DJI Neo selfie drone introduced for €199

Chinese DJI presented a miniature unmanned aerial vehicle Neo, designed for filming its owner. The device can operate without a controller, and the cost of the drone is only €199.

There’s really no need for a DJI Neo controller. The owner simply presses a button on the drone’s body to select predefined flight patterns: it can follow the user, hover in place, circle overhead, and zoom in or out in image size. DJI Neo launches in seconds, records, then returns and lands right in the palm of your hand, without requiring the owner to have experience flying drones. It can and will even fall, but the flexible frame will allow it to withstand such a blow.

The device has a return to home (RTH) function, and if you do connect a controller to it, it, with one transmitter and two receivers, can transmit video over a distance of up to 10 km. The controller can be the DJI RC-N3 for $129 or the DJI Goggles 3 headset for $499. The device does not yet appear to support portrait mode, but the company promised that it would “consider consumer feedback on this matter.”

DJI Neo supports video recording in 4K resolution at 30 fps and 1080p at 60 fps; it can take 12-megapixel photos in 4:3 or 16:9 formats; There is a system of mechanical single-axis stabilization and software stabilization. In the future, support for video recording in 4:3 format is promised. The storage on board DJI Neo has a capacity of 20 GB, and it cannot be expanded; The battery life lasts for 18 minutes; The weight of the device is 135 g.

The drone does not support gesture control commands, but it understands voice commands. A phone with the DJI Fly app, which connects via Wi-Fi, can act as a controller. The sound when shooting can be recorded from a phone to get rid of the noise of the propellers, or from a proprietary DJI 2 microphone that connects via Bluetooth. Video recordings in 4K have a duration of 10 to 30 seconds and a volume of 80 to 200 MB – they are transferred either to the phone via Wi-Fi or to a PC via USB Type-C.

The basic DJI Neo goes on sale for €199, but you can choose the advanced Neo Fly More Combo kit for €349, which comes with the DJI RC-N3 remote control, three batteries with a charging hub and spare parts. The battery on the drone charges via USB Type-C in 50 minutes at 15 W; In parallel, you can charge three batteries (45 W) in an hour.