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 additional batteries and a multi-charger.
Again in 2019, DJI launched the Mavic Mini, a small drone meant to behave as a straightforward entry level for budding pilots and videographers. It was an ideal different to the perfect digicam telephones on the market since it could possibly do numerous issues a cellphone 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 over time, 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 seem to be an infinite and sophisticated beast by comparability. The Neo is so tiny that it could possibly relaxation in your palm.
To get began with the Neo, you don’t even have to be taught to fly it. Simply hit the “Mode” button on the drone to pick out from quite a lot of pictures — together with the basic 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 achieved. It may also be managed via voice instructions given to your related smartphone if you wish to get a bit extra within the reeds however nonetheless don’t need to contact a controller.
In fact, when you do need to management the drone manually, that’s attainable. You should purchase a {hardware} controller from DJI, or you can even management it with the DJI Fly app in your smartphone. When you’re actually formidable, you’ll be able to 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 will probably be captured with the 12MP 1/2-inch sensor. If you wish to movie with the drone, you’ll be able to stand up to 40 minutes of 4K/60FPS footage saved to its 22GB inner storage.
The DJI Neo is so small it could possibly 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 of get 40 minutes of footage abruptly with the Neo as a result of its flight time is just as much as 18 minutes. Nonetheless, that ought to be sufficient to seize a fast selfie and even movie a vlog. The Combo mannequin comes with two additional batteries, rising your potential flight time to 54 minutes while not having to cost something.
Whenever you’re capturing video footage, it ought to be pretty clean, though not practically 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 points of the Neo is that it could possibly monitor you. For instance, you would launch it out of your palm, begin monitoring your again, after which it would movie you as you stroll, journey your bike, go for a run, and so on. You too can have it monitor your face so you’ll be able to movie a vlog in a walk-and-talk fashion. When you join your DJI Mic 2 to your cellphone, an algorithm will really digitally combine down the noise the drone makes, permitting you get first rate audio even with the drone filming you just a few toes away.