DJI Mini 3 Pro Review - Part 1: If you own it you'll love it

wow [Music] [Music] hey everyone welcome to my channel well this is my dji mini 3 pro review ta-da now dji released this little guy way back on may 10th and dji sent it out to all the reviewers who only review dji products for the most part so this channel reviews all drones so i never qualify as a dji fanboy to review their products so i had to buy this with my own money so i bought this baby with the integrated display and the fly more kit over here and eventually it was sent to me and i received it at the end of may early june and i've been testing it since then and now it's time for my review now what makes my review different than other reviews you've probably seen is that well a lot of the reviews you've seen were from people who received this drone back in early may from dji it wasn't finished back then so the drone they were reviewing and telling you about was an unfinished product it's pretty much finished now so the review you're going to see here is an honest reality of what you're going to get if you buy this drone the second thing is that i'm only reviewing stuff that you the viewer asked for so i made a post a while ago on the youtube community forum and i said what would you like to see reviewed and many of you sent me all types of ideas for review and i actually followed them and that's basically what this review is about and this is part one of that review now quickly before i get into the meat of the review let me answer some viewer mail questions the first question is should i buy this yes it's a buy if you have the money and you have the credit card ready to go buy it i'll tell you it's a really good drone there are some negatives well i guess i should mention them here but first let me answer the second question the second question i'm looking at over here is is this a professional drone i don't know why people think dji drones are professional it could be because they labeled this the dji mini 3 pro but pro does not mean professional it means prosumer dji realized a long time ago in the day of the dji phantom 3 that if they make many models they have to call the top model something so back then you had the dji phantom 3 pro next one down dji phantom 3 advanced next one down dji phantom 3 basic and so on and so forth they did it as well with the phantom 4 they had phantom 4 standard phantom 4 pro then when it came to mavic's they had the mavic pro then the mavic air so pro doesn't mean professional like a professional would be using this to do like the next hollywood movie if they did you know you'd have stuff like dji inspire pro dji inspired 2 pro or you'd have a lot of those other things mavic 3 seni pro you know it it really those are more pro than this but uh yeah so this has the pro for prosumer so on to the next question oh you're gonna love this one the dji fanboys are not gonna like me when i say this so the third question is are there any negatives with this drone i'm going to read them off right here and i'm not going to get into it too much in this video but some of it you're going to see here first negative focus this camera does not have the ability to focus as well as something like the nano plus the evo nano plus by atel if you're focusing on something and then you walk in between what you're focusing on and the camera it will not focus on you there's no face detection no human detection anything like that it just keeps focusing on the background it's happened to me many times and on this tiny screen half time your image is out of focus and you don't even know it number two it overheats if you put this on the ground on a hot sunny day and you don't fly fast enough it will overheat and turn off and you have to wait till it cools off before you can fly same thing happens when you're flying if it's really hot and you're tasking it and it's getting hot if it starts to overheat your range is limited because the vtx overheats brings me up to number three which is the range using this controller your range is kind of limited because there's no external antennas some people said they have range issues with the ce and the fcc sometimes you live in north america united states or canada and it goes into ce mode and you have no range it could be once again because it overheats and it reduces the vtx because that is the hottest part on this little baby number four is flight time i took this out many times and flight time is okay but don't hover for very long when you hover it really uses up the flight time on this i have done hyper lapses and sometimes i can only get out two in a row and then it's out of battery power so when you're doing a hyperlapse that's a lot of hovering and it's trying to stay stable especially if you don't have it moving and it sucks up the battery you might only get like 19 minutes flight time when that happens number five you're gonna see in this review it has no landing light on the bottom many other drones have a landing light and they have a landing light because all the sensors on this drone all require light so when there's no light they don't work number six vertical mode so the whole camera is horizontal and all they do is just like the old dji mavic pro the camera turns sideways and you can take photos and this one allows you to take video and you can use all the functions you're going to see it in this video doing it in vertical mode if you wish the only problem is on the app they have the app so that when it goes into vertical mode on your screen you get this tiny little sliver of an image because it's in vertical mode they really need to speak with autel and take a look at the autel evo light those guys have vertical mode down perfectly and it's a million times better than the vertical mode on this little baby number seven the display on here well it's only 700 nits and when you're out in the bright sunlight you really can't see anything now for somebody like me who's been flying since the year 2013 i can look at these super tiny screens and i can make out enough to see what i need to see so it doesn't really hamper me but i showed that screen to other people when i was out flying and they're like i can't see anything like they thought there was no image on it it's pretty black but uh if you're used to it you'll get used to it you can shade it just put some shade and then it's okay and number eight well it's a dji drone so it has dji no fly zones that means when you're flying you are gonna get the notice that you can't take off if you're in a no-fly zone that happened to me once i was out at my local beach a little too far close to an airport and it said you can't take off so i had to go to the other end of the beach to take off so honestly those are the only negatives i've noticed everything else is positive as far as i can tell maybe in future videos i'll have other negatives but that's it and they're not show stoppers i would still buy this drone i am very happy with this little guy so this is my part one of my review check it out [Music] so [Applause] [Music] here we go with my first low light test and i can tell you i was very impressed check this out you can see the moon up top now what's interesting is as i rise up into the sky the sky is not blown out the exposure does not change i can make out the definition on the ground and the definition in the sky and when i zoom in still looks great sure it's a digital zoom and digital zooms are not that great but dji makes a smooth zoom so check this out smooth going in smooth coming out image looks great for social media like youtube i'll do it again here you can see in low light it's very hard for a digital zoom to actually bring in any detail but it looks pretty good still see the detail in the sky and see the detail on the ground so i was quite impressed [Music] here we are filming the ground in low light now in low light there's usually not enough light to bring out detail in the image however everything looks quite detailed to my eyes so i think a lot of owners of this drone will be quite impressed and quite happy with filming in low light now here's something i found very interesting look at the sky and look at the ground as i lower the drone what should normally happen with most drones is the exposure should change i have it on auto camera settings so as objects come to the forefront well then the image should brighten but look at the sky everything stays the same that is really good for a tiny little mini inexpensive drone like this with not a lot of pro settings hey everyone can you see me back here it is evening the sun has gone down as you can see i can see over there see the orange sky the sun has gone down i am lit up by a street light that's giving me this orange glow there's a big activity going on over there and that's where i'm gonna fly the mini three pro over to check out how good it is in low light so this is my screen can you see it over here kind of small eh anyways i just want to mention that if you're if you're unaware a drone like the mini three it does not have a takeoff and landing light because it's only 250 grams they couldn't add it that means as well that the sensors on this drone that require light they won't work so there's no obstacle avoidance at night there's no detection of any kind it will kind of detect the ground with some sensors barometers inside but when i'm flying around i'm kind of flying blind and just looking through my little display here which looks like this all right let's go fly take off going up all right i just want to show you me standing down here beside my jeep this is what it looks like i look like i'm kind of lit up because there's a street light there so however good this is recording this is what you get at night so let me bring the camera up and show you the festivities so straight through those trees is where all the excitement is happening so let's go that way remember i have no obstacle avoidance so i can come pretty close to the tree i almost hit it there all right so let's take it up so nobody sees or hears me because i don't want people to be hey there's a drone but there we go look at this parking lot the whole festivities so this is the image you get so i'm pointing at the lights that they have on the ground which will give the brightest spot if you look in the spots where there are no lights you'll see noise that's common in a small little sensor like on the mini three so here i'll show you if i go to the left here look in the center of the field you should start see it looks like ants or snow or whatever on the screen that's just noise you get that when there's low light there is a noise reduction going on in this drone dji sticks it in all their drones and it's in this one so it's trying to work its best at making knight appear pretty good so here we go you can see looks pretty good to me let's go way up and look straight down here we are right above and i'm going way up maximum flying delta there we go that's my maximum altitude i'm allowed to go in canada so you can see the lights on the side and the darkness in the center where you'll see some noise now if i bring the camera up and look at the world let's go this way pretty fast there's a forest and if you look out there that should be pretty black so you see any noise how's that looking you know on my screen here it looks really good i can see the noise but i can't see how bad it is there's a road out there with cars on it how's that look pretty good there you go that's that's what it looks like at night on this little baby and if i look this way this is my town you can see the school below and my little community with all the lights on out farther away let's take a photo of that [Music] all right our little guy's coming back and i put on return to home let's see how close he comes back he's right over here i don't know if he's going to be even being the camera oh i look like he's off to the side i don't know if the cat and i is over there he's over there oh well see it's night time and on my screen because there's no light i don't know if you can see this it says see on there it says make sure it doesn't know what it's landing on it has no idea because the sensors don't work at night so i have to make sure even though it's on pavement here i'll show you it's right over here turn it this way it's uh right there and uh nothing under it pretty smooth so i'm gonna tell it go on down okay it's all good there we go so i'll say unfortunately that's one of the things dji should have added was a light at the bottom and taken something else off because the drone is kind of hit and miss at night although the camera looked like it was working well [Music] all right i'm out here in this field on a super windy day to answer your questions about the mini 3 pro so i did ask previously to ask me what you'd like to see and one was how well does it fly in the wind it's pretty windy right now we have wind gusts from 50 kilometers up to 70 kilometers per hour hopefully you can hear my voice going through the microphone there's a lot of wind happening here so the mini 3 is over there and i'm going to pop it up in the wind and you'll see how it flies it should fly fine all drones fly fine in the wind all it is is that if you're inexperienced you may not realize that you never fly a drone in the wind if the drone doesn't have enough speed to fly in the wind in other words in plain english what does that mean that means check out what the forward speed on your drone is and then check out what the wind is the forward speed of the drone should always be faster than what the wind is or obviously you know logically you're not going to go anywhere so there's a lot of youtube reviewers that somehow forgot that when they tested out drones anyway so for today this little baby can handle the wind i'm pretty sure all right let's turn it on and take it on up in this wind here we go see it's pretty good it hasn't flown back it hit me in the head yet although i am moving back oh it is bouncing backwards so look where it is and uh it started over here uh and it's going back there is it powerful enough to hold itself in place well i'm looking at it sideways so you could see it and as long as it doesn't gust too much so each time there's a wind gust it will push it backwards but overall in strong winds it's hanging out it's doing well and if you want to see what strong winds bouncing around with video looks like let me just turn on the video here there we go if i bring the camera down on me that is the mini 3 in strong winds it probably looks quite stable even though all around it it's anarchy here let me let me turn it around and you can see what i mean about anarchy look at the trees behind it here look at there it's it's crazy don't bring the camera look at the wind is just blowing back here everything's blowing i'm blowing so it's pretty good so i would say to answer that question is it any good in the wind yeah let me answer another question many of you have asked me how bright is the screen on this little remote down here see this thing here well the drone is on and this here controller's on and i have it on full brightness can you see anything can you see it on a bright sunny day i'm waiting for the sun to come out and i'm going to tell you right now no you can't it's very hard to see my cell phone which is an iphone 11 pro max is brighter than that screen however i've been flying for a long time so i'm used to what i'm looking for and you can see enough to get by but those little screens that where am i follow me this little screen down here you know it's on right now the sun is shining there we got the sun out can you see it these little screens are not designed for any type of pro photography you can't they're too tiny and they're not bright enough you really need something very professional if you're going to do pro photography you know like adjusting the white balance and all the colors and getting everything perfect these will not cut it whatsoever but on the mini three pro who cares it's a fun drone it's just to take with you on vacation or everything else here comes that win again so uh i answered that question can you see this in the bright sunlight barely you're gonna have to use some sort of shade over that because yeah not that not that good [Music] okay we're gonna try the active track through the trees and see if the avoidance system works so i'll keep talking as i'm walking here so the active track on this drone is really good in my opinion it's as good as the air 2s and since it's a smaller form factor i think it's slightly better than the air 2s for the active track it does have a pass and i do have it set to bypass objects you have to set it up in the settings to make it go around objects if not if you select break it will just stop every time it sees an object on the screen it's flashing different colors telling me there's obstacles in the way but you see how it goes around the trees and everything no problem so you can see there's a little hole up ahead in the forest and it's just got to follow me through the forest without crashing into anything it should like it better in the forest because it's not as windy in there so let's go there's lots of little overhanging branches that could mess it up and then i gotta send this thing in for repairs but we'll see what happens so it's going crazy now telling me there's obstacles as long as i'm not moving fast it should follow me because these little drones are designed to go walking speed uh when there's lots of objects around they can't think fast enough the processor in them is it's only so much you can fit in a little tiny drone so and sell it for the price they sell it at so anyways it's following me around here i'm not doing a thing my hands are out here if i hear a big crunch behind me i'll know it didn't work out so so far so good it's kind of dark in here but there's no wind which is good so little branches like this those are hard to see like all this stuff around here it's going nuts if i hold this close to my mic listen to it it's just going nuts it's like it's ding ding ding ding ding because there's so many objects around but this is the great thing with this drone and active track so to answer the question that people ask me is the active track on here really any good is the avoidance system any good well you see for yourself it's really good you know there's no doubts in that dji has a really good set of programmers they've got the algorithm in perfectly they've got the lenses pointing forward at the right angle so that you don't crash into things and it knows to go around objects actually you know if i had to say what it's doing it basically just sees where i go and then it tries to follow the same path because if i made it through that means it could make it through too the same thing so that's pretty it that's pretty much it tree up there you know what i didn't think i'd walk in this far but we've come in quite a ways so oh it followed me all the way oh now i gotta walk all back all the way back to the car okay let's try that so let me just spin around here like this let's see what it's going to do i'm going to turn around here and you see it at the hat cam it's going backwards now and at some point it wants to get behind me but let's see it's going to be able to do it this is really testing it out oh there's a tree there what's it going to do over that tree no problem it's going up in the air so going up in the air is not a good thing because up in the air there's a lot of branches that it may not see did it finally figure out a spot to turn around oh this should be interesting where's it gonna go where is it gonna go look at that does it still have me look at this it's stuck behind all those branches oh my god did you see that holy cow that was pretty impressive there was no way i thought it was going to get out of that that's pretty good you know the best the best drone on the planet for active track is the skydeal nothing beats the skydeal you know this this doesn't even come close to the skydeal however for a drone of this size which is really not designed for active track it's more for filming ah that's pretty darn decent i'll tell you that much so uh two thumbs up from me as i walk through the mud and almost slip and fall on my backside well since we're still walking here i'll answer another question a lot of people ask they said is it really portable take a look at this my backpack has all my camera gear in it i've got microphones batteries tripods bigger cameras smaller cameras i also throw this little camera in the backpack as well it is quite portable and i just have to throw that little drone and this little screen and we're all good now that it's dark here you might be able to see the screen on there can you see it can you see what it looks like i got here i'll show it this way can you see the screen now looking at my gopro here on my head that's what it looks like as i'm walking here there we go is it bright enough i don't know the angle does the gopro pick up if it's dark and not bright sunlight on your screen then it looks really good but out on a bright sunny day it just goes pretty much black all right so for the end let's just pick up speed here and come on out as i'm limping through and back out into the wind [Applause] [Music] all right so the mini 3 pro is there and it does have a camera on the front that can spin vertically and you have a little item on your screen at the top right here or well halfway down on the right hand side that you touch it and you'll go vertical there we go so now i'm in vertical mode and i'm going to put the record on and it's gonna record me in vertical mode and the video will be all vertical all it's done as you see the camera i don't know if you can really see it up front the camera is now vertical so the whole image has gone from this way to this way so you get 4k just vertical anyways this is more for social media you can do a lot of the features uh i thought it had a tracking hang on a second this is for social media you can do a lot of the features you'd normally do when it's in you know horizontal mode because it really doesn't matter if it's in vertical mode so uh yeah it's if that's what you're into it's pretty good there's only one major problem with it and that is that when dji added that it was kind of an afterthought i think you know why i think somebody came up with the idea let's do this or make it different than other drones on the market but the problem is if you look at my screen can you see it on there all i have is black on this side black on this side and a little strip in the center which is the vertical video it does not have the ability when you turn this sideways the screen does not flip and i do not get a whole vertical image like this and and no way am i able to walk around and look at it like that so i get a tiny little picture that is unfortunately what you get on the mini 3 pro dji has not fixed the controller so that it goes sideways if you buy an autel evo light they have a different system for vertical mode and it's a million times better than the dji system because it's really good as soon as you turn sideways it just turns everything into vertical mode it uses a different system but it's much more applicable to people that would want to film in vertical this is more like a gimmicky thing that you know some people will use that want to put their stuff on tick tock and all the social media sites and stuff like that now if you look at my screen record uh i'll show you right here i still have the ability for all these settings i can do master shots in vertical i could take photos and vertical i could do quick shots hyperlapse everything in vertical because it's just turning the camera sideways that's it so myself as a youtuber who does youtube reviews and everything i have no need at this time for vertical mode however if i wanted to post my reviews and other things on social media to do quick short videos you know like even youtube has the shorts uh then this here vertical mode is a bonus except that i'm stuck with vertical mode and i never have the horizontal mode to make a really good video okay i'm gonna take it out of vertical mode and go back into lovely horizontal mode oh and it's it's starting to rain a little bit now and to answer the last question or at least the last one at this point uh no it's not waterproof you cannot fly this in the rain this drone has a vtx video transmission system in it that requires uh an awful lot of cooling that is why this drone overheats an awful lot if i put this drone down on the ground and leave it turned on it's going to overheat and shut itself off and then you can't use it for a while if you're flying and it's not super hot out you can fly forever but uh because of that there's a lot of holes in it to get the venting going it's definitely not waterproof whatsoever hey back to me so normally in any of my videos at this point i would normally show you an unboxing however i do not want to put you to sleep with an unboxing at this point so i'll show you an unboxing in future videos maybe part two or part three or part four you'll see the unboxing and i'll show you some cool things with that with comparisons against the dji mini 2 and the evo nano plus you'll see that coming up in future videos with this little guy so for now all i'm going to say is i put links below where you can buy this product uh buy it off amazon buy it off the dji store buy it off other stores i'll put some links below go check it out see if it's for you remember if you buy this it comes with one battery and if you buy the fly more kit well then you get more batteries in the charger plus this case on the front if that's something you need and a pile of propellers but other than that there's not much else to say so i'm gonna say bye now and we'll catch you in part two coming up sometime next week [Music] they were your designs [Music]

Channel: CAPTAIN DRONE

Views: 93,564

Keywords: DJI, Mini 3 Pro, Drone, Camera, How To, Unboxing, Review, Test, Noise, Low Light, Filming, Night, Range, Tracking, Avoidance, Wind, Vertical Camera, Waterproof, Over Heating, FCC, CE, PART 1, Captain Drone

Id: JwKYtPQFpkc

Length: 26min 35sec (1595 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 25 2022