C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL;DR
- At IFA 2024, DJI launched a brand new very small drone often called the DJI Neo.
- Designed to be gentle and easy, the drone is sufficiently small to relaxation in your palm and doesn’t require a controller.
- The Neo will value $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 straightforward entry level for budding pilots and videographers. It was an awesome various to the perfect digicam telephones on the market since it could actually do a variety 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 costlier — than the earlier mannequin. With prices and technical know-how growing over time, the unique concept of the Mini line has form 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 look like an unlimited and complex beast by comparability. The Neo is so tiny that it could actually 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 photographs — 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 carried out. It may also be managed by 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.
After all, in the event you do need to management the drone manually, that’s doable. 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 bold, you possibly can 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 possibly can rise up to 40 minutes of 4K/60FPS footage saved to its 22GB inside storage.
The DJI Neo is so small it could actually match right into a fanny pack and really easy to make use of that you do not even want a controller.
Sadly, you gained’t be capable of get 40 minutes of footage 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, growing your potential flight time to 54 minutes with no need to cost something.
Whenever 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 costlier 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 elements of the Neo is that it could actually observe you. For instance, you could possibly launch it out of your palm, begin monitoring your again, after which it’s going to movie you as you stroll, experience your bike, go for a run, and so forth. You can even have it observe your face so you possibly can movie a vlog in a walk-and-talk model. Should you join your DJI Mic 2 to your telephone, an algorithm will truly digitally combine down the noise the drone makes, permitting you get respectable audio even with the drone filming you just a few toes away.
