DJI Neo Three-Battery Combo, Mini Drone with 4K UHD Camera for Adults, 135g Self Flying Drone that Follows You, Palm Takeoff, Subject Tracking, QuickShots, Stabilized Video (Controller-Free)

This drone is actually amazing for beginners! The tracking is amazing and does a decent job avoiding things while it follows. It's not perfect but the drones is tough enough and can take a beating even if it does bump into something. Some cons with the drone is that it only comes with the drone itself and a battery. No carrying case, controller, or extra batteries, so you will have to invest a little more if you want max out this units fullest potential. Good news is you can still manually control this drone with your smartphone. It's not as great as using a real controller, but if all you're doing is taking pictures or getting a nice view, using your smartphone will get the job done. 1 last bonus for this drone is it's flies EXTREMELY well indoors. So if weathers bad and you wanna just fly it around your bedroom or living room, you can absolutely do so safely. It's even more steady than toy drones I've bought that were specifically designed to be flown indoors. To close out, this is one of the most versatile drones on the market at one of the most budget friendly prices.

I am a rookie when it comes to drones so I wanted something beginner friendly and easy to learn. This was perfect. Small simple great video quality and works just as described! Worth the price!

Like most folks who get the Neo, this is my first drone. I got the RC2 controller with it too. Yes, the RC cost me more than the drone, but the extended range and storage, AND the fact that it's compatible with several other DJI drones made it 100% worth it to me. This drone is freakin AWESOME! It makes it very easy to learn how to pilot these things, and it's pretty tough. I've crashed it multiple times and it just keeps on keepin on! The camera takes really good photos and video. I love it! I even bought a second one on Prime Day, saving $40! If you're new to drones like me, I cannot recommend this enough. Just watch some YT vids and I'm sure you'll agree.

The media could not be loaded. I am extremely happy with this drone. For reference, I had the original DJI FPV drone which I dropped an insane amount of money on (full regret), with the gen 2 goggles, hard shell case, extra batteries, props, etc.. All told we are talking well over $1400 (I know I know).My main reason for switching to the neo is size. I wanted to be able to throw a drone in a carry on or in my ultralight go-pack for a weekend solo backpacking trip. I also wanted to be able to pluck the drone out of the air with my bare hands without having to worry that a gust of wind was going to result in my losing a finger. This drone complete with a charger, anker battery brick, extra battery, extra props, and a few tools, all fits in the LKTOP carrying case no problem and weighs basically nothing as far as I'm concerned. For ultralight backpacking, I will fly this exclusively with my phone. The fact that it can also be used as an FPV drone is incredible (unfortunately it does NOT work with the original DJI FPV goggles or controller (gen2), which is a real bummer for me).battery charges from an anker battery brick in about 2 minutes, so I really do think that the triple battery set and charger is way overkill. By the time you finish flying with one battery, the other battery will be basically fully charged and ready to go. I am not a hollywood director, so the 4k at 30 FPS is more than good enough for me.The neo sits in that beautiful niche of ultralight recon drone. I am extremely, extremely happy with it, and the $200 price point is honestly a steal. The one thing I am really not a fan of is the DJI fly app and the fact that on android you have to download it from the DJI website and turn off all sorts of security to use it. That is a serious concern of mine, and for that I nearly removed one star.... But in terms of hardware, the softwares functionality (not security), and the joy of using this thing.... hard to beat. I already accidentally flew it into some tree branches and it was none the worse for wear.

A few weeks ago, I saw a video on the HolyStone HS11D drone. It seemed like a fun and relatively stable drone given it's price of around $65. I learned to fly it and had some fun but most importantly, it let me know what else I might want in a drone. Although easy to fly, even for a complete novice, I still managed to crash it several times as it lacks any form of self-protection beyond a rudimentary altitude hold. Also, the camera was fixed with a max resolution of 1080 with no stabilization and the image quality was not really great. So what is the next step up? The shopping checklist was primarily : 1 - a better camera with directional control, 2 - GPS position stability, 3 - self-recovery/return to home facility. The other important criteria was cost and I was not in the market for anything above $300, regardless of any extra features that a higher budget cap may offer. Most research I did suggested that the Mini SE was essentially a DJI Mini 2 with a Mini 1 camera. There are a few other Mini 2 features that are omitted from the SE but they were things I could live without, for now at least. I pulled the trigger an with 24 hours the Mini SE was on my doorstep. Setup was a little more complex that the simple HS110D. There were extra physical hardware and software setup steps, including a firmware update that I managed to skip for the first flight. I tried to update but it failed. For the first flight I used an iPhone as the app was instantly available in the App Store. I didn't fly high or far but already it was a much calmer experience as the drone stays in position if you don't give any input unlike the HS110D which was happy to drift into the nearest obstacle unless you're maintaining 100% control. After landing, I went back inside to recharge and learn some more of the features, setup the camera and tweak some other parameters for RTH, etc. For the second flight, I switched to Android but unlike the iPhone, the app needed to be downloaded from DJI as it's not available in the Google Store. This time I went on a slightly longer test flight and engaged RTH features to get confidence in the system. Video footage was impressive and inline with my expectations. Everything worked fine. Still early days, but I feel a lot more confident in flying this drone, both through my own abilities and the abilities of the drone itself. Sure, for more money, you obviously get more and one day I may feel the need to invest more. But for now, I'm more than happy with the feature set and capabilities offered at this price point and I couldn't identify a better drone for the $300 that would suit my requirements.