C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL;DR
- At IFA 2024, DJI launched a brand new very small drone often known as the DJI Neo.
- Designed to be mild and easy, the drone is sufficiently small to relaxation in your palm and doesn’t require a controller.
- The Neo will price $199 by itself or $289 for the Combo with two further batteries and a multi-charger.
Again in 2019, DJI launched the Mavic Mini, a small drone meant to behave as a simple entry level for budding pilots and videographers. It was an ideal various to one of the best digicam telephones on the market since it might probably do plenty of issues a telephone can’t (like fly, clearly). Since then, there have been a number of iterations of the Mini line, with every being higher — and dearer — than the earlier mannequin. With prices and technical know-how rising through the years, the unique thought of the Mini line has sort of been misplaced.
Enter the model new DJI Neo, which the corporate simply launched at IFA 2024. This new drone is small and easy to the purpose that it makes the Mavic Mini appear to be an unlimited and sophisticated beast by comparability. The Neo is so tiny that it might probably relaxation in your palm.
To get began with the Neo, you don’t even have to study to fly it. Simply hit the “Mode” button on the drone to pick out from quite a lot of pictures — together with the traditional Dronie — and it’ll take off out of your palm, movie or {photograph} your exercise, after which land again in your palm when it’s completed. It can be managed by way of voice instructions given to your linked smartphone if you wish to get a bit extra within the reeds however nonetheless don’t need to contact a controller.
After all, when you do need to management the drone manually, that’s attainable. You should purchase a {hardware} controller from DJI, or you may as well management it with the DJI Fly app in your smartphone. Should you’re actually formidable, you may even use the FPV controller and a set of DJI goggles. These choices make the little DJI Neo fairly versatile.
Stills shot by the Neo can be captured with the 12MP 1/2-inch sensor. If you wish to movie with the drone, you may rise up to 40 minutes of 4K/60FPS footage saved to its 22GB inside storage.
The DJI Neo is so small it might probably match right into a fanny pack and really easy to make use of that you do not even want a controller.
Sadly, you received’t be capable to get 40 minutes of footage suddenly with the Neo as a result of its flight time is barely as much as 18 minutes. Nonetheless, that needs to be sufficient to seize a fast selfie and even movie a vlog. The Combo mannequin comes with two further batteries, rising your potential flight time to 54 minutes with no need to cost something.
If you’re capturing video footage, it needs to be pretty clean, though not almost as clean as you’d see with a Mini or different higher-end DJI drone. That’s as a result of the gimbal on the DJI Neo is a single-axis unit (up and down solely), whereas dearer drones have a six-axis gimbal, which provides you much more stabilization. Fortunately, the digicam on the Neo has digital picture stabilization (EIS), which ought to assist clean issues out a bit extra.
Lastly, one of many coolest facets of the Neo is that it might probably monitor you. For instance, you would launch it out of your palm, begin monitoring your again, after which it can movie you as you stroll, experience your bike, go for a run, and so forth. You may also have it monitor your face so you may movie a vlog in a walk-and-talk fashion. Should you join your DJI Mic 2 to your telephone, an algorithm will really digitally combine down the noise the drone makes, permitting you get respectable audio even with the drone filming you only some ft away.