shoes.

However, in tracking mode, the DJI Neo’s performance improved significantly. At 20-22-25-26-30 kilometers per hour, it maintained tracking. At 32-33-34 kilometers per hour, it started to slowly separate. At 35 kilometers per hour with sustained speed, the gap increased steadily. Testing at 40 kilometers per hour showed the drone still following but with a clearly increasing gap.

With the RC2 controller post-update, in normal mode we topped out at about 20 kilometers per hour, similar to before. In sport mode, we reached 28 kilometers per hour, slightly slower than in tracking mode. Holding full sticks forward in perfectly level conditions with no wind, we maintained about 28 kilometers per hour, indicating they didn’t increase the sport mode settings but clearly increased the follow settings to the 32-35 kilometers per hour range.

Woodland Testing

In the wooded area, the DJI Neo demonstrated one of its strengths: following your track on the ground rather than short-cutting turns, which typically means it lasts longer than its competitors. However, since it doesn’t have any obstacle avoidance sensors, it “YOLOs” everything, unlike the Hover drones, leading to some close encounters with trees.

Additional Features and Notes

The device, priced at $199, doesn’t fold, which affects its portability. It doesn’t fit super well in a back jersey pocket – it’s not terrible, but it’s not fantastic. The same goes for running shorts, whereas the Hover just folds and easily fits in any running shorts.

Competitor Context

The comparison Hover drone is currently stuck in customs, having been there for about five to six weeks. They’ve reportedly sent a new one out, but testing results are pending.

Final Assessment of the DJI Neo

Setting aside quality considerations, the Neo is now much more usable thanks to the firmware update. While the lack of folding capability remains a consideration for portability, at $199, the improved following speed and tracking capabilities make the DJI Neo a worthwhile consideration. A full comparison with the Hover Pro will provide more context once customs clearance is achieved.

Thank you for watching this video and I’ll see you in the next one.

Now, this test has four parts to it:

1. First is the tree tunnel that you see right there.
2. After it gets past that, a bit of open area, but it’s got its own trickery to it.
3. Then we’ve got the high-speed test. This thing also now tracks at a higher speed than past drones from DJI, so that’ll be interesting to test.
4. From there, we’re going to go to a little more open area where I’m going to use the new automatic angle feature where it’ll automatically not just choose a shot but choose a composition as well, which is new for the Air 3S. If it gets through all that fun stuff, then we’re going to go to the trees. We’re probably going to have the trees either way, but we’re going to purposely go into the trees and see what happens.

Key Feature: LIDAR Sensor

Now this thing has one key feature that may allow it to finally make its way through, and this feature is the new LiDAR on the front. This little black stripe right there, this LIDAR sensor, allows it to detect objects it can’t see. That’s particularly useful in low light conditions like right now when the sun is starting to set, but also scenarios like thin branches in fall and winter as it’s coming up right now, and materials that are either reflective or transparent such as glass or some metals and stuff like that. That’s a huge boost for DJI drones, and we’re going to find out whether it was worth my money because I did buy this myself just about 2 hours ago at the DJI Store here in the Netherlands.

This will actually be its first flight and potentially its only flight. We shall see. Don’t worry, I got the Care Refresh, we should be fine with that.

Configuring the Drone

You ready for this? Let’s get rolling. Now with it up there behind me, there is one setting we need to check first, which is the obstacle avoidance settings. So I tap the little dot-dot-dot in the upper right-hand corner right there, and then you’ll see obstacle avoidance action. The default is “break.” I’ve already changed that to be “bypass.” Below that we have “normal” and “nifty.” “Nifty” makes it a little more spicy. I don’t usually see much of a difference there. We’re just going to keep it on normal for right now. Going on down, display radar map so we can see the things it’s about to crash into. The rest of the stuff is all fine there.

Starting the Test

Now what we got to do here is to go ahead and get myself in the frame. There we go. No one’s coming, no one’s all the way up ahead, which is amazing. I can make a little square around myself. We will choose active track here we go.

The Tree Tunnel Challenge

Okay, starting down this little slight hill right here, going to kind of get moving. So far so good. This is further than a lot of other DJI drones make it. I’m going to bring it down a little bit so you can see it’s already kind of struggling a little bit because of the height there, being closer to the trees. Oh, it’s getting awfully close to these tree branches here. Bring it a little bit closer. I’m going to swing it off to the side now ’cause there’s someone coming up. See if it’ll get off to the side of me there. We’ll do that. Here we go, it’s off to the side. Oh no, it’s going to go right into that tree! Oh, and that’s… we’re not off to a good start here, folks. I’m just going to move it back. Fine, we’ll go behind me for now.

There we go. Oh, that’s a tree. Oh, that’s a big tree. Okay, come on, get behind me. Don’t… watch out for that tree! Holy moly. No, just behind me. Why are you over there? Okay, there we go. Now we’re back on. You know, I’m not sure if I would credit LIDAR with any of that. It’s more just dumb luck. Oh, that’s another tree. I just heard something hit there. That sounded more just like hitting it. Clunk. “Subject moving too fast.” I’m not moving fast. I’m moving 18 km an hour. It’s just painfully slow.

Now I’m going to save you a whole lot more fussing around of basically the same thing happening over and over and over again, but I will let you briefly watch this crash because, eh, it’s worthwhile, right? Just stay there, please. That’s a lot of trees. Oh no, we’re about to lose it. And… and… oh, it saves itself! It goes back up and again. Little bugger, what are you doing? No, buddy, no. Just go down, down, please. Stay down. I promise it’s better for all of us.

Adjusting Settings

So we’re going to turn on one of the settings here which allows us to go lower. Turned on the low option basically for ground, how low it’ll go. And I don’t typically like to do this, but right now it’s really struggling. I’ve got the lower setting on now. I basically turned that on to allow it to go under 2 meters. It seems to be… no, don’t go up, dude. Stay down, TRUST me. I’m looking out for you. Don’t go up. I told you to stay down low.

And we’re going to try going through here and see if we can do this without it killing itself ’cause this has less branches above it.

Moving to Open Areas

So we’ve left the tree tunnel with, I would say, strongly mixed success. Now at this point, we’re going to get moving a little bit faster here. Why are you going up? I’ve told you… we’ve had this discussion. Do not go up. Fine, go up. Go up as you see fit.

Now try to catch up with me here. Doing a good job of catching up. It’s bouncing all over creation up there. It looks super smooth in the gimbal, but let me tell you, this guy is everywhere.

Okay, we’re doing good here. It’s got this like shrub section up there, bushes. It’s going to have to go above them ideally. But this is like a clear indication of where LIDAR would be used to go around this if it’s having problems with the obstacle avoidance sensors. Like, it should see those bushes without any problems whatsoever.

Still tracking. There we go, it got to me again. It found me. There we go. What are you going to do through here? Come on, you’re like 100 meters away. The fast zone. Can you do this? Go over. Try to find where I went to. Oh, you lost me. Oh, you lost me. Strong. Nope. So close.

Control and Future Developments

Now a couple things to note about control of the Air 3S. Unlike the cheap $200 Neo, this one requires a controller at all times. So the Neo, you can use your phone or nothing at all and just simply follow you using buttons on it. Somehow the $1,100 drone doesn’t have that functionality. I don’t really understand why, but nonetheless, this does require a controller.

However, DJI does have something in the works. It was leaked out. This thing right there, that was supposed to be a beacon for the Air 3S. Unfortunately, it didn’t make the cut. Talking to some people in the know, that sounds like that’ll be like a next year thing, probably not till April or something like that. And that’s a bummer ’cause that would have been super cool, very similar to what Hover has now for the Pro and Max series, what Skydio had before them, AirDog before them, and so on down the list.

In case you’re wondering, by the way, where my Hover Max and Pro Review is, I’m still waiting on it. It’s currently in customs jail. If someone knows someone at DHL Netherlands or Customs jail Netherlands, that would be awesome. It’s been there for a few weeks now. So once I get it out, then I’ll have a review for you. It’s as simple as that. In any case, on to the next stage.

Testing Automatic Angle Feature

Okay, now we are in the fast section, but there’s some… like 200 meters ahead. But this is perfect for the 3x lens here and doing active track. So I’m going to go and highlight myself. We’ll do active track. We’re going to stay in this case off to the side. There we go, out there. Stay there. Okay, perfect.

And I’m going to zoom back a little bit more so that we’re back a little bit more. There we go. Put myself quite a bit ways out there. We’re going to keep it, um, a couple meters off the ground, give or take. That’s as far back as it’s going to let me go apparently, which is fine. And we’ll go ahead and get going here, and we’ll speed up a bit.

I don’t know what interference it’s talking about. That’s a field. Why are you going over there? No, I’m over… Thank you. That’s what I thought. I promise I’m trying to… trying to keep you alive, my friend. If you’re behind me, you’re going to die. I… no, no, no, no, no. There. Thank you. That’s what I’m talking about. I don’t know why you’re so high, but there’s nothing over there, so you do you.

Okay, let’s get moving here. Oh no. Nope, nope, nope, nope.

Windmill Land and YouTube Analytics

And one more thing from here in windmill land. If you find this video entertaining and useful, if you can just watch it all the way through, that’s honestly all that YouTube cares about. And I promise it is entertaining. It only gets better.

I promise we’ll get back to the high-speed section. I’ve got this giant open expanse right now, and I’m going to go ahead and pop back into the 1X because that just seems like a safer thing to do right now. We’re going to hit record, and I’m going to go into full auto mode.

So I’m going to get a little bit closer to me here. We go. Tap me. Active track. Okay, and now we’re going to choose full auto. There we go. Automatic movement enabled, and it’s got the whole world to try not to crash into anything for at least a little while. Don’t worry, we’re going to go back to some trees, but I’m going to let it do whatever it wants to do. And hopefully, my controller will stay on my bike. I didn’t really think about this when I went off the beginning here, but there’s a road way up there.

Here we go. Automatic mode back on again. Let’s see if it’ll stay on this time. Not really sure why it went off, but you do you, drone. For once, you’ve got the freedom to do whatever you want, and you’re staying right… Oh, that. Good job. Finally. Just a bit of teasing helps get it moving.

Okay, let’s see what it does. Let’s see if it does something. There goes my pedal. Okay, this is kind of… you know, it’s doing its thing. It’s obviously capturing some interesting shots, I guess. It’s kind of pretty, but I wish it would just do something else now. There we go. Hey, I guess it’s listening to me.

Okay, off to the side. I mean, if it was me right now… That was a little slippery. If it was me right now, I’d be off to the side getting those sunset shots like that right there. There we go. That’s… that’s what I’m talking about. That is a very pretty shot.

Please don’t slip in this. I’m having to go slow because the mount situation is properly wonky, and I don’t want it to bounce off and me run over it ’cause I’ve got enough stuff to probably replace after this day. We’re only halfway through the course right now.

High-Speed Test

Okay, now I got the wide-open road. Me and you, speed test time. Speedies. It’s going to be a bit of a headwind right now. Where’d he go? Okay, we’re at… I’m doing 35, just letting it do its thing. It’s keeping up, which is nice. Usually, it struggles. I’d go faster if I wasn’t into the wind, but it’s getting some pretty shots, usable shots.

I’m going to go now. Okay, that’s kind of cool. Here comes all these trees down here behind you. Oh, don’t hit that tree, please. Not that one. Now here we go. It’s got the freedom to do whatever it wants right here. There’s trees every 10 meters, including… yield to that one, but… Oh, that’s a close one. Good call.

Okay, around the tree. Good job. Avoid the trees. You got one job: avoid the trees. It’s trying to find a gap. Can do it. Trying to find it in between these two. Pull off at 360. It wants to. Come on, you can do it. But don’t just… don’t hit the tree. Tree’s getting bigger. Getting close to it. That was close.

Hey, you got like six trees left. Come on, you can do it. That tree behind you is pretty big. You’re about to hit it. Whoa, good job. You ducked down. Duck for cover. Okay, you… you could go up. Up would solve your problem. You can’t find a spot, can you?

Here, I left the car back behind me. Watch this because I’m still in Spotlight mode as I pedal around it. Or just scooter around it, it’s following me. Okay, I’ll stop teasing it.

Assessing the Damage

So in looking at things now, we’ve got a little bit of damage. We’re missing the tips of the props entirely on this one here, on that one there as well.

The Finale: Tree Club

But it’s time for the finale now. The rules of Tree Club are really simple: do not go up. If you go up, you die. It’s as simple as that. The challenge this thing is going to have is that LIDAR is only good for forward detection. That’s it. For upward detection, it’s going to use the obstacle avoidance cameras.

DJI says in all their marketing that it can avoid all the things at night, like full-on night. And obviously, this is not full-on night. This is still exactly an hour before sunset. So let’s get this in the air and find out what’s going to happen.

I’m not terribly sure this is going to work. In fact, I am 100% sure this is not going to work. But we are going to try it. We’re going to test. There’s no way. This is like… I’m going to be ducking, but you know what? Let’s see what happens.

I’m going to go super slow. I’m going to give it all the room in the world to see if it can do this. I will be blown away if it gets through this. Holy cow, it’s doing it! You don’t realize how dark it is in here. I’m not even sure where I’m going. It is super dark. Uh, let’s see, this way. Sure. What? That is impressive. Holy cow. Let’s go this way. I’m not sure it’s even a trail anymore, but we’re going to go this way. This… come on. This is impressive.

Oh, did it lose me? Nope, it’s got… Come on, it got me. It found me. Can it go through that? Under that? Oh, good job, DJI. You’re not super like obedient, but you know, you’re… you’re pulling it off. You’re like the… I don’t know, the teenager that won’t listen but still… Oh Lord, that is not going to end well at all. I don’t know how you get yourself out of that pickle. Oh no, that’s in the trees. That’s deep in the trees. That’s… that’s… that’s going down.

Oh no. I wish I… I don’t have a good way to… Where am I… You got yourself in one heck of a pickle over there, my friend. How are you going to get out of… How am I going to get you out of that? Okay, you’re deep inside that mess. Okay, yeah, I just would stay there if I was you too. See if I can get this out of here. We’re going to go… I don’t… How do you even get in there?

I think we can just fly… Oh no, no, no, no. Just don’t… Don’t do your own thing. No. Promise me you’re not going to do your own thing. I promise you I can get you out of this if you just let me. No, don’t go fast. Don’t go fast. Just go forward. Down. Okay, listen. Next time, you know…

Final Thoughts

I think at this point, I think it’s earned it. I think it… it gets a pass rating on The Gauntlet. Did it need help? Yes, but so did the Mini 3 Pro. It… it didn’t crash though. That’s a key thing. Either this or the Mini 3 Pro crashed, and I think if it had been a little bit lighter out and not basically almost sunset, then it probably would have gone a little more seamlessly on some of these things.

But overall, this is super impressive. That LIDAR sensor, it’s hard to tell exactly when it’s being leveraged compared to the vision-based sensors that it has, but there are clearly scenarios like in the trees there that all previous DJI drones would have crashed 100%, gone straight into some of that stuff, even bigger trees that have gone straight into.

So, kudos there. Land this thing and still have a functional drone. What do you think? You good with that? Oh, it just flicked. See? It’s good with that.

Thanks for watching. Have a good one.

Bonus Footage

We got like 50% battery left. Let’s go get some more pretty shots.

Okay, so I’ve got automatic moving on, just heading back now, and I’ve got it on Auto on the 3x lens this time. I’m just… just going to let it have fun. Just going to let it do its thing, dancing around with a sunset in the background. We’ll see if it’ll find some amazing shots or not.

It’s a great shot for like right there where it’s super far away out there. I’d say like 20 meters away. Lens is like… this is a cool shot. This is fun. That’s an amazing shot right now for completely autonomous, doing its own dance.

But now is when I would be swinging out to get the sunset that I’m riding into. I’m going to show you how I would have framed this shot, and keep in mind I’m doing this as a solo rider. So I’m in what’s called Spotlight mode. That keeps the camera centered on me where I control the drone’s movements.

I’m still controlling the drone’s movements right now, but then I’m going to stop it. Let go right there, and it’s just going to simply follow me. It’s going to keep me centered in frame the entire time. This is one of those modes that a lot of people don’t use, and honestly, you should really use it. It is so good for this where it just keeps you centered and you focus on getting the exact shot you want from a kind of drone position standpoint.

And you can see here it is still following me this far away. I’m not moving the camera. It’s doing all the camera work itself. I’m just riding my bike off into the sunset.

With that, have a good one.

1. A crazy tree tunnel to follow me through
2. A middle stage with some complexity but some easiness
3. Open areas for high-speed tests

If I haven’t killed it yet, we’re going to go trail running deeper into the woods to see how well it works. I’ve been doing sports follow drone testing for about a decade now, and now it’s the Neo’s turn. The question is: will it get to the finish? Keep in mind, only one previous DJI drone has done that—the DJI Mini 3 Pro.

Test Setup

This is definitely not sponsored by anyone. I bought this drone myself, including the Care Refresh package. The Neo doesn’t require any phone to track you or control it. However, I’ve got the phone on the handlebars here merely so you can see what the drone is seeing. It doesn’t assist in tracking in any way; it’s simply there for me to monitor and tweak if needed. Otherwise, you can go out with just the controller and no phone at all.

Initial Flight Test

I’m going to choose the follow mode here: Rocket, Spotlight, Direction follow. I’ll long-hold this for a couple of seconds, and up it goes. Medium follow, 3, 2, 1. You heard it say “medium” and “follow.” I’m going to adjust its elevation so you can see better, not just my backside the entire time. That’s one of the benefits of using the phone to make those little adjustments. Otherwise, you just have basically three elevations: low, medium, and high.

Tree Tunnel Challenge

We’re going through the tree tunnel at about 20-25 km/h. You can see it’s starting to lose me at times, and I have to slow down. The little rectangle around me identifies me as a person to track. It briefly lost GPS in here, which is strange because this isn’t a hard scenario.

Reacquisition Test

When I lose the drone, I go back to find it. Like a little dog, it’s happy to see me again. The reacquisition portion is much better than past DJI drones. It actually does a little look around; it’s almost like it’s smart.

Crash Durability

The Neo has no obstacle avoidance sensors at all. It’s simply using the camera to track you. We’re really judging it on four core things:

1. Does it track you well without losing you?
2. Is the video shot and footage usable from a tracking standpoint?
3. When it loses you, does it try to reacquire you?
4. When it hits trees, is the drone durable?

Direction Track Mode

There’s a Direction Track option where you can put the drone out in front of you or somewhere else, and it’ll follow you from that direction. However, for cycling, the Direction Track piece isn’t great, so we need the controller for adjustments.

Speed Tests

There are three listed top speeds on the Neo:

• 6 m/s (21 km/h) in normal mode
• 8 m/s (28.8 km/h) in sport mode
• 16 m/s (57.6 km/h) in manual mode (for FPV flying, not tracking)

In our tests, the drone struggled to keep up consistently above 20 km/h in tracking mode.

Running Tests

For running, the Neo performed impressively in follow mode, managing to navigate through tight turns and obstacles. However, the Direction Track mode struggled with anything faster than a walk.

Conclusion

The DJI Neo is cool and durable. I’ve crashed it 15-20 times today alone, and it’s still functioning. However, it’s too early to know how well it will hold up over time compared to competitors like the Hover X1. Both drones have their specialty areas. DJI excels in general drone features, while Hover X1 has more mature tracking features in its small form factor.

Stay tuned for my complete comparison between the Neo and different Hover drones, as well as a comprehensive DJI Neo beginner’s guide coming soon.

Now, reviewing drones in sports tech is my job, and I’m going to dive into who this drone is for, who it’s not for, and whether or not it’s worth it. If you’re into drones or sports, the answers here might surprise you. So let’s get some of the basics out of the way.

Pricing and Specs of the HoverAir X1

The HoverAir X1 is priced at generally about $350 for the base unit and about $400 for the combo pack with an extra battery and this charging kit right there. I say “generally” because this drone is perpetually on sale. You’ll almost always find like an $80-$200 coupon code thingamajig on Amazon that you can tap to get money off.

In my case, I paid about $360 for it, including the combo pack which, as I said, has the extra battery that you see right here as well as this faster charger.

Starting off with the weight on the drone, it’s specced at 125g according to HoverAir, but I find it like 128-129g or so, a little bit heavier than that. But keep in mind, that’s half the weight of something like the DJI Mini 3 or Mini 4, which is 249g or basically 250g.

Design and Durability

When it’s not used, it’s folded up like a book like you see right here, and then when you want to use it, you just simply unfold it like this. It literally fits in my running shorts pockets. Just to be clear on this, my iPhone right here weighs 240g, a GoPro weighs about 160-ish grams. So this is literally like the lightest thing I can put in my pocket, aside from some snacks, which obviously you have to have in there as well.

It’s got four props that you see right there that are surrounded by this lightweight plastic cage. Now, you might think at first glance this plastic cage is cheap, but that’s actually its kind of secret weapon of sorts. If you look really closely, what you’ll notice here on this cage is that it’s designed to have all these areas that flex. So you see, like this flexes down, it flexes – everything moves and is flexible.

In fact, if you look even closer, there are these little pins that pop up right there. These actually will separate. Like you just saw, I just separated this out. Let me show you this, a little tough there, that’s separated out there. So in the event you crash into something very, very hard, instead of snapping or breaking, it simply unclicks, and then you just simply click it back in again. It takes like 5 seconds.

Controls and Modes

On the top of the drone, you’ve got two different buttons. The big one here powers on like this. You can see the little lights in the back turn on there. And the little one here changes the mode. You also see a status light on the front right there. See, it says the mode, and then as it turns on, it tells you the current mode. I can change the mode by using the other button right here to iterate through the different modes. So if I zoom out, follow, orbit – there’s six different modes on here that you can iterate through, though the last one is a custom mode that you can kind of change what that particular mode is.

For all these modes, you can tweak them using the companion app. The companion app allows you to check settings and change settings, as well as download footage. I’ll talk more about all the features later on, but one of the most important things is to look at the flight modes that you see right there. These are all the flight modes that are included on there: Hover, Zoom Out, Follow, Orbit, Bird’s Eye, Manual Control, Snapshot, Dolly Track, Sidetrack, and Smart Control.

And one of the fun things you can do here, if you’re watching other review videos, is to see how many flights they’ve actually taken with this thing. It’ll list each flight for each category listed there. So you can see I’ve done 47 flights in the Follow Me mode itself, I’ve done Zoom Out flights, I’ve done Dolly Track 20 flights, and so on. So just keep that in mind when looking at other reviews to figure out whether or not someone’s actually used the darn thing.

Settings and Pre-Flight

Now, tapping into a given mode, it’ll tell you a little bit about that mode, basically what it’s going to do. It also has a little video so you can see and kind of understand that particular mode. You can play that video and it just sort of shows you what’s going to go on. However, if you go back to the Hover button there, choose Hover Settings, you can change the settings for each mode.

So if I do the Follow one right there, you can see that the Follow Type, the duration – so it’ll go for a set time period like 30 seconds or 60 seconds, or just go on forever, which is what I have there for “Continue.” You can change the distance – how far from you will it be? Will it be close, standard, or far? And you can change the altitude. Do you want it to be low, lowest, flat shot, or high? I found in general, the flat shot or high is going to get the best tracking results. You can do low and lowest, but then it gets into ground issues where it’ll get too close to the ground, it’ll stop, and so it’s better just to keep it like middle or high, unless you’re really on perfectly flat like pavement ground where there’s nothing else around you.

Now, you see at the bottom there’s both a Vertical option as well as a Video Quality option. I’m going to get into all those things later on in the video and show you comparisons with these drones right here, so you can see how that all looks.

With all that said, let’s head outside and take off. It’s very, very simple. You’re going to hold this thing in the palm of your hand like this after you’ve powered it on. You’re going to choose the mode that you want, and then you just simply press that button right there, and it’s going to go and take off about 2 to 3 seconds after it’s in the air.

You’ll see that LED on the front, it changed from green to red. That’s the one that you see right here, going from green to red, which means it’s now tracking you. Just for context on how fast you can get it into the air, here’s a case where I’m running into the frame. The drone is folded in my pocket. I’m not using the phone or anything like that, and I’m going to show you uninterrupted. Hold this down for, I don’t know, 2 or 3 seconds tops. Here we go. It’s got the green light on already. Double-checking the gimbal right now. You might be able to hear it. Current mode: Follow. There we go. Tap it one more time. Repeats it: Follow again to me. Takes off. And I’m waiting for the light to turn red. The light’s red. Off I go.

Tracking Modes

The big thing to understand about this drone, though, is it’s all about tracking someone while you’re doing something. Now, you can of course do shots where you’re just standing still. This includes the Zoom Out, the Orbit, the Bird’s Eye mode. You can see right here, Bird’s Eye, where it goes straight up from there. And then another shot here in Orbit, where it goes around. There’s also the new Smart Control mode. This mode lets you just stand there, or whatever you want to do, stand there, and basically use your arms to tell it to go right, or you can tell it to go left, and it orbits around you in that direction. Or you can like, literally push it away using your arms. It’ll go further away from you. It is super cool. But if you start walking away, it doesn’t follow you. So it’s basically just a static shot there.

Instead, there are basically three core following modes. There is the simple Follow mode, where it’s following you from behind. There’s what they call Dolly, which is following you from in front – or not following you, but basically being in front of you as you’re going somewhere. And then there’s Sidetrack, which is tracking you from the side.

Most of the time, you’re probably going to use the Follow mode, where it’s following you from behind. In fact, here you can see my wife doing a run. It’s just simply following along behind her. It’s really easy for her to use as well. There’s nothing complex about it. It doesn’t even need any of the phone app stuff at all.

At the same time you’re watching that, I’m going to start a clip at the bottom. I took on Monday a trail run I did through the woods, and I’m going to let that clip play uninterrupted while I’m talking about all sorts of other stuff to keep you totally distracted here, just to show you how insane this thing is. That clip keeps on going till the very end, where I stopped the flight because it was getting low on battery once it cleared all the trees. Just keep watching there.

And the important thing to know here is there’s no obstacle avoidance on this drone. It doesn’t avoid anything. It’s just simply following you like a lemming off to its death. Now, at first, I thought that would be pretty darn useless, coming from, you know, these other drones that have some sort of obstacle avoidance, whether it’s good or not is besides the point. But they’ve got something there that will at least miss the big things, the big trees. But the HoverAir X1 does not have any of that. You look at the front there, there is nothing there that’s going to obstacle avoid anything. It’s got its camera, but that camera is totally focused on tracking you.

And while I was concerned about the lack of that, what I realized is it’s turned out to be its strength in a way, because it’s so lightweight and so crash-resistant, it doesn’t care. It says like, “YOLO” to everything, crashes into everything, and you just simply pick it up, put it in your palm, tap the button, and off you go again. It is as simple as that.

Now, one kind of funny little quirk is that when this thing records a crash, it stops the video recording like right there, like at the moment it hits something, the impact. It doesn’t actually record the crashing to the ground part. I would have personally liked to see that carnage. I mean, I think you would have wanted to see that carnage too. There’s some epic falls to the ground from trees, relatively high up and hitting other things.

In any case, out of the 130 flights that I’ve taken, probably 30 to 40 of them have ended up in crashes. Now, obviously a portion of that is because I’m pushing the limits of this drone, which isn’t to say that someone hasn’t broken it. Obviously, you have. But I mean, after 130 flights and 30 to 40 crashes, it’s still in one piece.

Lack of Spare Parts

I do wish there was better access to parts. If you go on Hover’s site, there’s like no ability for you to buy an extra cage or motors or props. Maybe if you contact support. But there’s not any like easy button for doing that, whereas there is an easy button for showing how much you’re appreciating this video, which is simply hitting the like button or subscribe. I’ve got a comparison video coming up between these two things, showing you kind of how they compare and where one does well and where one doesn’t, and so on. So definitely hit subscribe for that. It really does help with the video and the channel quite a bit.

Now, I want to dive into the tracking modes a little bit more, since that’s obviously what most people are buying this drone for.

Follow-Me Mode

As I mentioned, the very first one is that following behind mode, like you see right here. This is by far the most foolproof mode. It just works super darn well. And as long as you don’t hit anything, it’s surprisingly difficult to lose this drone, whether you’re running or cycling or whatever the heck you’re doing in between there. This drone will follow you very, very well, and it does it for a very long time until the battery runs out. Like you’re probably still seeing along the bottom there of the video.

Dolly Track Mode

The second mode they have for tracking is what they call Dolly Track, or basically tracking in front. This is the one where it stays in front, like you see right here. This works also very, very well, especially depending on which settings that you have. You want to do mid or at least further out. If you do it very, very close, it doesn’t seem to work as well. It just gets lost, especially if you’re moving fast. If you’re hiking or walking, no big deal. But running quickly or cycling, it tends to struggle a little bit more if you’ve got it too close to you.

But what’s cool, though, is if it struggles to follow you in this mode, it’ll simply zip around and follow you from behind. It’s actually the same behavior that most Drone Companies do as well. When it fails a front or sidetrack, it simply slides behind you, because that’s the safest and the easiest way to track you.

Side-Tracking Mode

The third option is sidetracking, and this is actually a new one that was just added in a Firmware Update, I don’t know, a few weeks ago or something like that. And this will follow you off from whichever side you place the drone on. This is pretty cool, and it tracks a little bit faster than the front one does, not as fast as the following from behind. And then just like with the in-front track, if it encounters any sort of issues or is just concerned about speed, it’ll zip in behind you as well and just keep on following there. Eventually, it will actually get back out to the side if you were to stop entirely. So it does eventually get there if you need it.

And again, remember, in the app, you can go ahead and change the distance, how far away it is for each one of the different modes, as well as the altitude. Also, the app controls this custom option, this little star right there. If I go down to Custom, listen, Custom Sidetrack, it’s showing the custom mode here, which is Sidetrack. These are the four custom modes that you can choose right now: Snapshot, Dolly Track, Smart Control, or Sidetrack.

I wish I could have more custom modes there, because I don’t really use the Orbit and like the rocket thing going straight up all that often. But I do use the Dolly Track and the Sidetrack quite a bit. Still, I appreciate the fact that I don’t have to have my phone at all for flying. It is again just purely this thing, it’s just this by itself, which is kind of cool.

Tracking Performance is Very Impressive

Speaking of which, from a tracking standpoint, in case it wasn’t clear by now, it’s astonishingly good. I mean, just check out the section right here where I’m running behind a tree every like one and a half to two seconds, and it keeps tracking perfectly fine. It’s very, very impressive.

In fact, my six-year-old daughter has been playing with it a bit as well, and it’s silly simple for her to use, obviously while I’m there. But she loves trying to hide from it, trying to like run away from the drone, and it’s nearly impossible for her to escape it. It’s crazy. She can operate it just fine without any like verbal guidance from me. I’m just watching how she knows the modes, how to take off. Like it’s all really, really simple.

And since there’s no exposed props, like she’s not going to get hurt. Even in cases where it’s run into her, it just bounces off of her. Like it’s silly. Like she just giggles and thinks it’s hilarious.

Likewise, my wife has also used it on runs, because it is so easy to use. Again, no phone involved, just take it with you, throw it in the air, and then it follows you. When you’re done, you just simply stick your hand out, which is a good time to talk about landing.

Landing and Footage Download

All you do is stop, you put out your hand, it sees that, and it lands on your hand. It’s as simple as that. Now, after the flights, you can use the app to download the footage straight from the drone to the app. You can also just simply plug this into your computer and download the files directly if you want to. Either way, it’s quick and efficient.

I like the fact that it shows me which ones I’ve downloaded and the exact moves that I’ve done for that particular one. Now, there are some challenges with this drone, and I’m going to walk through those first, then we’re going to get into the video stuff.

Challenges and Limitations of HoverAir X1 Drone

By far, the biggest challenge you’re probably going to have with this from a sports standpoint is the max speed. The max speed of this drone is 17.6 mph or 25 km an hour, which is a fair bit slower than these drones and most other drones out there, either the top speeds or tracking speeds.

So to start off, for tracking things like walking, hiking, and running, there’s generally no problems at all. It handles those speeds just fine. Cycling, it’s a little bit trickier. For flat mountain biking or uphill mountain biking, generally no problems with speed.

You’re generally below that speed threshold. Even if I accelerate, as you see right here on this flat terrain, it starts to kind of lose me, but it doesn’t lose me. It keeps me in range the entire time. And when I slow down, it will catch up.

Now, if I go beyond that point where it keeps on tracking, so maybe, I don’t know, 50m out or 75 meters out, it’ll simply just stop there. And eventually, you’ll just land right there. Do keep that in mind. If it lands somewhere where someone else might come along and run it over, that’s where we get to road cycling.

Road Cycling and Skiing Challenges

This is a little bit trickier. So if you’re easy pedaling, it’s not too much of an issue. You can see that right here. I’m just cruising along. It looks nice, it’s clean, its stability is great. No problems at all. But as I accelerate, the thing eventually drops.

At that point, it’s going to hang out there and eventually it would land on this road. There’s no cars coming at this point in time, so I’m good. But if a car did come along right here, the drone would probably get squished.

By the way, I’ve gone both downhill and uphill, and there’s no issues with like descending or ascending in terms of the tracking, as long as it’s somewhat gradual. And the reason is, this thing has a max ascent or descent limit of 1.5m a second.

And where that gets trickier is skiing. I’ve tried a few attempts skiing and eventually kind of gave up on it. I’m a relatively advanced skier, so I can ski pretty fast. And this thing would quickly lose me every single time. And even when I went relatively slow, like you see right here, it still lost me because I descended too fast for it.

And when you lose it on skiing, it’s exponentially worse than for every other sport mode, because you have to hike your ass up the snow, in this case about 20cm of fresh snow, to go get said drone, which is now hovering up there or now landed somewhere else, assuming you even knew that it stopped behind you.

Thus, if you’re skiing, it’s best to have a buddy follow the drone, not follow you, and so they can retrieve the drone when it decides to stop, which it will pretty quickly. If you watch all the reviews out there of people skiing, they’re all going pitifully slow. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. I’m just being like realistic here. Don’t buy this for downhill skiing. Cross-country skiing, probably just fine.

Wind Resistance

The next bit is wind resistance, how well this thing handles in the wind. Officially, this drone has a wind resistance of 17.9m a second, which translates to 17.7 mph or 29 km/hour.

For better or worse, I live in the Netherlands, which means that if you’ve seen all my other drone testing videos, you know I routinely test drones in wind conditions of like 70 km an hour. It’s sort of a thing I do. It’s what people come to the channel for sometimes.

The Hover won’t do that. You can’t even like take off in that. Well, technically, it allows you to take off in those higher winds. I tried like a 50 km/hour day. It took off and immediately was like, “Nope,” straight back down again. Like it literally just landed immediately at that point. It said, “No.”

However, for winds up to the threshold, it’s surprisingly okay. Here are some beach shots I did on a windy day, because it’s the Netherlands and it’s the beach. Like there’s no day in the Netherlands where the beach is not windy. And so I’m riding along here and it’s doing just fine tracking me in the winds.

Also, just look at this from like an epic shot standpoint. These are beautiful shots at sunset here. The lighting is really, really solid. So not only is kind of low light, sunset scenarios not a problem, but Dutch winds aren’t a problem as long as they’re not super strong.

Lack of GPS and Over-Water Cautions

The other thing to note here is there is no GPS in this device. Now, a lot of people might say that’s actually a huge advantage, and I would generally agree with that. It’s merely using spatial awareness and object recognition to fly along.

The thing to understand, though, is there’s no return to home. Return to home is what most drones do if it loses connection with you or tracking you. It’ll eventually just go up and go back to wherever it took off and land. This won’t do this. When this thing loses, it’s like, “We’re done right here, right now. We’re landing.” It’s as simple as that.

Thus, I will never fly this drone over water. And I am the king of stupid over-water drone flights. Like, there’s no one out there that does as many stupid over-water drone flights as I do. This? No way, Jose.

In fact, just this past Monday, when I was riding along and it was tracking me from the front to the side to try to flip around to the back, it got itself over like just the edge of a canal. And it started landing. And I grabbed it at the last second, close to the edge of the canal. I’m not sure if it would have landed in the water or if it would have landed on the land and then tumbled down the hill into the water. But either way, just keep this thing away from water, because it’s not going to end well. Again, the second it loses tracking for you from any reason, it will simply stop where it is and land.

Manual Control Mode

So then what about manual control? See, the thing is, this really isn’t designed for that. But it does actually have a mode for manual control on the app. You can go ahead and connect to it via Wi-Fi, and you can use a screen on your phone to control the drone and see what you’re doing.

It is painfully slow and cumbersome though. Like very, very slow. It’s like slow-mo across the board. But it does let you get some of those establishing shots if you want to. You’re limited to about 100-125ft away from you, so not that far, like 30 to 50 meters in a best case scenario. But it’s enough to like get just above the trees, like you see here, and stuff like that. No problems with that basic stuff.

If, however, you want like sweeping panoramic scenery shots where you’re moving long distances, this isn’t the drone for you. Get this over here instead.

Camera and Gimbal

As noted earlier, you get 2.7K at 30 frames per second, or you get 1080p at 60 frames per second. In all my filming, I just went with 2.7K. I just wanted the resolution over not having it. And if you go to vertical mode, then you’re limited to 1080p as opposed to the 2.7K.

Now, in the front, there is a gimbal. You can see this right here. It’s moving up and down to keep the image and the scene level. It’s going to keep it silky smooth, even in windy conditions. This shot on the mountain bike – sorry, the road bike – was actually pretty windy at this point in time. And it looks beautiful from a stability standpoint, from a gimbal quality standpoint. Like, really no problems at all.

Keep in mind, this thing has hit trees dead on, 30 to 40 times. And it’s been spot on there.

Storage and Battery Life

Also built in is storage. There’s 32 gigs of storage built into this, and it’s non-expandable. That’s probably one of my bummer things here. You can’t put a larger SD card in there. For context, one minute of footage at 2.7K is roughly 700 megs, or basically 7/10 of a gig. So you get 45 minutes of footage on this drone at 2.7K.

That might not sound like a lot. But keep in mind that, unlike these larger drones that are going to fly for 30 to 45 minutes, most of your flights on this are going to be like 2 to 3 minutes. It has more battery, which I’ll talk about in a second. But from a flight time standpoint, you’re following you tracking for usually a short period of time, and then you go ahead and stop and do something else.

Now, the battery lasts about 10 to 12 minutes of real-world battery life. But the batteries are so ridiculously small and lightweight in this that it just doesn’t matter to carry extras. I mean, look at that. That’s 43g. So when I go off for a run, I’ll take the drone in my pocket and throw this in the pocket as well. It’s just easy to have there. And again, takes 2 seconds to swap out.

The charging time for these batteries are 35 minutes if in the hub, and then about 55 minutes if it’s in the drone itself, which you can charge on the USB-C port right there on the side.

Drone Footage Comparisons

So let’s talk about footage. This entire video, it’s all unedited footage. I’ve not edited it, corrected it in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I’ll stick a little Dropbox share down in the description there with some more original raw clips, if you want to download them.

For comparison, I’ve got a couple quick clips I want to show you between the HoverAir X1 and the DJI Mini 3 and 4, so you can just see these side by side. As mentioned though, I’ve got a full comparison video where I’ll dive into many more aspects of comparative stuff.

But in the meantime, three quick clips. First up, in the mountains, to show how well it handles bright snow conditions and sun and all that kind of stuff. I put these two drones side by side so you can see that, in basically the same framing, as close as I could possibly get it.

Next, I’ve got the shot right here. I wanted to show you, the sun is coming from the left behind this tree. So the side that you see is actually the shadowed side of the tree. And that’s going to be darker. But I threw myself in there in a red shirt to show you how it lit me as well in this whole scenario. This is a somewhat complex scene to light – or to shoot properly, anyways, not to light, obviously. The sun is lighting it. So I wanted to include it.

And then we’ve got the shot here, a static shot, where I’m running two in from it. I didn’t want to have multiple drones chasing me at the same time, because frankly, that’s just a mess. It always goes wrong. Drones cross into each other. It’s just, it’s really hard to get the same shot anyways.

Wrap-Up

Anyways, with all that said, let’s just do a quick wrap-up. Overall, this thing is awesome. It’s become my de facto drone when running, because again, it’s half the size of these other things. It doesn’t require a controller like these other things require. And it just fits in my pocket and goes running. It’s easy enough for my six-year-old daughter to use, for my wife to use, without any technological barriers. Zero phone required, all that stuff is great.

And of course, it’s durable. It’s incredibly durable. As you’ve seen this video here, I haven’t killed it yet, surprisingly, despite all these flights.

That said, Hover doesn’t have any information at all on their site about how to get spare parts, like a spare cage or props or motors for this. I wish they’d do a better job of that, because right now it’s pretty darn fuzzy, other than submitting a support ticket and hoping for yourself.

Ultimately, if you want to get shots of yourself, your friends, doing things, this is by far the easiest drone to use and the one you’re least likely to break or get in trouble with. Inversely, if you want shots of epic scenery or cityscapes or stuff like that, or shots far away, this isn’t the drone for you. Get this over here instead.

As someone who has literally almost every single consumer drone on the market, I thought this thing would be a toy when I first ordered it, that’s not worth using. But the reality is, most of us are producing content for social media platforms, and the quality coming out of this is more than good enough for almost every one of those platforms in almost every situation.

So while it doesn’t have the range or all the extra features of something like this, this is simply another tool in my toolbox of things I can use.

At 125g, it’s light enough that when I go on trips, I can take it side by side with one of these other drones, use this for big, pretty establishing shots and all sorts of other fancy, complex shots, and then use the HoverAir X1 in tight spaces where I just want a very quick and easy to use drone to throw in the air, get the shot I want, and then be done with it.

With that, thanks for watching, and don’t forget to hit the subscribe button there for plenty more sports technology goodness, including that comparison video that I talked about

Have a good one.

Now, let’s break down the Gauntlet for you. It’s divided into four distinct sections, each testing the Mini 4 Pro’s mettle. First up, we have the notorious tree tunnel, a dense maze that the drone must navigate. Survive that, and you’re on to the more open but still tricky second section.

Things get interesting in the third part, where we crank up the speed and see if the Mini 4 Pro can keep up. And finally, we put that new 360-degree obstacle avoidance to the test in the fourth section, where we explore orbiting and more.

But here’s the kicker – only one DJI drone has conquered the Gauntlet before, and that’s the Mini 3 Pro. The Mini 4 Pro, however, comes with a new feature: the 360-degree obstacle avoidance, thanks to those fancy front and rear sensors.

Before we dive in, we need to tweak some settings. Make sure you switch the obstacle avoidance setting to “bypass” instead of “break” to keep things moving smoothly. Displaying the radar map can also help you stay aware of obstacles.

Now, let’s jump into the action. We’ll start with basic mode, guiding the Mini 4 Pro through the challenging tree tunnel. The drone follows me closely, and we can even adjust the direction it follows from. It’s a smooth ride, and we’re off to a great start.

As we hit the open stretch, you’ll notice the radar map highlighting potential obstacles in orange. The drone adjusts its speed to avoid collisions, which is reassuring. But keep in mind that Sport Mode, while faster, sacrifices obstacle avoidance, so use it wisely.

Now, it’s time to test that 360-degree feature. With FocusTrack settings, we can define the altitude, distance, and direction of the drone’s movement. We can even orbit around objects effortlessly, all while maintaining control.

But don’t be fooled; it’s not flawless. In tighter orbits, it may struggle a bit, especially in Sport Mode. It might hesitate, but with some patience, it can pull off some impressive moves.

Now, we venture into the challenging bonus round, where we test the Mini 4 Pro’s off-roading skills. It handles the rough terrain admirably, proving its mettle once more.

But let’s not forget, ActiveTrack isn’t without its quirks. Thin branches can be its Achilles’ heel, as it may not detect them properly. Also, the new slanted obstacle avoidance sensors, while providing 360-degree coverage, might still miss some obstacles directly in front.

In conclusion, the DJI Mini 4 Pro shines in many aspects of the ActiveTrack Gauntlet. It’s durable, tracks well, and boasts impressive 360-degree obstacle avoidance. However, it’s not infallible, so be mindful of the surroundings, especially in tricky situations.

Stay tuned for more Mini 4 Pro adventures, including road testing, beginner’s guides, and wind testing. Thanks for joining me today, and remember, happy droning, folks!

This is the DJI Air 3. It has undergone several significant hardware changes that make it particularly intriguing for Active Track scenarios. By definition, Active Track means the drone is following me fully autonomously, though I do have one of its controllers with me.

The first thing to note about Active Track is that it utilizes the new obstacle avoidance sensors. There are four main sensors being utilized: two on the front, which are angled off to the side. This design provides both forward and sideways coverage. The other two sensors on the rear function similarly, ensuring 360-degree coverage on all sides as well as above. Additionally, sensors on the bottom measure ground detection and altitude.

In this video, I’ll walk you through various core scenarios. With that foundation laid, let’s delve into the standard test course I use for all drones. Then, I’ll show you different tracking scenarios from the past month, giving you insights into capturing the best possible footage.

DJI Active Track put to the test

Using Active Track, DJI’s follow-me technology, I can simply highlight myself, and then there are three different tracking options. For this demonstration, I’ll choose the Active Track option. A marker appears on my map, allowing me to set the drone’s position in relation to me. I’ll start with it behind me and later maneuver it through other orientations.

Once I’ve set it, I hit ‘Go’ to lock it in place. A recurring message appears in the top left corner every 10 seconds; it’s a known bug for European users (I’m in Europe), and unfortunately, there isn’t a current fix.

It’s crucial to mention there are two primary settings for obstacle avoidance. In the top right corner, navigate to ‘Safety’ and ensure the ‘Optical Avoidance Bypass’ is turned on. There’s also a riskier option which allows the drone to delay its evasive maneuvers until the last second, but for this demonstration, I’m sticking to the basic mode. Another feature displays a radar map showing nearby obstacles.

While I was out in the field, I forgot to highlight the ‘Subject Scanning’ option. When enabled, it automatically detects subjects, eliminating the need to manually draw a box around them.

A personal note: I often forget to press the record button. For this demonstration, I’ve adjusted the drone’s altitude to closely follow behind me. While I’ll mainly use the main lens, I’ll switch to the tele lens occasionally.

A quick note: anytime you see overlays on the screen, that’s from the screen recording. It’s lower resolution, but I’ll switch between it and the high-res footage as needed. The focus here is primarily on illustrating how Active Track functions, though the end footage is genuinely stunning in most instances.

Coming up, there’s a tricky section. A few hundred meters ahead, there are some people. Unfortunately, the drone lost me rather quickly in this segment. It was a faster failure than with any other drone I’ve tested, but considering the challenging terrain and my success in more open areas, I decided to reset and try again.

Here’s a closer look at how I mount it on my bike. I’ve made a separate video on that, which you can find linked in the corner, so do check it out. Sometimes, I also use a carabiner clip, as you might see in some of the mountain biking clips.

Generally speaking, there’s a limitation on how fast it can move when it’s near trees. As you can observe, it’s pulling back. This behavior is essentially the drone trying to avoid the trees. As it approaches ground objects or trees, its speed decreases. The Skydio doesn’t exhibit this behavior with DJI drones. Once it gets within a few meters of an object, the display turns orange, indicating it’s too close for comfort. As you can see, it’s struggling, especially when in close proximity to trees or the ground. At this proximity, it slows down to a walking pace.

I directed it to track me from the right-hand side instead. The field over there is clear, so it should be able to track me without any obstructions. I fast-forwarded some footage because the drone was hesitant to follow my direction.

Eventually, I stopped it, positioned it manually, and resumed tracking. If it decides to engage with the trees, then it’s on its own. It needs to avoid the tree branches. Under such conditions, I would typically use the 3x lens. But the drone’s positioning isn’t ideal. It’s moving sluggishly. I’m only going about two miles an hour.

Once it catches up, I’m switching to the 3x telephoto lens on the Air 3. The Air 3 has two lenses: a main lens at the bottom and a telephoto lens on top. The telephoto lens is great for Active Track for two reasons. Firstly, it offers a unique perspective in most scenarios.

Secondly, it enhances safety since the drone can be positioned further away from the subject but still capture a comparable or even superior shot.

Now that I’m using the 3x lens and have set the drone to identify me, I select the right side, press ‘Go’, and ensure I’m recording. The drone is now in a safer position. However, it’s moving so slowly that I might be overtaken by a grandma soon, especially if the drone doesn’t crash into a tree first. The close proximity to the tree is quite astonishing. After some struggles, I decide to summarize a series of failed attempts, so you’re spared the lengthy viewing. Look, there comes that grandma!

For this tree section, it was a solid fail. However, to be fair, it wasn’t a total loss, as the drone is still functional. This is more than can be said for its predecessors; every other DJI drone has crashed on this course at one point or another. This one, however, remained crash-free, so that’s a positive takeaway.

I then moved to a more open area. Here, the drone worked seamlessly until the final section where it came too close to a tree and faltered. In the open space, there’s a useful feature called POI. With POI, the drone orbits around me, providing a dynamic view. I’d typically have it move faster, but I don’t want my phone falling and getting caught in my bike’s tire – that would result in both a damaged phone and a disgruntled me.

Given the prominent windmills in the background, it’s evidently quite windy today, probably around 30-40 kilometers an hour. You’ll observe that the drone’s speed varies in different sections due to wind resistance.

After some off-road travel, I reached a road where I could demonstrate the drone’s capabilities using the 3x lens, especially when aided by a tailwind, given the strong winds in the area.

Okay, this right here, what you’re about to see, is similar to when it almost hit that fence. “Oh, did you complete the loop? Get back around there! Don’t wimp out like that.

This is awesome! Come on, you’re supposed to be doing loop-de-loops.” Go birds! “Come on, crow, I’m not afraid of you.” Now, I’m basically going beyond the speed it prefers, but I can switch to sport mode since there’s nothing here to hit. However, in sport mode, the drone doesn’t avoid obstacles.

It’s crucial to understand that. People often ask, “Why can’t you just switch to sport mode?” because “sport” sounds like it’s intended for fast activities. But in DJI terms, “sport mode” means maneuvering the drone sportily, which deactivates obstacle avoidance and lets you fly much faster. It’s excellent for situations like this where there’s nothing around to collide with.

However, seeing the upcoming tree line, I’ll revert to normal mode to re-enable obstacle avoidance. “Good job, little buddy. You got it.”

Now, the question arises: will it manage to rotate around this tree without any hitches? That’s the real test. “Doesn’t look promising. I didn’t even attempt it just now. It seems smarter than its DJI Mavic 3 counterpart.”

I’ll reduce my speed for a bit. “Move a little faster forward. Will you manage that?” It needs to navigate between the trees. “Excellent job, little buddy! Don’t crash into that thick trunk; you’ll lose.”

Alas, it got slightly apprehensive. “Yep, YOLO! Good job. Go around it. Don’t lose sight of me. I’ll slow down, give it a chance. There are still tree branches in the way.”

I practically had to stop, but eventually, it caught up. We’re only halfway through the usual test. I’ll skip the rest; I think you get the gist. In the subsequent part, it lost me even more due to the abundance of trees.

Instead, let’s discuss its strengths. Here I am in the mountains, with the drone trailing us using Active Track mode. This is the ideal scenario. There are a few trees, but I’m moving into a clearing, and it’s excelling.

“I can do whatever I want here since there’s nothing to crash into. It’s perfect for this.” I can lower the shot. In this instance, I position it to my left to capture a different perspective. This goes on for a lengthy stretch of gravel road. Ultimately, I place it in front of me.

DJI products excel in such scenarios, whereas Skydio performs better in environments with more obstacles. That’s not to say DJI struggles with obstacle avoidance. In fact, it’s significantly improved. In the past month, it hasn’t collided with anything, even though I’ve somewhat tried to test its limits.

Consider this segment where I’m mountain biking, which was just yesterday. I set the drone ahead of me. You can see it’s slightly erratic. Both of us are ascending. While it tracks well on inclines and declines, it seems somewhat slow uphill.

However, observe how it adeptly maneuvers between poles. Just wait, here it comes. “Wow, that’s a tad risky!” The first pole isn’t a big deal, but then there are ski nets, usually marking ski runs to prevent people from tumbling off the edges. The drone is navigating these brilliantly.

Now, I’ll share a trick for capturing cool shots. With Active Track, most people won’t publish a 20- or 30-minute video of the drone merely following them. Instead, you’d utilize brief clips as B-roll footage. Watch my technique. I’m adjusting the controller, changing the drone’s tracking direction from front to back.

DJI products require a moment to make this switch, and you must begin moving first. As I start pedaling, you’ll notice the drone slowly transitioning behind me. Use this trick subtly to create dynamic angles during flight.

I’m also not really sure why the sheep were surprised. This is like the fourth pass I made past them, and they’re like, “Whoa, where’d this guy come from?” There’s all sorts of livestock in this area, and they just kind of hang out. Normally, they don’t really care about mountain bikers, runners, or cyclists, but in this case, they did.

You can see this is a cool shot here. And again, as I go downhill, you can see me do the exact same thing. First, I had it stationed at the front, and now I’m setting up for the back, creating this sweeping shot that opens up the entire vista in front of me. And it follows along. I’m not going super fast right now, but it is holding on. If I was on my road bike, it would struggle a bit more at some of these speeds, but right here, mountain biking, no real issues.

Now let’s talk about recovery—how well it recovers after it loses you. So, check this out: I’m on the 3x lens up in the mountains, cruising along. I’m not going that fast; I’m going uphill, but it’s going lower than I wanted it to. Right now, it gets behind this little hut thing there, but it’s still tracking. It recovered me. That’s impressive.

It shouldn’t have been there in the first place; it should have ideally raised its altitude. But hey, it did it. Here’s another example of recovery: I’m going along, pedaling. It’s just at the edge. This is where Skydio would automatically rise up a little bit, but the DJI products are like, “Hey, you set me for this altitude; I’m going to keep this altitude.”

It’s holding on. At dusk, it’s actually much darker than you think. It loses me, but then it gets me back again. Holy moly! And it’s still going, still going, still going. And then, in just a second here, it’s like, “Oh no… oh… oh, yeah.” If I was in full daylight, it might have had a better chance of following me, but in this case, this was essentially at sunset with really low colors.

Before we talk about boats and cars briefly, there’s one message that’s notable for European users. That message right there tells you that the aircraft cannot be more than 50 meters away from you when it’s tracking. This is new to DJI products with the Air 3. This was never there in the past, and it’s sort of a bummer.

With the zoom lens, that means you have to be within 50 meters, and I found that DJI’s definition of 50 meters is iffy at best and not in your favor. A lot of times, I found that I could be at clearly only about 30 meters away, and it’s like, “No, you’re too far.”

When that happens, you simply need to bring the drone closer to you, or you go closer to it until you’re within range, and then you can go ahead and do whatever it is that you wanted to do.

Now, you’ve probably seen this video where I’ve done some tracking from the front, but I just want to emphasize that. As you can see here, I’ve set it for front-left. In general, setting up for front-left or front-right gets better angles than just straight head-on. I don’t know why, but this tends to do a better job.

The only challenge with DJI products is that they tend to need a lower speed for front tracking. As I mentioned earlier, when it has challenges tracking, it defaults to the safe zone behind me. It’s still a cool shot; it’s just not the shot I asked for.

In case you’re wondering what happens when it does lose you permanently, you’ll see this right here. I was really trying to be finicky with the altitude on this. It loses me, and basically, the aircraft will just stop and hang out there. You can then manually take control and go from there.

Let me show you probably one of the better shots that I got. I found just the right height, and it just cruises along. This is a super cool shot. It would have been better without a power line, but I can’t control where they put power lines. Then, I make the turn, and for whatever reason, it loses me. I’m actually really surprised it lost me. I think that’s more of a lighting issue with that particular lens at essentially sunset. But still, it was a super cool shot up until that point.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t have to be me on a bicycle or running; you can track cars. You can actually see the subject scanning pop-up here. I basically stopped because a car was coming around, so I stuck the drone in the air. It picks up the car as an object I can track.

The same is true for boats. I drew a little circle around this, and it recognizes it as a boat. I then actively tracked this water skier for quite a long time, just following along. I’ve actually tracked many boats here in the Netherlands. It works really well. And remember, you can do both regular active track and POI, where you’re rotating around it.

Keep in mind with rotating around it, you probably want the speed to be a bit lower; otherwise, it’ll struggle on the front side.

So, where are we overall with active track on the DJI Air 3? Well, it’s definitely DJI’s best attempt yet, but with some caveats.

The first is, as I said earlier, it’s not Skydio, and it’s not going to be. The problem is, I’m not convinced. I am pretty sure Skydio is done with consumer drones. They’ve been asked multiple times, and they keep saying, “We’ll tell you later on in the year.” \

When a company says they’re going to tell you later on in the year and they’ve stopped selling consumer drones, it’s a good indication they’ve stopped selling consumer drones. They’re out of stock, etc. They’re going to focus on commercial, enterprise, military, etc. That’s their choice. I think it’s a mistake, but that’s their choice.

Unfortunately, DJI does not offer a beacon for the drone, so there’s nothing that you can just put on yourself that’s small, waterproof, and maintains that continuous connection.

Listen, DJI, you love selling accessory products more than any other company in the space. You make us buy new remotes for almost every single drone. Why not just make an accessory beacon? I, and I’m sure many others, would pay hundreds of dollars for a reliable accessory beacon that works with at least one of your drones for a reasonable period. Skydio sold it, and people bought it. Please, that’s all I’m asking for.

In conclusion, I hope this provides the insights you need to make an informed decision about DJI’s tracking capabilities. As usual, if you found this information useful, please hit the like button, subscribe, ring the Bell for notifications, or do whatever helps you stay connected. Have a great day!

I have a full, in-depth Review, up in the corner there, of both of these units by themselves, but this is all about how they differ from each other.

First off, though just very briefly, here are all the ways they are the same. On one single screen, because I don’t really want to go through all these one by one, but all these things are the exact same on both drones.

Instead, it’s the other 17 things, that we’ll talk about, that are different.

Price difference between the Mini 3 and Mini 3 Pro

First off though, before we get to those 17 things, that number zero, which is the price.

The price of the Mini 3 base unit is $469, versus the Mini 3 Pro base unit is $669. Those are without the remote controls. So basically a $200 difference. And then you can get two different remote controls for both units.

So, you’ve got the DJI RC-N1. In this one, you take your phone, you stick it up top like there pretty straightforward. And then in the other one here, the DJI RC. The entire thing is built-in, so you don’t need anything else with it.

This is my personal preference just because, Like, it just works. It just works, and the factory quality is super high. And since I don’t deal with my phone at all, I’m pretty happy with this.

Mini 3 lacks obstacle avoidance sensors

Now, starting off, with the very first difference right here, it is the lack of obstacle avoidance sensors. So we’ve got these two drones side by side right here, you see on the Mini 3 Pro on this side you’ve got the optical avoidance sensors on the front.

Those two, right there. This here is just simply like fan grates. That’s all that is.

And then, on the back, here, the rearward-facing ones are actually built into the back. So these two there face rearward so it avoids obstacles going backward. And then, on the bottom here, there are also downward obstacle avoidance sensors.

They’re not really so much for obstacle avoidance but more about keeping the drone over a spot of land. So they’re basically image recognition, and they keep it over the exact same spot.

Both drones do have ground detection technology. These two dots right there that helps it figure out how high above the ground it is. So when it lands automatically, it doesn’t like plunk into it and kill your drone.

No Active Track on the Mini 3

Now, the reason why these obstacle avoidance sensors matter is obviously to avoid obstacles, but they also matter for the next item, which is the lack of Active Track.

So, with the DJI Mini 3 Pro, you get Active Track. That’s the ability to go ahead and choose something, for example a runner, a cyclist, whatever you want. A car, or a boat, you name it, you choose the item on the screen, and the drone will actually fly behind you, going along its merry way.

And then you use those optical avoidance sensors to again try to avoid hitting trees and whatever else the case may be. Now that does not mean that there’s no Active Track technology at all in the Mini 3 base.

To be clear there is no Active Track function here but you can use the quick shots feature for that for small short durations, about 15 to 30 seconds.

So, if you look right here, this is what the Mini 3 base unit – I just filmed this a couple of days ago – in this case, I am on my bike, and I’ve tapped myself on the screen it recognizes me as an object I choose that, and then in the Quick Shots menu, I’m choosing one of the five different Quick Shot options.

Now, in this case, it’s the dronie, so it’s going to basically slowly pull back like this up and away from me, and then as it does that it’s going to actually track me with the camera.

And this is kind of the cool little hack to this. So in this case I’m going to keep on pedaling, and it’s going to simply follow me the entire time. Which is a pretty nice way to do this you can see it keeps on going and going and going and it actually kept me the entire time.

Now, reality check, the downside of this was like one of 12 attempts to get this to work right. It takes a lot of practice if you’re going faster. If you’re just walking and running, it’ll work virtually every single time perfectly. But there’s a lot of nuance to this.

I’ve got an entire video on how to do this on the Mini 1, the Mini 2, and probably soon on the Mini 3 up in the corner there.

No Spotlight and Point of Interest for the Mini 3

Now the next item on the list is in addition to no action track modes. There are no Spotlight modes or POI modes.

Those use the same underlying technology and what that allows you to do is to go ahead and choose an object for example windmill or whatever the case may be.

And what the drone will do is that the camera and the gimbal will stay locked on that object will you fly the Drone around it. So, you can fly whatever the heck you want, and up down left right you name it, and it’s going to keep focused on that particular object.

That object can also be moving as well so again a boat or a person or whatever the case may be. So it’s essentially kind of like the opposite of Active Track. In this case, it’s not flying the drone. it’s you flying the drone, and it like flies the camera if that keeps the camera focused. It’s why it’s called Focus Track.

Now speaking of keeping yourself focused. If you’re finding this video instantly useful this is a great time to whack that like button in the bottom there it really does help out this video and the channel quite a bit.

The DJI Mini 3 does not have Master Shots

Now the next item on my list is the lack of Master Shots. So what Master shots does on the Mini 3 Pro is it takes all of those skills from the Quick Shots area, and it basically rolls them together into giving you a giant b-roll compilation. I think this is one of the most misunderstood things out there in the entire DJI series.

Master Shots isn’t something you’re just going to give this like 30 seconds to two-and-a-half-minute-long clip to someone and say; here watch this two-minute boring clip of this windmill for two and a half to three minutes.

Instead, the real key is to use those shots that it creates and it creates almost a dozen different shots for you they’re all perfect.

They’re all focused on the subject and then roll them into whatever project that you have. So again, now you’ve got all these little slices that are basically an entire b-roll done in three minutes. And the Mini 3 base unit does not have that.

Now the next three items are all related to each other, so I’m going to kind of iterate through them.

First off, there is no ability to change a color profile. So on the Mini 3 Pro, you can go from normal to D-Cine.

Like, that’s if you want to grade the color afterward, and the reason why that matters is that you cannot go to 10-bit recording on the Mini 3 base unit.

So the Mini 3 Pro if you’re in a D-Cine. Like with that mode enabled, you’ll get automatic 10-bit recording, versus the Mini 3 base doesn’t have that option.

And then, finally, tied into that same settings pane is the ability to go from h.264 to h.265 or back, depending on what you want.

Practically speaking, I don’t think that really matters too much in 2022. Look if you’re buying one of these drones and your computer, sorry drone, can’t handle h.265, which has been out for almost a decade now, you probably shouldn’t be buying this drone. First, focus on a different computer, a different phone, a different whatever the case is.

Now the next item on the list here is that the frame rates are slightly different. So in the case of the Mini 3 Pro, you can get up to 4K at 60 frames per second, and in the case of the Mini 3 base, it tops out at 4K at 30 frames per second.

And the same is true when you look at some of the slow-motion modes. So, in that case, the Mini 3 base tops out at 60 frames per second in either 2.7 K or 1080p, whereas a Mini 3 Pro goes all the way up to 120 frames per second in 1080p.

And now, of course, you are taking a bit of a resolution hit for that, but you do get that 120 frames per second. You can see an example of it right here. Just doing like waves or whatever the heck I decided my example to be. Again this is something that I would not let this particular item be the deciding factor for you. I very rarely use 120 frames per second in drones I use it more in action cameras but not so much in my drone usage.

Next, we see similar limitations on the photo side. So in the case of photography, you have all the base same resolutions, however, you do not have a dedicated 48-megapixel option on the mini 3 base, like you do on the mini 3 Pro.

Now there are plenty of debates on whether or not it’s actually a true 48-megapixel option or a megapixel photo. And that’s something that you could spend a lot of time talking about. But the point of the matter is, that when it comes to the menus, there is no option for that on the Mini 3 base.

Now, likewise, there’s also no option for burst photos on the mini 3 base like there is on the mini 3 Pro. So the ability to take a whole bunch of photos over a very short period of time is ideal primarily in sports kind of photography.

Maybe something going off a giant ski jump. And you want to you want to do that, that’s certainly there. But again, I think most people these days would probably go towards using simply just the resolution at a higher frame rate and then capturing the stills from that.

There’s obviously differences there, but that’s where most people tend to be. But it is worthwhile noting, though that in that case if you do that you’re not going to get raw images. And both drones do shoot raw imagery so you can use the raw images from virtually all the different modes if you want to both current jpeg as well as raw.

Hyperlapse is absent on the Mini 3 camera drone

Now the next feature is combining both video and photos, which is hyperlapse. And that is not offered on the mini 3 base, but is the Mini 3 Pro.

The idea behind a hyperlapse is that you’re moving somewhere, so it’s like a time-lapse but you’re adding movement to it, and it makes it all nice and smooth.

In fact, you can even set the waypoints and altitudes and camera angles and all kind of fun stuff as you go along so that you’re making, for example, a hyperlapse around something or whatever the case may be. That is not something that’s offered on the Mini 3 base.

Likewise, well, both of the Mini 3 units do have Quick Shots. Those are the pre-programmed shots in them that things like the dronie, or the orbit, the helix, etc. Basically, the ability to go ahead and have the drone fly a certain path for you. Getting that perfect shot that could be kind of complex for a beginner to do manually. There’s one Quick Shot that the Mini 3 base does not have, which is the asteroid Quick Shot.

Ocusync 2.0 versus 3.0 for the Mini 3 Pro

Now the next difference gets into a lot of the transmission stuff, and this is pretty notable. In the case of the DJI Mini 3 Pro, it’s using a DJI’s Occusync 3.0, versus the Mini 3 Base, which is using 2.0 from the previous generation.

Now, there are two ways this manifests itself. First is the claimed range. The Mini 3 pro has a claimed range of 12 kilometers, compared to the Mini 3 base at 10 kilometers. But that’s only for certain Countries. For example, the US is part of the FCC rule set which means in that case, you get the full range.

Versus me here in Europe, I get like half of that as is a spec claim and then even a fraction that again as a real-life claim. Practically though, from a range perspective, both of those are kind of a wash, to be honest.

What’s not a wash, though is what you’ll see from a streaming resolution on your controller. So, no matter which controller you have. Whether it’s this one here, sorry, this one here. Or this one with your phone it’s streaming a copy of your video in real-time from the drone to your controller.

It’s also, of course, recording that 4K files on the drone itself or whatever resolution you’re shooting at. But in the case the Mini 3 Pro is streaming a 1080p copy to your controllers versus the Mini 3 base, it’s streaming a 720p stream.

Now by itself, you probably wouldn’t notice this difference. So if I just stuck you out in the field as one of these controllers and said, what do you think you’d be like yeah. But if you have both controllers side by side, you’ll see that the 720 image is just a little bit softer it’s not quite as sharp.

The very first flight I had both controllers side by side, my wife was with me, and looking at I’m like, that just looks fuzzy. Like it’s out of focus slightly compared to the other one. In reality, the footage was perfectly the same on both of them.

You can see what this footage looks like side by side here out of the actual units, but that streamed copy wasn’t quite as sharp. And that doesn’t matter which controller to use it’s all the same because it’s the broadcasting from the drone itself as opposed to the controllers.

Remote controllers for the DJI Mini series

Speaking of controllers, as I mentioned earlier, the mini 3 Pro is currently compatible with the DJ RC Pro Edition versus the base it’s not. I expect that will probably change over time.

I do appreciate, I love the idea of what DJI is going to of having basically three controller options. Good, better, best. This is a smart controller. I’m too lazy to go across the room and get the fancy one.

But, essentially, three controllers in all drones uh that are released are compatible with all three controllers, and you just pick and choose what controller you like based on how much money you have in what use cases you have.

DJI Mini 3 battery performance

Now that gets us to the very last feature, which is the batteries. Both drones are compatible with both sets of batteries. And there’s two different types of batteries you can see this right there.

This one says 249 grams on it this one says nothing. And that’s because this is the Plus battery, the heavier battery. Now in the case of the base unit that’s included in your drone.

On the Mini 3 Pro, you’re gonna get 34 minutes. However, on the Mini 3 base unit, you’re gonna get 38 minutes. Four extra minutes I guess you’re saving and processing from the opposite avoidance sensors and all the extra goodness.

You actually get better battery performance just slightly on the Mini 3 base. And that’s also true with the plus size battery so in the case it’s 47 minutes for the pro and 51 minutes for the base unit.

Practically speaking estimate about 80 percent of that time, so for me, in the Mini 3 Pro in like warmish summer conditions, not like hot, just warm summer conditions, I’m getting about 35 ish or so minutes on the plus battery.

So kind of a bit short of that 47 minutes claimed that’s just kind of reality check. And also, of course, you can’t buy the plus batteries in Europe.

But they do work in these drones anywhere in the world as long as you are licensed uh for that particular weight class. In my case, I am so no particular concerns there

That, at this point, is it. That’s all I got folks.

I’ve completed my entire Roundup of 17 things to know. 17 differences, not things to know. 17 differences between these drones.

Difference number 18!

Okay, so we got to update the count to 18 differences now, because I just found another one while shooting this thumbnail.

There are no legs on the Mini 3 Pro. Like the front legs. Like there is on the Mini three, look at this they added a little front raiser. I did not notice this at all until right this second.

This makes it a little less tippy, right. So I can press down on this it’s not going anywhere I press down on this. Practically I haven’t really noticed a big deal here. I could see though, in windy conditions. But again, I’ve done the most wind condition tests out there on YouTube and didn’t really notice it there either. On the ground, it stays kind of put, but hey, there you go number 18. Back to the table thing.

If you got other questions, drop them down at the bottom there. I’m losing my voice, so we’re just going to kind of call this video done.

So, as usual, if you found this video interesting or useful, whack that like button. The bottom there, or hit subscribe for plenty more sports technology goodness.

I’m planning on dropping a complete Mini 3 beginner’s guide. I’ve already got one out for the Mini 3 Pro, but they’re so different as we just learned, that they’re not quite the same guide.

So hit the subscribe button for that. And again, have a good one!

Now in this review, I’m going to cover everything that’s new between the Mini 3 compared to the Mini 2. But I’m also going to briefly touch on the differences between the Mini 3 and the Mini 3 Pro. Because, while they share the same name and there are some similarities, there’s also a bunch of differences.

But because there are so many differences there, I’m also going to have a separate video up in the corner here, in the next day or two, that dives into all the nuanced differences. All the little quirky things that the marketing site doesn’t tell you.

Also, apologize; my voice is a bit rough today. Just kind of wrapping up a bit of a cold here. So with that, let’s just dive straight into it.

Three offerings of the DJI Mini 3

Now there are three basic ways you can buy this drone the first is just the drone itself.

So if you have an existing controller, either the DJI RC or the RC-N1 from the last couple years, then you don’t need to buy a controller, and you can save some money.

The next way is with this DJI RC-N1 in that case you’ve got this you put your phone on the top of it in a little slot right there and you’re good to go.

And the third way you can buy it is with the DJ RC. Now, in this case, this RC is a fully self-contained controller. As you can see right there you have a screen on it, and it can basically run the version of Android.

It’s relatively similar to the smart control or the DJI RC Pro of years past.

As of right now the Mini 3, the base unit, is not compatible with the RC Pro but the Mini 3 Pro is. I suspect that might change over time.

DJI Mini 3 Fly More Combo

Now within those three categories of no controller this controller or that controller, you’ve also got the ability to get the Fly More Combo.

Now the Fly More Combo essentially comes with a couple extra batteries and there’s a battery charging bank.

This is arguably the best battery bank the DJI has done ever. They’ve done a lot of banks like every drone gets a ridiculous new battery style.

This one is awesome. USB-C charging there you also got a regular USB-A port, so you can charge up the controller by just plugging in the side of it.

And then the three batteries just slide in and they lock. So you can throw this in a bag with a battery bank or whatever the case may be, and kind of top them off as you go.

Now there is one battery in the drone itself. And then you get two additional batteries. However, while I said there was a Fly More Combo, there’s also Fly More Combo Plus in certain regions. Europe is not one of the regions.

And in the Fly More Combo Kit Plus, you get the bigger batteries. So these bigger batteries are the same physical size, but they have much longer battery life. I’ll talk about that in just a second.

DJI Mini 3 versus Mini 2

So with that, let’s talk about what’s new on the Mini 3 compared to the Mini 2.

The first thing is a camera bump, in a good way by the way. So first off the sensor size has increased from 1/2.3 inches to 1/1.3 inches. which, I know, sounds smaller, but it’s actually bigger the way cameras work.

And they’ve also gone from an F/2.8 down to an F/1.7, and that’s a huge deal for low-light performance in particular.

DJI Mini 3 versus Mini 3 Pro

Next, they’ve increased the quality from 4K to 4K HDR, though you don’t have any of the options for things like the Cine Profile, that you do on the Mini 3 Pro.

And then from a frame rate standpoint, I’ve tossed those on the screen, more or less the same as a Mini 2.

The main difference here between the Mini 3 and the Mini 3 Pro is, there’s no 60 frames per second in 4k, like there is on the Mini 3 Pro. And there’s no 120 frames per second in 1080p. like there is my Mini 3 Pro as well.

True vertical shooting with the DJI Mini 3

Now well the intros of the camera have been upgraded I think actually the bigger deal is the externals of the camera in particular to the new gimbal style.

The gimbal and the camera setup is the same as on the Mini 3 Pro and with that allows true vertical shooting.

The entire camera lens will rotate 90 degrees and allows you to shoot natively in that vertical format.

That’s notable because, while you can certainly make a vertical crop out of a horizontal picture the reality is that’s just simply not the same.

The other thing that this new gimbal allows you to do is to go upwards to 60 degrees versus previously is limited to 20 degrees.

While, I don’t tend to use the ability to shoot all the way up to 60 degrees a lot, there are certainly some cool shots you can do with that. Especially on like tall buildings or structures that may be towering above you.

The last thing to note is that the quick shots feature has been updated to allow vertical shooting. You can see that right here, where I shot this lighthouse. In the quick shots mode doing an orbit around it. That’s all natively done in the vertical shooting mode, in Quick Shots.

Okay, in a quick note if you’re finding this video and share useful that was an awesome time to whack that like button. It really does help with this video channel quite a bit.

DJI Mini 3 battery life and flight time

Next, there’s both the change in the batteries and an increase in battery life. With the base batteries, you go from 31 minutes up to 38 minutes.

However, with the plus batteries in the regions that support that, you go up to 51 minutes. Which is actually more than the Mini 3 Pro, just by like three minutes or so.

No obstacle avoidance on the DJI Mini 3 Pro

Likely because you’re not powering those obstacle avoidance sensors on the Mini 3 Pro. Which is a good thing to note there is no obstacle avoidance sensors on the Mini 3 base.

No Active Track on the DJI Mini 3

As a result of that, it doesn’t have Active Track either. Still, Active Track components are actually built into the Quick Shots feature.

See this right here, where I’m using one of the Quick Shot options to actively track me as I’m riding along.

Now, this is the same as a Mini 1 (Mavic Mini) and the Mini 2 and I’ve actually done full videos on how to create these exact same shots.

I’ll put one of them up in the corner there, and I’ll probably reshoot it on the Mini 3 as well.

But again, it’s the exact same feature. Just, leveraging the Quick Shot functionality, and this is completely automated. What you’re seeing right there. I am not touching the controller at all it is simply doing its own thing.

DJI Mini 3 weighs less than 250 grams

Now, as I noted earlier on the Plus Battery, that’s the one that does not have the weight printed on it, right there.

So you see, Plus has no weight. The regular battery has the weight printed on it, so that way when it’s in the aircraft it shows that it’s a sub-250-gram aircraft, because that is a core thing with the entire DJI Mini series to keep it under 250 grams. Which is really notable for certain regulatory bodies in terms of regulations and licenses and stuff like that.

Which is why this battery is not actually offered in Europe. DJI says that by having this battery, it puts it over the weight limit. And it does, it puts it about 287 grams versus roughly 246 grams of the regular battery.

Still, that doesn’t really make sense to me because obviously, they sell plenty of other aircraft that are above that weight limit. And they still sell those even though they require additional licensing in Europe.

Nonetheless, if you travel to somewhere like the US you can buy the Plus size batteries, and you can bring them back to Europe and fly them quite legally, as long as you have the right license to do so.

There’s nothing in the aircraft stopping you from doing that, and it works just fine. I’ve done it myself just fine. So that is at least nice to know now.

Obstacle avoidance sensors on the DJI Mini 3

Now next, one thing this does not have is those obstacle avoidance sensors, like I mentioned.

So if we look on the Mini 3 Pro on the top right here you have those two sensors that are forward-facing.

Those are also two sensors right there, that are backwards facing, so it doesn’t run into trees or forward and trees.

And even on the bottom, there are two additional sensors used for obstacle avoidance.

This is in addition to the single set of downward-facing sensors right there that the Mini 3 base has. And that’s primarily just to keep it from hitting the ground when it lands.

So, they’re simply ground proximity sensors. They’re not actually obstacle avoidance sensors like you see on the Mini 3 Pro.

Similarities between the DJI Mini 3 Pro and the non-Pro version

Now, let’s talk through a quick list of what has not changed. What’s still in this drone, because I think that’s super important.

Number one, it still has Quick Shot modes as you can see right here.

Quick Shot modes are a set of series automated drone moves. Basically, they make it easy to get really complicated shots with a single tap of the button.

In this case, I selected a boat, but it could be a person a tree a building or whatever it may be. And now it’s going off and doing and grabbing this particular shot.

This happens to be in orbit. A little more challenging, given the wind and the boat speed, but it’s slowly getting there.

Number two, obviously, it’s still under 250 grams as long as you have the base battery.

How does the DJI Mini 3 withstand the wind?

Number three, it still is a pretty high wind resistance level 24 miles per hour. 38 kilometers per hour is the official spec.

In reality, you can go above that. I’ve tested the Mini 3, the Mini 2, the Mini 1, the Spark. All these drones in higher winds than that.

In fact, this very drone right here was about two days ago in 50-kilometer-hour winds, over water. Zero problems at all. And either control and of course, the imagery from that looked pretty stunning too.

DJI MIni 3 shoots RAW

Also, in the list, it still has all the same photo modes as in the past. So it’s got still shots at both jpeg as well as raw.

You can do timer mode. So basically, every two seconds, five seconds, whatever the case may be.

You can do auto-exposure bracketing, where it shoots a bunch of different photos at once in different brackets.

And you can do panoramas both 360, 180, and wide shots, and then it just simply stitches those all together after the fact.

How to fly the DJI Mini 3?

So with that, we’ll just talk through a simple flight outside is going to unfold the arms just like this to get it all expanded.

Out blocks in place, and then you just press this button here once and then long hold to go ahead and turn it on.

The same is true for the remote control. You’ll press it once there and then long hold to turn it on.

In all the flights I did, it took generally between 25 and like 40 seconds or so so for the fine GPS, which is about where I want it to be. Pretty quick and easy.

It uses GPS both in the air as well as to set the Home Point. In case the drone loses connectivity, it’ll know where to fly back to and automatically land.

And when it does the automatic landing, again, it uses those sensors on the bottom of the drone. Those two right there.

To go ahead and basically ensure it doesn’t, like, plummet into the ground and cause any damage.

Now taking off is pretty easy. You have to press the button on the side right there to go ahead and take off.

Or you can bring the sticks in like this, and that’ll go ahead and start the props as you see right there.

There we go. Stop that before I hurt myself. Anyways, with the drone up in the air, you’re gonna start flying around.

Photo and video modes on the DJI Mini 3

Now, on the right-hand side of the screen, you’ve got basically a panel for controlling different photo and video modes.

There’s essentially two kinds of categories of stuff. Video stuff and photo stuff.

So in the video stuff, for example, in the lower right-hand corner, you can change the resolution, and that’s noble, because by default it probably is not going to be the highest settings.

So you can tap that, for example, and change the resolution as well as the frame rate.

Now that’s notable, especially if you go to the Quick Shots menu because the very first time you go into the quick shots menu, it’ll bring that back down to 1080p. So make sure you pop it up to 4K. It’ll stay there for all future shots.

Now in terms of just shooting regular video, you can tap the record button to get on going, but you’ll also see next to that the ability to rotate the gimbal.

Let’s go ahead and put it into vertical shooting mode from horizontal shooting mode.

Below that is the ability to zoom in this is a digital crop. So it’s basically just taking that 4K frame and then cropping it into, what is effectively a 1080p image.

Still, it works pretty good, in some cases. You can see right here where I’ve got a full wide shot, and then I crop in.

And the case of YouTube, if you’re watching this on your phone in 1080p, you probably don’t notice the resolution or the quality difference at all.

It still records the file as 4K, but ultimately it is a bit of a cropped-in image. I find it handy, though. From time to time, I just want to do something very quickly and not have to deal with it in post-production.

Next, if we switch over to the photo modes, you can see I can take photos there again just like before with choosing a 4K resolution.

You do want to make sure that if you want those raw images after the fact that down the bottom there, you choose a format and choose jpeg plus raw.

Otherwise, you’ll just get the jpegs. Which is fine but again if you went out and shot some amazing shots and got back and they’re like oh I wish I had the raw images, so I could tweak them a bit better in photo apps.

Well, at least make sure you do that before you get going.

Change the DJI Mini 3 up to Pro

Speaking of tweaking, down at the very bottom there, there’s the option to go ahead where it says auto? Change that to Pro. And this is true of both the video and the photo side.

It allows you to tweak things like the white balance, the shutter speed, the ISO, the f-stop, etc. All are offered right there.

The core difference between the Mini 3 and the Mini 3 Pro from a photo standpoint is a lack of a 48-megapixel photo. This just pops out a 12-megapixel.

Still, I’m getting great photos from it. You can see some of these shots right here on the screen. These are all just straight out of the Drone Photos.

No tweaking. Nothing else. All in auto mode, by the way. And so again, seeing some pretty good results there.

DJI Mini 3 streams 720p with Ocusync 2.0

Now, there is one area, however, that I do notice a quality difference between the Mini 3 and the Mini 3 Pro, and that is on the controller itself.

So the very first flight, I went out my wife and I were side by side with both drones then looking at two controllers, and I’m like this just seems a little bit softer.

The image on this seems softer, and the reason is that the Mini 3 base has the DJI slightly older transmission technology.

And within that, it tops out at 720p stream from the drone to the controller.

It’s still recording at 4k on the drone, but on the controller itself, you’re only seeing a 720p stream from the drone as opposed to the 1080p stream on the Mini 3 Pro.

In reality, on the SD cards, it’s just as sharp side by side. Again look at these two images side by side between the drones and you can see they’re virtually identical as best I can get them.

And I don’t think like that should be a singular reason why you go for the Mini 3 or the Mini 3 Pro.

It’s just like one interesting little difference I noticed when you are having them side by side. To go, oh, it looks just a little bit softer on this particular controller.

DJI Mini 3 transmission range

Which then gets you just general transmission range uh in my case, because I live in Europe and all my testing this time around is in here, I’m already limited on range.

I’ll put the official specs on the screen right now, but in reality, you’re kind of nowhere near that.

In my testing, I have a DJI RC with the Mini 3 base, and I was like 1000 meters, give or take, before I started seeing some signal degradation issues.

This is over water with nothing in between me on a relatively clear day. I personally don’t have much of a reason to fly drones beyond that range.

From like a Legal standpoint or anything else, but if you do that may be something to consider.

Most people have had better results with this controller (RC-N1) versus this one for range reasons, but again my testing is under EU or CE rules, which reduces the power from a transmission standpoint.

If you were in the US or other Countries that followed basically the US side of the rules, then you get longer transmission.

This is automatically switched in the controller in the drone itself based on the GPS location you’re at that point in time.

There are no separate versions of the drone from like the US versus Europe.

It’s all the same drone. All the same hardware. You’re just simply unlocked based on the GPS location at that exact point in time.

Meaning if I take this drone and fly across the ocean to America, then in that case, I get the full range as any other drone in the US.

DJI Mini 3 battery life and performance

And then, finally what about battery life and performance? Well, it’s going like snow today and it’s been really cold all week. Which is the worst possible scenario for testing battery life.

All of DJI’s battery life claims are done indoors, in a lab environment at room temperature in a wind tunnel where they’re basically flying forward at a certain, you know, speed.

Because it’s actually more efficient to fly forward than to hover. So, I don’t have a good way to test that.

I would say, obviously it’s winter right now and I would mostly in windy conditions so my battery life is a lot less.

If I look though where the Mini 3 Pro battery life has been for the last nine months or so of me using it I’d say you’re looking about 80 percent of their total claimed range.

So, for example, if I have the Plus Battery which claims at like 45 or so minutes on the Mini 3 Pro I get like 35 to 38 minutes give or take on a flight.

DJI Mini 3 pricing information and conclusion

Okay, so where do they stand overall with the Mini 3?

Well, for the price for the drone itself, it’s a solid deal. It’s got a bunch of amazing features in it and it really ups the game. Especially in the battery life realm.

I have no, like real complaints about this drone. It’s pretty good.

The one thing when it comes to recommendations though, is that, I would largely recommend that you just spend the extra money now for the Mini 3 Pro. The extra 220 bucks if you can make that work.

And the reason, as I mentioned earlier on is the obstacle avoidance sensors in particular, will probably save you that money longer term from like crashing into things if you’re brand new to drones.

If, however, you’ve already got something like the DJI Mavic 3 and other drones and you just want a sub 250-gram drone for like kind of fit into your overall portfolio of drones in your house, then in that case, this probably makes a bit of sense if you have that flying experience and can avoid, you know, slamming into the side of your house on your first drone flight.

I love the DJI RC for the DJI Mini 3

And then, when it comes to the controller side of it. I have absolutely loved the DJI RC over the last nine months with the Mini 3 Pro.

I use it as my daily everything, for example, this past summer I went on an eight-day hike with it. 180 kilometers. And I just took basically these two things. That’s it.

And the reason why is that everything is then self-contained. I don’t depend on anything on my phone. I just know it all works as a single package here, the batteries are there. I don’t have to deal with anything else it’s just like an easy button for me.

Anyways, hopefully, you found the DJI Mini 3 In-Depth Review interesting are helpful. Check out all my other DJI Mini 3 videos on the screen right here.

I should soon have a full beginner’s guide, as well as a complete comparison between these two drones, a side by side, including all those nuanced differences. There’s there’s a lot of them, that are in there.

With that, have a good one. Thank you!

DJI Mavic 3 Classic testing Active Track

Now, this video is sponsored by Surf Shark. More about them once we get this drone out of the tree.

Ok, today we’ve got a simple test of the DJI Mavic 3 Classic in Active Track mode. I’m just gonna ride.

And I’ve got the DJI RC hooked up to this little mount here. It’s not an awesome mount but it’s an acceptable amount.

It’s a third-party mount, I’ve got a whole video on it up in the corner somewhere there the Mini 3 and RC accessories and it’s like I don’t know $20 bucks or something.

Now first, here are some quick things to know about Active Track on the DJI Mavic 3 Classic.

Number one is to ensure that you’re in normal mode and not in sport mode.

So you see if you turn on sport mode right there it turns off obstacle avoidance so when you get more speed, you’ll basically just get more speed to hit that tree, at full speed.

Number two is that you want to make sure that you’ve got bypass enabled in the upper right-hand corner. The little dots right there. And there’s the safety tab, you’ll see bypass, breaker off, so this is again for obstacle avoidance. With ‘off’ it will just run into things.

With break, it’ll stop as opposed to going around a tree. Whereas bypass will go around the tree, above the tree, to the left or the right. It’ll basically go around any objects that it sees in order to keep on going.

Next in the lower right-hand corner, you need to make sure you change the resolution. By default it’ll actually be low would be 1080p, so you want to kick it up to 4K.

Inversely if you’re at 5.1K, Active Track does not work in that mode, so it needs to be one of the 4K modes where you can be less than 4K, but 4K is kind of where you want to be.

Once that’s all set and ready to go, make sure you start recording so press the recording button on the right-hand side there. And then from there you go ahead and highlight yourself for the object you want to track. You can also tap on an object if it detects it as a person. I’ve highlighted myself.

DJI Mavic 3 has Active Track, Spotlight, POI and more…

You have three modes at the bottom Active Track, Spotlight or POI. We’re going with Active Track and once you do that, you’ll basically get to choose which direction you want to track. From the left. The right. The top, etc.

We’ll get into that more in just a second. Make sure you press that go button. The green go button and then you’re basically ready to roll.

So with this voiceover done, let’s try this all for real.

Here we go. Highlight myself. I’m right there. There we go. Active Track back. Yep, and let’s go. Just see how this rolls.

Hopefully, the controller doesn’t fall with my handlebars. That’s the only part that’s not super awesome here…

Once we get to smooth the ground I’ll pick up the pace a bunch, but I’m a little concerned about the controller to be honest.

Come on… Apparently my shoes too. It’s not clipping in. Just gonna hold the controller with my hand on the mount. It’s mounted but I don’t TRUST it.

Just a lot of bounces. You probably can’t tell this is actually gravel. It’s not really asphalted at all. Not really. It’s just simply not asphalt. There we go, now we transition to asphalt. Get shifted. Come on pedal clipping. The pedal is displeased today. Time for some new cleats.

Got a runner-up ahead. We’ll see which way she’s going. She’s going left. Cool, I will go right. Ah, here we go. Smoothness. Okay, we’re chugging along now once we get up there.

I have no idea my speed right now. I know it’s speed but we’re cruising. Got a little bit of a gap right here.

It’s (The DJI Mavic 3 Classic) got to kind of shoot the gap or go above it. We’ll see what it does. And now this is a good time to know if you are finding this video interesting or useful just go and whack that like button down the bottom there because it really does help with this video and the channel quite a bit.

Whatever it wants here. Now it’s set to track from behind me you can see that option there. Once we get out here around this corner, I’m going to change this to the left because it’ll be a prettier shot and we’ll see how well that works. There we go.

Just a second. I’ll clear this. We’ll set it off to the left. There are some occasional warnings. There we go.

So I just simply tap myself and choose left and that’s it. And now it should go off to the left of me. I’m here to catching up.

Keep in mind, there are some winds here but it’s not too bad. It’s relatively protected right now.

Also, this bike is clearly too small for me. It’s a loaner bike for testing some other stuff. That’s all right.

There we go now I can bring it down a bit in altitude using the sticks just to kind of make it a more interesting angle. Still going to keep tracking from that same side but there we go. That’s a cooler shot.

Lower, oh no it doesn’t like that. Come on little buddy. Catch back up again. Subject moving too fast. Come on you can go 46, 43 miles an hour.

I’m not moving too fast for you on flat ground into a wind, a bit of wind. There we go. Okay, now this is where it’s gonna get dicey. I’m gonna put it behind me again.

I’ve got to go through this little cut-through here and I don’t think it’s gonna like this much. Follow leaves. I’m gonna slow down. I’m gonna give it its best shot here. See what happens. Gonna follow me, my little buddy

You can do it. Don’t hit the trees. Please. No, not that tree. Oh. You got it. You got it. You got it. I’m here. I’m here. You can find me. Come on. I’ll back up into your view. Oh, it’s right there. Look up gimbal, up, I’m up there straight to the game below. See, there I am. It highlights me again.

There we go. Active Track. Go from behind. Obviously, you know, it’s like resetting a level in a video game at this point. But don’t hit that three either, please.

Okay, to be fair, that spot is right there. That little spot has taken out many of the DJI drones. Skydio has made it through there. Oh, I hate this, these cleats needs to get replaced.

Okay, we’re back up. We’re cooking now. I wonder what it’s going to do with this gap. I can shoot it’s got this gap we can do this. This is plenty big to drive a truck through. Like a literal truck can go through this gap so let’s see what’s gonna happen.

Here, I’m cruising. I’m guessing, I don’t know whatever it says in the bottom left-hand corner there, probably 18 miles an hour so a little on a 30 km an hour. Is anything around the corner? Nope, we’re good.

Okay, it’s not super thrilled, but you can do it. You can do it. Don’t lose me. Don’t lose me. Don’t lose me. Don’t lose me. Good job!

I had to slow down but you know that’s the name of the game here. This is not a Skydio.

You know essentially with the Skydio you got amazing tracking but not amazing video quality.

With a DJI Mavic 3 Classic, you’ve got amazing video quality generally speaking but not amazing tracking.

I’m going to bring this gimbal down a little bit to make it look a little prettier, and I’m going to go this way on the Farm Road.

Let’s see if it just cuts through. What’s it gonna do? Here it got me. Okay. I’m going to pop it out to the right-hand side because that’s prettier. There we go. And now I’m goning kick up the notch. Speed a little bit here.

Hello, bird. Goodbye, bird.

Subject moving too fast. Oh, come on.

At least it looks cool, though. This is an awesome shot right now. I actually like that quarter shot through to the back. Let me see if I get back to that with all these bumps.

it’s not as, oh, I guess I put it there. We got this one. Hey, how are you doing? So yeah this shot right now, with the sun kind of angle the trees, and everything. That’s awesome right there.

Still, you can see I’m holding on to this RC to keep them from jiggling too much.

It is technically a farm road. It’s a decent one but nonetheless. It’s, you know, got some bumps to it.

It’ll be behind me. Good, oh. Which way? I could go that way. I don’t know it that way. I just, oh, that didn’t sound good. Oh, that was a headwind. Oh, nay, not what I wanted.

Okay, now let’s do an orbit. Anything coming? No. Here we go. Let’s see if I can orbit around me into this headwind. This is a stiff headwind, by the way. It’s the same wind for this morning.

We’re going to gimbal down a little bit. I mean, up the elevation just uh… I hear you, little buddy. I hear you. Attention with this too-small bike. There we go it’s completing that. Oh, a little jiggle there for you. I saw that.

Now it’s gonna whip around the back side probably or it’s gonna lose me. Let’s see. Don’t get too far behind. It’s like a Peloton, you fall off the back, and you’re out of luck.

It’s trying. It’s struggling. Uh-oh, and it lost me. I’m up here I’m up here little guy. No, no, not there. I’m up the road.

You keep circling like Search and Rescue, but I don’t think you’re going to find me there.

Let’s see, if I come back here, will you see me? I turn around there we go. See, I’m up here. Hey, come on. You can find me. Are we gonna plunk into me one of the two… See, what if I just I’m gonna roll in front, middle of you in your loop? Will you see me now?

There we go. See, good job. Now we’ll head back the fast way. Now you have a tailwind, you should be able to pull this off. Come on. I’m gonna beat you. I’m gonna beat you. Oh, you’re confused about this. You are. Come on, you can do this loop. You’ve got it. We’re running out of real estate here. Our Runway is about to end.

Oh, you’re just. You’re wimping out. It looks pretty, though, I’ll give you that. Whoa. A sign you almost gonna punked yourself, my friend. Let’s go back to the beginning.

Don’t go that far away. Now, this is dangerous territory. The orbit with the trees. In theory, it has not there.

It definitely does have sideways protection, and all of these trees are fairly clear, so it should not have any trouble seeing these trees.

If it was another month or so. Down. Oh yes… you saw the tree, all right.

Oh, this is gonna be a pain in the back. So it should have easily seen that tree. Here let me get in the frame. Back here. Right there. Hi. Okay, now, uh, let’s get you out of there. This is going to be a pain in the back.

As you can see, it should have easily seen this tree. And now it’s about two and a half three meters. About three or four meters up there. I’m not sure how I’m going get out of there, but I will figure this out one way or another.

We’re way up there, my friend. Got it. Boom baby. Put it there for a second. Now I’m stuck… And there we go. Gotcha, little buddy. You thought you were escaping… Nope.

We could take it up in the air. It looks like it’s fine. I don’t see any. No, no cracks, uh, a little scrape but no crack, no cracked props. Well, we’ll fly back home but, um rolling.

Now, as I mentioned earlier this video is sponsored by Surf Shark. Now unfortunately I do not have a t-shirt with a Shark surfing, but I do have a t-shirt with a Shark on a bicycle, and I can only presume the Shark was out surfing and now he’s riding home, or something like that.

I don’t really know, but what I do know is that Surf Shark is a super easy-to-use VPN.

Another bunch of reasons you might use a VPN could be privacy. As someone who’s been living abroad for over a decade now, I am constantly using a VPN to access sites.

And sometimes it’s like fun stuff like accessing streaming platforms or movies or TV shows uh, while I’m pretending to be in the US.

And then other times, it’s accessing like boring and kind of not so fun stuff like financial websites or news websites or booking engines and things like that.

In fact, my product reviews, I’m constantly using a VPN to check prices in other Countries as well.

Now using Surf Shark is silly easy. It takes just a couple of seconds to install, and then you just simply choose which country you want to pretend to be in, and you’re done.

There are over 3200 servers in 100 countries, so you can pretend to be pretty much anywhere in the world you want to with just a click of a button. Now, if you enter the code Rainmaker, you will get $85 off and three months free. And if, for some reason, you don’t like it, you get the whole thing refunded as well. Thanks again to Surf Shark for sponsoring today’s video.

This looks nice and pretty again. You can see the DJI Mavic 3 Classic is much happier over the road. I don’t know what to say like it’s good when it’s good.

Obviously, this image quality is great. Right now, this looks really nice. You wouldn’t get this out of a Skydio drone. But then again, the Skydio would not have hit that tree in any way, shape or form. But this is also pretty easy lighting right now.

As you saw in other parts, when I’m kind of towards the light, it’s not super awesome. Surprising, actually, but it is low sun at this point, you know, mid-fall or so.

Okay, we’ll go the way we came. Seems like a bad idea. Now we’ll go straight. It almost looks like the construction down here though we’ll see.

Oopsies. I’m trying to avoid any mud here, mostly, so I don’t fall. It’s my… I normally do this fast, but with this mount on right now, it’s just not awesome at all. Like I said, I just don’t want it to snap off, and then I need to do something stupid at the last second to try to save it, and then I’m crashing. We’ll probably fast-forward to this section here.

Okay, this is our turn here. Hopefully, see if we got a clear shot all the way back to home. Yeah, we did we got one guy biking, but he looks like he’s going the opposite direction.

Now let’s see how this handles. It should go down to avoid the trees. That’s a little close, dude. Let’s bring this guy down a little bit.

Now personally, I prefer the lookout to the left, so I’m going to stick this out to the left. At this point, it’s just you can see it’s slowing down in here because of the fact that it’s so close to these trees.

A lot of these trees have lost their leaves, and it’s getting really close to a tree it doesn’t need to get to. Just go out there. Thank you.

Anyways in here, I’ve done this test many times and on this little stretch here because it has a tolerance. I’m on the other side of the tree, dude there we go.

Because of the tolerance, when it gets within two meters or something, it slows down pretty dramatically to basically like running speed.

And so by staying here, I it would be pretty slow from behind me it’s again like running speed, walking speed.

I’m gonna bring this down a bit. It should just stay out there there it’s pretty safe right now.

It’s basically got a wide shot all the way down, so unless it does something last-second, stupid, it shouldn’t run into anything because there’s nothing for it to run into.

Where I can get in trouble is if it were to go back very quickly into trees behind it, but they’re like five meters behind it or forward very quickly into trees up here. But again, it’s at least five meters or so away. So anyways, this is a cool shot. It looks pretty. I like it.

I’m going reasonably fast right now, and now it’s (the DJI Mavic 3 Classic) got nothing behind it. It should really be able to fly through here. There we go. See, you give it the right opportunities, and it does well.

And this is actually a really good example of something where the DJI does better than the Skydio would.

The Skydio would like pump in and out of this a lot. Get a little close my friend, here.

The Skydio will pump in and out, so each tree will go like… There’s a little bit of micro-adjustment, that’s very visible on the camera after the fact versus the DJI.

For better or worse. Just simply says, send it and go straight down on a line. So this distance between me and it outside of that right there is staying very constant.

Now, this is our turn, and you just completely missed our turn, buddy. I’m over here. Get behind me. Okay, there we go.

We’ll bring it back to starting here, and I can’t imagine it’s gonna hit anything now nothing left to hit. Okay, there’s someone right over there, so we won’t go bug them. We’ll just end it right here if you… meters short.

Bring it over here and into the sun this is where we… Do not hit that sign come on this is it. Okay, so there we go our loop is complete.

DJI Mavic 3 Classic versus the Skydio 2

Now my goal for this video is not to do like a crazy Skydio 2 versus this versus whatever the case is.

I’ve done that before, and the DJI Mavic 3 Classic is the same drone as it was a year ago when I did the DJI Mavic 3.

And by and large, the same results, as we just saw without the Skydio, because we know that’s a well-proven understood beast at this point.

Now overall, my thoughts remain largely the same, which is that if I’m going out like all this past summer I use the Mini 3 Pro as my go-to drone for almost everything when it came to a sports tracking standpoint.

The Mini 3 Pro does not have the full sideways obstacle avoidance, but it kind of makes up for it because of the fact that it’s so light. And that even when it does hit a tree or something, the damage is relatively minor.

As long as you keep the drone filming from behind, there are no issues at all. And even on side-tracking in wide open spaces, I had no issues either, so with that hope you found this interesting, useful.

If so, go ahead and whack that “like” button there or hit “subscribe” for plenty more sports technology goodness. Have a good one!

That’s their lightweight aircraft. And in fact, you couldn’t even buy this by itself. But again, as of today, you can now actually buy just this controller itself. That’s notable cuz this is a whole heck of a lot cheaper than the DJI RC Pro that you see right there. Now, there are pros and cons to all these, and I’m gonna dive in and go through a little bit of that at the end of the video.

But first, let’s just talk about the functionality here, how it works, and then kind of a brief comparison between these two. Now, the main use case for a lot of people and why they would want to use a DJI RC with the Mavic 3 is that:

One, this is like half the weight of this. So if you’re going somewhere you’re trying to save weight, for example, this is a great way to do it.

Two, you may have already bought the Mini 3 and want a controller with a screen built into it. In that case, again, you now have compatibility with the Mavic 3, which gives you more flexibility on what controller you take with you.

So the first thing you need to do is to update the DJI RC controller. If you’ve just bought that, or if you have one, for example, with a Mini 3.

Pairing your RC with the DJI Mavic 3

Now, from a pairing standpoint, it’s pretty straightforward. The way it’s going to work is in the lower right-hand corner. You choose the connection guide. You turn on your drone. You can see that I just turn that on there. and it’ll go into this pairing process. It’s probably not going to find it right away because it may try to pair with your existing drone. You’re gonna go ahead and just simply hold this back button down here for four seconds.

That means us in the pairing process, the pairing mode, and then this thing, we’ll find it immediately. It’s as simple as that. Okay. In a quick note, if you’re finding this video interesting or useful, just simply whack the like button at the bottom. It really helps with this video and the channel quite a bit. Now, with all that said, we’ll go out and fly.

I’ve actually been flying it this way with the DJI RC now for more than a month, a month and a half, or something like that. Almost two months actually since the beginning of May. And it’s working great, and I could like walk through all the features. You can see all these features here, but here’s like the skinny.

It’s just like normal. The thing is, with this remote, this is just an Android phone under the covers, basically just like the DJI RC Pro is an Android phone under the covers, and that Android phone is the same exact app that you run on the base controller with your phone. So all the features are the same as what you have there, except for the ones that are not available on this controller.

So, for example, there is no live streaming on this controller. That’s one that’s not there today. That’s a limitation of the DJI RC that is available in the RC Pro. It is also available if your phone is connected to this controller. But other than that, everything works fine. Things like AirSense work just fine.

All the photo photography. Everything there is all the same. The other minor downside, though is that you can’t transfer stuff directly to this after the fact. You can’t transfer videos to this controller here. Instead, you have to do a quick transfer between your drone and your phone. I personally don’t mind that that much.

I prefer having a dedicated controller. It’s just my personal preference. So, for example, later on this month or early next month, I’m going on a more than a week-long, 170-kilometer hike. And I am all about weight savings and battery conservation. So I’m going to take this controller here because the weight is actually identical to this right here, by the way.

Without the phone, but it’s all built-in. And this ensures that I have enough battery life for all the drone stuff I need to do over that week-long timeframe. And I’m gonna take the Mini 3 and not the Mavic 3, but my preference is just having everything kind of consolidated here.

Now you still will get a lower resolution streamed copy to this, and there is a micro SD card, down at the bottom. In fact, you can see my entire video on the DJI RC up in the corner there. I go through 25 common questions on that. So definitely check that out in the corner. But the point being, in terms of like day-to-day usability, it’s identical.

Now the one question a lot of people are gonna ask is, what about range? Did I have any range problems? I didn’t, but I also didn’t have like a scenario where I needed to go super far either. I’m sure there’ll be YouTube channels out there that will do range tests. That’s just not my cup of tea for what I do.

Personally, though, I don’t have any reason to go more than roughly a thousand meters. That’s usually where my like Bailey wick of things kind of ends. Some people want to go way more than that. That’s cool. But for the shots I’m getting, which are mostly sports. I don’t have a reason to go that far out. And regulatory-wise, I can’t go much further than that before I lose sight of the aircraft.

Best DJI RC’s for the DJI Mavic 3 compared

Okay. So let’s do a quick comparison between the DJI RC and the RC Pro. I’m just gonna throw this chart on the screen right now. I’m a big believer in just like giving the information and not making this whole video way longer than needs to be.

You can see most of these things are relatively self-explanatory. You can see the screen size’s the same. The resolution is the same between the two of them. The brightness, it is brighter on the DJI RC Pro. That’s especially notable in bright, sunny conditions like on a beach or something like that. It’s certainly easy to see the RC PRO than it is the RC on a bright beach.

But your phone, the brightness on that, the screen brightness on the beach after the thing warms up is identical to the DJI RC, so basically, it’s a wash in that case between using your phone, using this in terms of visibility and a bright, sunny, warm location. Note the weight there. It’s basically double the weight of this thing here.

It’s pretty impressive. And the battery life is actually longer on this than it is on the RC Pro at four hours versus three hours, which is pretty cool. The first biggie though, is there’s no HDMI port on this at all. There’s no way to get stuff off of this that anyone knows at this point in time in terms of like live streaming or live video off it. It’s ultimately one of the core reasons why they want you to spend more for this.

As silly as it is, despite the fact, there are two USB-C ports on it. Neither of them work with HDMI adapters. I’ve tried. TRUST me, it doesn’t work. In terms of antennas and adapters. This has the antennas on the top there. So those kinds of extra external antennas versus this is totally built-in. Again, some people have had range issues with the RC and the Mini 3.

I haven’t like gone and done, you know, 2000 kilometers or two. 2000 meters or something like that with these two to see if that exists here, whether it’s a controller issue or this. My guess, though, is that the range limitations that people are seeing is more the controller than the aircraft itself.

Now, in terms of buttons, there are still customizable buttons on the back right there. Just like there is on this. You just got more options for customization on the front here, on the top with this little five D button right there, the customizable joystick. So that is one option there, but I found that, practically speaking, this covers everything that I need. But again, some people will use all the customization on that.

The really big ticket item difference between these two is that you can install third-party apps on this, and you cannot install third-party apps on the DJI RC. So because, again, this is an Android phone, you can install additional apps on there. This has more storage space on it. Now 32 gigs built-in.

This is just the eight gigs here. Only about two gigs of that is actually usable, though. But you can put a micro-SD card in there. But again, you can’t actually install apps onto it. Versus this one here, you have plenty of internal storage space as well as the micro-SD card slot.

And then this last one’s interesting screen recording-wise, you’re actually fairly limited here. On the DJI RC, it’s a lower screen-recording. You probably could see that earlier on there. Practically speaking, that really only impacts YouTubers, to be honest. And you wouldn’t really notice it unless you put it on a big screen versus screen recording here is a high resolution.

I don’t understand why that is, but DJI says when I ask them that. That is what it is. That all said, my personal preference is still almost always gonna be using this cheaper remote. And again, the reason is that one, it’s lighter if I’m carrying it with me, especially in a sports scenario. Just less things to carry.

It’s a lot less bulky than this. And practically speaking, it’s hard for me to recommend something that’s 1200 bucks over something that’s, you know, two to 300 bucks here when this does almost everything I need. But again, there are many cases where people want the actual functionality here, either from a regulatory standpoint, for example, having a second person on set or something like that. And with the HDMI output that you would need the RC Pro. This simply won’t work for you anyway.

Hopefully, you found this video interesting or useful. If so, whack that like button or hit subscribe for plenty more sports technology goodness. With that, have a good one!