DJI has been on somewhat of a roll lately. Here at Chez Auscam, as you may have noticed, I have been inundated with new products from the company over the last weeks (and loving it I have to say).

This morning, the new Lito X1 drone appeared on my doorstep, and I managed to sneak in a quick registration and fly before more pressing matters caught my attention sadly.

First Look

Although I don’t think I’ve heard it said publicly, I think it is fair to suggest this new Lito range is a replacement for the evergreen “Mini” series that has served DJI for so long. What they have done in essence is to take all the best bits of various models and wrapped them into a sub-249g drone that sits quite comfortably in the palm of your hand and offers a bunch of technical, video and photographic opportunities..

The Lito X1 has the usual folding arms and while it might look like a Mini, many of the specs take it beyond that level in quite a big way.

Let’s look at the major ones.

First up is the sensor and obstacle avoidance system which is fully omnidirectional, supports infra-red and vision sensors on the bottom and all sides and full LiDAR in the front for low light navigation and precision tracking.

For video and still photography, the Lito X1 sports a 1/1.3” CMOS sensor giving 48MP photos up to 8064 x 6048 pixels and 4K video up to 100 frames per second. If you drop the video resolution to HD, you can up that frame rate to 200fps. Vertical video in 2.7K is also supported as is RAW stills, HDR and 10-bit D-Log-M for the colour grading fans out there. On board is 42GB of storage and there is provision for an SD card of course.

Wi-fi and Bluetooth are both supported too.

The lens is equivalent to a 24mm unit, has an f/1.7 aperture and 82° field of view.

The battery will give you an estimated 36 minutes flying time in the standard battery and 52 on the extended ones, with a theoretical range of 21Km, and uses the DJI O4 transmission technology. Live feeds in 1080p can be achieved at 60 frames per second which is not too shabby at all.

In the Intelligent Flight Feature department, the Lito X1 has MasterShots, QuickShots, Hyperlapse, Waypoint Flight and Cruise Control.

Target Market

DJI says the Lito X1 is aimed at content creators, those who shoot travel videography and for “advanced beginners”. I think it is the perfect drone for those graduating from something like the Flip (which I say is the perfect starter unit) but also feel anyone starting out would quickly accustom themselves to the Lito X1, especially as it comes with the RC2 controller with the built-in screen.

I have the “Fly More” combo which also ships with a charger and 2 spare batteries along with a carry case and spare props. One thing I would like to see is DJI also supply a second set of the little screw in knobs for the directional controllers as they are easily lost.

Setup

For the albeit short initial flight, you have to go through the usual motions of logging into your DJI account (or creating one) to activate the drone and update any firmware. Sometimes this latter function can take a while if the DJI servers are busy, but lately this has been less noticeable so hopefully the company has done some upgrades.

In this instance, it took around 10 minutes which is manageable, and then I could fly without restriction.

In Flight (Albeit Short)

The first thing I noticed is the noise level; the Lito X1 is a quiet little beast, especially compared to the Flip or the very noisy NEO 2. As I have come to expect, the controls are very responsive, and the Lito X1 is easy to fly as a consequence. It was a little breezy during this quick 2 minute test flight, but the stabilisation on-board seemed to cope quite well.

I look forward to a longer flight later, but for now, my first impressions are a solid little performer that seems to do everything it says on the tin with little fuss.

Abother small but important thing too. In the past, I have found the gimbal / lens protectors on DJI drones have been designed by the Devil himself sometimes, them being right bastards to get off and back on again. Which of course we all do yes? Well the plastic protector for the gimbal / lens on the Lito X1 is dead easy, thank goodness!

The DJI Lito X1 as tested here retails for around AUD$1000. With the standard controller (using a smartphone as the viewport) that drops to $899.

More info is available at the D1 Store or from www.dji.com .

First Flight

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