DJI FPV Drone Long Term Review | After 6 Months Of Flying

good day folks my name is shawn and this is air photography today we're going to be doing a long-term review of the dji fpv drone when it comes to major releases like this i like to follow up down the road especially with something like this that is totally different it was kind of the first drone like this available on the market i know there's many people who still have a lot of questions about it who are still on the fence whether this is a right choice for them it's not something they want to jump into because it does have a fairly high price tag now this long term review is not going to be a very technical video going over all the specs and features because there's already a ton of videos available on youtube about that this video is going to be more about my user experience over the last six months and how i've enjoyed it now when dji launched the original fpv system about two years ago maybe a little bit more i was pretty excited about it because i was thinking about getting into fpv and when dji launched the digital version i thought it was a perfect time to get in so i started spending money on many different types of digital fpv drones some of these have a full air unit in it some of them are just the caddix vista but as you can see here i did buy quite a few i was really experimenting with it and trying to learn the hobby and i found myself just getting more frustrated than anything they're not the easiest thing to pick up you have to really log a lot of hours a lot of stick time to get good at it these fpv pilots that you see on youtube that are doing pretty incredible maneuvers and tricks that's not something you pick up overnight it takes a lot of time a lot of dedication and a lot of practice and for me i just didn't have that kind of time for me a couple times a week i have a few free hours in the evening where i can get out and fly and on top of that i still enjoy flying gps drones so you know it was kind of hard to get the time in there to really learn it so needless to say a lot of those fpv drones were just collecting dust when it comes to fpv i was more interested in filming cinematic fpv shots not so much the freestyle stuff where you're flipping around trees and through little obstacles and that a lot of people like that but that really wasn't what i was interested in i wanted to learn fpv for cinematic flying just some different perspectives that i could edit into some of my videos so when it was rumored that dj i was gonna be releasing an fpv drone i got pretty excited and of course i did buy it right away and it's probably some of the best money i've ever spent in this hobby i've had an immense amount of fun with it and i've got some pretty interesting content as well now for me the appeal of the dji system is that the learning curve is really small if you know how to fly a mavic or even a mavic mini you already know how to fly the dji fpv now you're not going to have all the skill in manual mode but in normal mode or sport mode for the most part it flies just like a mavic it's held in place by gps if you let go of the sticks it's just going to sit there and hover it has all the safety features that you would expect from a dji drone like if you happen to become disconnected it will come right back to you now as mentioned i've been flying this since it came out about six months ago it's almost been six months and i've got probably at least 300 flights logged with it and for me i've only been in manual a handful of times i'm not really great at manual but again that's not why i bought it i didn't really buy it to be doing flips and rolls now some people that's what they're interested in but for me again i just wanted to get some nice cinematic footage i wanted the thrill of the speed because this thing flies extremely fast and just the immersive flight wearing the goggles now i'm just gonna go over a couple things here why i really like it and what appeals to me about it the first is easy charging these are intelligent flight batteries so you don't have to worry about voltages making sure you don't run them too low improper charging and on top of that they're very safe lipo batteries that you use with traditional fpv drones they can be very unstable they can cause fires and you really have to pay attention to the voltage when you're flying but as mentioned with the dji fpv drone batteries you just plug them in charge them you've got a regular meter just like a mavic telling you when the battery is low when the battery gets too low the drone is automatically going to go into an automatic return to home so the system is just easy to use and flawless as mentioned it's easy to learn and it's easy to fly even if you've never even flown any drone before you can pick this up pretty quickly no matter whether you're young or old or middle-aged it's a good system for everybody as mentioned it's also scalable to your skill level so you can start out in a normal mode just kind of cruising around you can then move to sport mode to pick up the speed a little bit when you're ready you can move into manual mode and even manual mode has two different modes one where the angle roll is limited so you don't have to worry about accidentally flipping over and then you can put it into full manual where you can do all your tricks flips and dives and all that wonderful stuff but for myself i leave mine in sport mode most of the time i find it flies fast enough and it gives me the shots that i want to get another really nice feature is the break button some people call it the panic button that's one thing regular hpv drones don't have once you take off you're committed to the flight you can't really stop to take a breather get your composure you have to be on until you land that drone if you run into trouble chances are you're just going to end up crashing your drone or perhaps even losing it when you're flying the dji drone if you get a little bit nervous and you just want to take a break you can just take your hands off the sticks and the drone's just going to stop and hover if you're in manual mode flying and you happen to get yourself into trouble disoriented all you have to do is hit the panic button there the break button and the drone is just going to ride itself and just sit there and hover so a lot of nice safety features to make your flight a little bit more comfortable and as mentioned the return to home is a really nice feature i had an incident the other day with it i was actually flying at my sister's farm now usually the drone has really good penetration and really good distance but the way i was flying i was flying pretty low to the ground and then on top of that i went in behind some trees now if i was flying a regular fpv drone it would have just disconnected and the drone would have crashed i would have to go out and try and find it but with the dji drone you could see in this footage here once it got disconnected it just break and stopped where it was it then put itself into return to home so it started to rise to the predetermined height but then of course it reconnects and i was able to take manual flight again so it's all those safety features that just make it a really enjoyable experience and takes away the worry another thing if you like to fly long range this is perfect for it now you are limited by the battery but sometimes i'd like to send mine out a little bit of a distance you can see here in this footage here i sent it out to an abandoned lighthouse and it was about two kilometers two and a half kilometers offshore sending it out that far and capturing footage i had no worries at all because i knew the drone would keep track of the battery level for me and initiate a return to home when it thought it needed to come home and if i got disconnected from being out too far again it would just come home now i'm not a highly trained fpv pilot by any means so you know sending out a regular fpv drone that far especially over water is something that i would probably never do but with the dji drone there was no issue at all now another nice thing i will be able to do with the dji fpv drone this winter is fly it in the snow i haven't been able to do that yet because we haven't had snow since i purchased this but again i wouldn't send a regular fpv drone out in the snow because of my skill level i'd probably end up crashing it out in the field and the snow would never find it so all the way around it's just a fantastic little drone i've had an immense amount of fun it's just thrilling flying that fast in sport mode you can get up to almost 100 kilometers an hour if you put it into manual mode you can go a lot faster than that now a couple other things i do want to talk about you may have noticed here i do have a camera mount on the top this is by small rig they have an accessory kit for the dji fpv drone which i purchased and for the most part it works quite well now i have had a gopro on it you know just mainly for testing purposes but i find the camera on this is more than adequate i'm pretty happy with the footage i don't really like putting cameras on it because the drone does sound a little funny up in the air and you do lose a bit of performance and agility but what i do like to do with it just to get some interesting perspectives you can see in this footage here i have an insta360 go to attached to it with a curved gopro mount and that just gives you an interesting perspective when flying around it's kind of fun to add to your edit now it isn't something i really recommend doing when i do attach it the center balance is really off and the drone does make some very odd noises while it's flying around i don't do it too much because i don't really want to push my luck or do any damage to the drone now another nice feature of the dji fpv drone is that the camera is tiltable and what i mean by that is on a traditional fpv drone you know you're gonna mount a gopro on it if you're trying to capture cinematic footage and of course you're gonna have the fpv camera out front but once you have your gopro on it and you're flying it's in that fixed position you can't change the angle unless you come back and land and then adjust it that way and myself i have gotten some footage that didn't look all that great with a gopro just because the angle was a little off but with the dji fpv drone you can adjust the camera just by using the gimbal wheel on the controller and that way if you want more sky in the shot or you want to angle the camera down you're able to do so now another thing i want to talk about here is wearing glasses with the goggles i know there's a lot of people who have asked me about wearing glasses and i'm a person i wear glasses for driving or if i'm watching a movie or something anything that i need a little bit of extra clarity in the distance when i first started flying with it i didn't think i needed my glasses because everything in the center was nice and clear but the problem i was having is no matter how much i adjusted the vision at the bottom there with those adjustments the outside of the picture was always a little bit blurry so then i tried it with my glasses and the whole screen was crystal clear so indeed you can wear these with glasses with no issue at all now with that said i just want to mention dji sells a foam upgrade it's supposed to help with light leakage some people say they're more comfortable i did try them but the problem was is that once i put them on i was no longer able to get my glasses through because it does make the opening a lot smaller so keep that in mind if you do end up purchasing the dji fpv drone and you wear glasses you may want to avoid that upgraded sponge you may find that your glasses don't fit underneath correctly anymore now as much fun as i've had with this drone there are a few issues with it that you need to be aware of now the first thing is is that this thing can be damaged fairly easy now with that said it is a fairly robust drone i've actually crashed this a couple times and uh for the most part i've been pretty lucky i've had some props i've had to replace but really it's like a mavic drone if you crash into a tree or a wall cement wall at full speed you're gonna break it and most likely will have to be sent back in for repair now dji does sell these arm bracers for it and the two times i did crash mine i had them on so you know i do believe that these do help stiffen up the drone and can prevent some damage so definitely i do highly recommend them and on top of that they do sell some replacement parts like for example here we have a gimbal and camera unit and this is actually fairly easy to replace on your own you know so it's a fairly easy fix if you happen to fly into something and you damage the gimbal and camera you can order these on the dji website and you know it's a pretty easy fix the other replacement parts they sell here are the landing feet at the front these things can snap off fairly easy especially if you're flying low to the ground and you do a somersault you kind of these things can snap off they can be replaced fairly easy as well so that is one of the downfalls of it you know knowing how fragile it can be kind of prevents me from getting too risky with it you know there's some shots i would love to try and get but again i don't want to risk destroying the drone i am hoping when dji releases a version 2 they are going to make it completely 100 modular where it's plug and play you can easily replace motors arms i think that would make this drone much more appealing to many more people because then they won't be so worried about destroying an expensive piece of equipment the other downfall to it is that it's quite bulky this drone doesn't fold up for most storage options you have to take the propellers off and then of course you have the goggles the controller the batteries the batteries are fairly large in this so you do have to have a fairly large case if you're a person who always likes to pack light travel light this definitely is not a great choice especially if you like to bring other equipment with you i have a large backpack that i use that i have this drone in and i can carry a couple other drones in it as well it's a big backpack and it actually has wheels because it does get quite heavy the other thing is it is a little bit pricey especially if you're just starting to get into drone flying um it comes in at 12.99 for the base kit that only comes with one battery if you do want to buy the fly more kit for more batteries and the charging hub you're going to be looking at another 299 dollars and then on top of that if you want even more batteries because uh three batteries in my opinion just isn't quite enough the other downfall to it is that it is extremely loud so be prepared to attract a lot of attention and some people don't like that you know quite often when i fly i love the mini because nobody knows i'm flying it it is very loud especially if you're flying fast and aggressively so maybe not the best choice to be flying in a quiet suburban neighborhood and lastly as mentioned the camera on this isn't too bad i've been pleased with the quality of course it can always be better i would like to see on the second generation a much better camera now the other thing i want to mention too when this drone first came out a lot of people mentioned that this is a great beginner drone for fpv people who want to learn fpv in my opinion yes it is indeed a great uh drone for beginners if you're wanting to learn fpv but to me it's not just a beginner drone it's also an end drone as mentioned i have all those other fpv drones that i purchased when dji released the digital fpv system i haven't flown them since i picked up this drone for me this drone is meeting all of my needs in fact it's exceeding my needs so i have no interest to fly those other drones anymore worrying about lipos most likely they're all going to go up for sale at some point i might keep one of the little mini ones just for beating around and uh you know doing a few little flips with it so that is basically my long term review of the dji fpv drone i really hope dji continues down the fpv path i would love to see some different variations of this drone as mentioned maybe perhaps a cinema rig i would love to see a little sub 250 gram one and perhaps maybe they'll make one that's more geared to freestyle for people who just want to do a lot of flips and different things like that well folks that's basically it for this video if you enjoyed it and got some value out of it give it a thumbs up that's always appreciated don't forget to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any of our upcoming videos and we'll see on the next one [Music] you

Channel: Air Photography

Views: 249,851

Keywords: DJI FPV, DJI FPV Drone, Long Term Review, Review, After 6 Months, DJI FPV Review, DJI FPV Drone Long-Term Revew

Id: Ag9lVZtDOhE

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 28 2021