FPV vs Normal DJI Drone: Which One is Best For You?

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] dji recently released the fpv drone which has made a whole lot more people interested in getting into fpv but fpv is good for a certain type of footage whereas gps camera stabilized drones are good for other kinds of footage and photography so today i want to break down the main differences between these two different styles of drones to hopefully help you make a decision on which one might be the right drone for you to get hey if you don't know me my name is jake and i create content here to help solo creators on the go people like me were on the go creating small commercial projects or stuff here on youtube so i test and review equipment here in alaska and i give you tips and tutorials on how to use that equipment so you can tell better stories and make smart decisions if you go to buy a new piece of gear breaking down the differences between fpv drones and camera drones before you make a decision about which one of these drones you want to buy especially if it's your first drone we need to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of each so let's start with the strengths of gps camera stabilized drones that most people think of when they think about drones to begin with these drones are a really mature product line it means they've been around for quite a while a lot of the bugs have been worked out so they get great flight time with this you can get about 20 minutes with this you can get 25 26 minutes out of a battery with a mavic air 2 you can get about 25 26 minutes out of a battery which is phenomenal a lot of flight time out of a couple of batteries makes it nice because you don't have to take a ton of batteries with you somewhere to be able to get a fair amount of footage but not only that they provide really great aerial perspectives for both photography and videography so for photography because they are gps stabilized drones you can basically put them up in the air take your hands off the controls figure out what you want to do and then start taking pictures or start taking video clips you can fly them into a lot of different locations where you couldn't put a normal camera you couldn't get an aerial perspective from and take some great photos and great videos but when it comes to the video side that's where these drones are actually really nice because most of them have some sort of intelligent autonomous flight features where they will track you as a subject and perform a pre-programmed flight movement which means you can get great footage of yourself or your family on vacation doing things that you love doing using one of these drones and not necessarily having to fly it yourself 100 of the time because they will do some smart features another nice thing about these is they have a lot of safety built into them in the case of both of these drones most of them have a gps guided return to home which means it will return to the place it took off from or return to your controller location depending on how you set the settings which is a great feature if you lose a control signal if you lose the the signal link between the controller and these drones you know that the drone at least 99 of the time is going to come back to you and land where it took off from so you have a great chance of getting the drone back and recovering the footage even if you lose control signal or video feed another great feature of these drones is the control signal link at least for dji and i think most other drones that are out there now is really strong which means you can fly well beyond the visual line of sight which is what most countries require you to stay within to be legal but you can fly a long way and still get great video feedback to your phone or back to your controller and great control signal which means they're going to be really stable and you can fly them out of ways and get lots of different perspectives from one location where you don't necessarily have to go to a specific spot to be able to fly in that area you can fly from an adjacent area and get there and still get great footage and great photos in the safety aspect although this one does not have any obstacle avoidance most of the other drones in this category do have some sort of obstacle avoidance which is nice if you're going to fly close to objects they will provide you a certain level of safety knowing that you maybe won't be able to run into or hit objects i generally fly without the obstacle voice on because i like to have full control and i fly close to a lot of objects when i'm flying or i fly through things often enough that obstacle voids would ruin shots for me so i generally don't fly with it on however obstacle avoidance comes in extremely handy when you're using some of the smart flight modes like if you want to track you in a circle or you want it to fly backward from you having a little extra assurance of that if there is something in the way whether it's a building or something like that that the drone will likely stop and not crash if it detects an obstacle nearby that's a really nice feature about these drones that makes it really fairly easy to fly and that brings me to the fact that these drones are really easy to fly they they're a really easy learning curve they don't take long to figure out how to operate and how to operate fairly well uh you can put one of these in the air and be flying it relatively competently within a day or so not a big deal you don't have to learn to program you don't have to learn to set them up or build them or anything like that they come ready to fly out of the box you can register them get them up in the air and start taking photos and videos almost immediately which is a really nice thing when it comes to using drones the fact that the learning curve the barrier to entry is fairly low to where you can start off from not knowing anything to be able to jump in and fly these and get decent photos and get decent video from them but there are a few downsides to these kinds of drones so we do need to talk about them one most of them almost all of them i think are proprietary which means you have to use the manufacturer specific battery packs you have to use the manufacturer specific remote controllers if you break one of these drones they are very difficult to repair yourself you're most likely going to be sending it to somebody or a reauthorized repair center to get one of these fixed and so that makes it a little bit harder to maybe risk a little bit more to get shots with these drones is knowing that if you do something wrong or if the drone crashes you're likely going to not have access to it for a few weeks while it gets repaired and you can't do a lot of the repairs or the programming yourself you are limited to whatever the manufacturer puts into the firmware of these drones which in the case of dji includes a lot of geo-fencing to try and help you not fly in areas that you're not supposed to fly in but sometimes their geo-fencing is a little too aggressive and thinks that there are airports where there are actually no airports or things of that nature that might prohibit you or make it more difficult for you to fly in locations that you can legally fly in but that's really most of the downsides of these drones there are not many they are really nice tool a really nice way to be able to capture video and and photos from the air from an aerial perspective and a perspective you can't get with any other kind of camera and then we come to fpv drones now fpv drones until recently when dji released the dji fpv drone fpv drones had a really high barrier to entry but before we jump into that and the kind of downsides of fpv drones let's talk about the strengths now one of the reasons i got into fpv was i was looking for ways to get more dynamic motion more energy and just a different feeling in my drone footage than these provided because the gps drones have been out for a while a lot of people have them and so the footage is becoming more and more commonplace to see drone footage in whatever sort of field you're working in but fpv is still relatively new and i feel like it's only just now really starting to hit the market as far as being seen as a viable option for filming and for getting a different feeling a different style of footage and that's the fpv's biggest strength is that you can fly through things you can fly around things you can do acrobatics there are no limits to what these drones can do as far as movement and as far as places to fly because it's 100 dependent on you to fly now that is also kind of a downside is that you have to learn to fly these really well before you can be fairly competent and it takes a while to build up your skill set fpv drones are flown with goggles on your face and your perspective is looking out the camera on the front which is really fun because you get the feeling of flying through these locations like you're strapped to the front side of a helicopter or an airplane and you're actually flying through these because your whole perspective is being guided by what you see in the goggles on the other hand it's also one of the downsides because if you're not used to it you might end up getting a little bit motion sick the first few times you fly or like in my case i had to sit down the first few times i flew because i found myself leaning one direction or the other or trying to move one direction to the other as i was flying and i would have fallen over if i hadn't but now that i've been doing it for a little while that's no longer an issue and i can stand up and fly although i do still find myself trying to move my body with the drone occasionally another great thing about these fpv drones is that at least with the kind you build yourself you can customize them like crazy you can put different cameras on them to film with you could use a gopro if you want you could use an insta 360 camera you could use uh osmo action if you wanted to because you basically can attach almost anything you want to you can customize the drone as far as the motor size the prop size the prop pitch the video feed you get i mean pretty much everything can be customized now that's also one of the biggest downside is that there is a big learning curve to building and putting one of these drones together but on the other hand once you learn that you can fix and repair and do anything you want to do with this drone because you know it inside and out and on the repair side these drones the fpv drones that i've built myself are incredibly durable and resilient i have crashed these extremely hard and walked away with nothing but bent propellers which can be replaced in a couple of seconds and been back in the air and flying within a few minutes and another part of the upside is you can even now especially lately put gps on these drones so that you can get an idea of your air speed how far how close the way you you are from where you took off and if you program it correctly you can get it to come back to you now it doesn't land like one of these drones does but it will come back to near the area where it took off but it expects you to take control back over at a certain point and land the drone yourself otherwise it's just going to crash into the ground and freak out but the chance that if you lose control signal you lose video feed and you need to get the drone back the chance of recovering it is pretty good with the gps on one of these drones biggest strengths of these drones are that you get this really dynamic really energetic really fast moving footage with acrobatics with interesting perspectives that you just can't get with any other kind of drone which makes it really attention grabbing and and really pulls you into something that is really cool a nice thing is too that you can get footage kind of like an airplane or a helicopter would if it was flying through a location but you can do it in places that you couldn't fit or you wouldn't fit or put a helicopter or an airplane because of the risk one of these a little bit easier to risk in some of those locations now specifically with the dji fpv drone because they just released it on the market it's really changed a lot about fpv now there is an option for you to buy out of the box that pretty much comes ready to go to get that kind of footage there's still a learning curve to be able to fly it in full manual acro mode like you would fly this but there is a fairly easy step process to go through to get to that point and then you can get really great footage another big strength of the dji fpv drone specifically is that you get a fairly good amount of flight time whereas with this i get anywhere from two and a half to five six minutes maybe depending on how aggressively i was flying this if you're not flying aggressively you might get as much as 14 15 16 minutes if you're flying more aggressively i've been more in like the five to six minute range but it is a really good option for stuff like that and if you've never flown fpv before you've never done anything with fpv drones but you want to get into it this is actually not a bad place to start it gets pretty good footage out of the camera you get a beautiful view in the goggles because it's all part of the same system you don't get quite as good stabilized footage as a gopro running it through real steady which is a program that stabilizes the gopro footage in post but you do get really nice really usable footage and with the right settings on this drone you can get really smooth really good looking usable footage another huge strength of this drone specifically is that it has a massive amount of range a really strong video feed and a really strong control link to the remote controller which has historically been one of the weak points of these drones is that without us without specific setups and without specific settings you would lose connection relatively easy uh when you got not that far away whereas with this you get the same sort of controlling same sort of system that's in these drones here but you're using it in one of these and this drone is fast i've been out and clocked it going 88 miles an hour 89 miles an hour when i went out and tested it in a big open area because i wasn't sure how fast it would go so however there are downsides to fpv drones both of these have pb drones as well one is for this kind specifically which i would still recommend if you really want to get into fpv acro flying or freestyle then i would still recommend you learn how to build your own it is and that is the biggest downside of these drones is that there's a massive learning curve there's a a pretty good barrier to entry as far as learning how to program how to build how to bind how to set these up so that you can do what you want to do now there are bind and fly options there are pre-built options out there but you're going to wreck no matter what you do you're going to wreck and learning how to build them and repair them yourself is really a big part of the process of this style of drone another big downside has been that the lipo batteries the lithium polymer batteries you get with these are a little bit temperamental and can be dangerous if they're mishandled now if they're not mishandled they're still relatively safe but if you don't know how to charge them what voltages to charge them to how to properly discharge them how to properly store them how to make sure the cells are balanced and stuff like that you can cause major problems and fires with these kind of uh batteries dji has solved that somewhat in the fact that they've put a lithium polymer battery in here that has the same or similar sort of smart features that are built into these where it will store itself properly the chargers built in so you can plug it in and just start charging it and it checks everything out that it should check out and make sure makes sure that everything is good with the battery whereas this you're a little more 100 dependent on you the downside of this specifically is those smart features with this lithium polymer battery comes at a cost it's expensive whereas these are 20 to 30 dollars a piece this is 150 or 160 dollars a piece which is quite a bit more than these on the other hand you do get the smart features and you don't have to worry about how you charge it discharge it all that sort of thing it it sort of takes care of that for you automatically another downside at least for this kind of fpv drone is that there are no smart features it is 100 dependent on you to fly it for you to keep it in the air and not to crash it there are no automatic modes uh for the most part there are there's software out there you can use if you want to do a little bit more automatic stuff but for mo for the most part for freestyle flying for cinematic freestyle flying there's nothing automatic about this you've got to do it all and so it makes it harder especially if you want to film yourself you you it's really difficult to do that and these drones are not made to take photos with at all not to say that you couldn't but they're just not they're meant to really have that high motion really dynamic footage as opposed to these which are kind of built to do both that's changed a little bit with this because this does have some smart features a little bit of obstacle avoidance it won't stop completely but it will slow the drone down and warn you that there's an obstacle nearby but it also doesn't have any intelligent flight modes like these do so you can't it's the same sort of thing where it's it's difficult to film yourself now the nice thing about this is that it does have a pause button which is a panic button and the drone no matter what it's doing upside down or not will stop immediately if you push that pause button and go into a hover and that is a big strength of this drone over these drones is that this having that normal mode that you can put it in and basically you can take your hands off the controls and it will hover in place until you're ready to start flying does make it a really nice thing if you're just getting into fpv this is definitely a good option for that which one of these drones should you buy if this is your first drone and you're wanting to take photos and video of yourself doing things than one of these gps drones and i really recommend the mini 2 because it's an excellent little drone that gets you past a lot of the regulations because it's under 250 grams you don't have to register it and a lot of things if you're just sharing on social media it's great now if you're doing any commercial work here in the us at least you still have to register it as a commercial drone so the mini 2 is a great little drone now it does not have any automatic tracking features it does have a few intelligent flight modes but not like this and it doesn't have any obstacle avoidance so that'll be a limitation as far as what you can use it for but as a first drone it is an excellent first drone and because it's not a massive investment like a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars you can really learn to fly any drone using this little drone here and get great photos and great video if you're wanting to learn fpv or you really want to get that that fast dynamic motion in your footage but you don't want to learn to build and program and do your own thing then really the only option right now is the dji fpv system it's a good system you will learn everything you need to learn you will be able to fly it pretty much the way you want to fly it and once you get the settings set the way you want them to be set for this drone then you're good to go but i would recommend you get the care refresh so that if you do wreck it really hard you can send it to dji and have it replaced if you're wanting to go into really hardcore freestyle acrobatic type stuff really all kinds of crazy cinematic flying and really get the most amount of control and the most amount of options then i do recommend you jump into building your own fpv drone or at the very least buying one that is pre-built and ready to go and then learning how to build it and program it through resources here on youtube but that will give you the most mileage and the most satisfaction out of an fpv drone in the long run there are of course links to all of these down in the description their affiliate links if you use them helps this channel out but it doesn't cost you anything extra if you would like to see specific reviews of these different drones click or tap right there i've put together a short playlist that'll show you reviews of this drone this drone this drone other drones that i've worked with i'll see you in one of those videos as always if you have questions ask me in the comments below or join my live stream which happens wednesday nights 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern i'll see you again soon in the next video cheers

Channel: Jake Sloan

Views: 133,911

Keywords: fpv vs dji, fpv vs drone, fpv vs follow mode, fpv vs normal drone, cinematic fpv, cinematic fpv drone, cinematic fpv freestyle, dji mavic air 2, dji mavic air 2 footage, dji mavic air 2 cinematic, mavic air 2, fpv drone cinematic, drone footage, drone comparison, which drone to buy, which drone to buy 2021, which drone to buy for beginners, drone battle, drone tutorial, racing drone, reelsteady, dji mavic air 2 footage 4k, DJI FPV Drone

Id: 2vZ-08ed8Rk

Length: 20min 20sec (1220 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021