First Look: DJI Air3S Drone. The best yet?

I’ve owned a DJI Air 2S for quite some time now, always considered it the best all around DJI drone, and quite probably, the best value for money. Very easy to fly, has a great camera and more than adequate collision detection.

The base Air2S relies on a smartphone as the viewport coupled with the RC-N3 controller, and that is the only limitation due to the brightness issue I have mentioned a few times. If you get the optional RC 2 Controller with the built-in screen, that solves that issue – mostly.

Now there is an Air3S, and I can quite happily report that as a first look, DJI has certainly looked at what they could improve over the previous model and done so in spades. And then added some more.

So What Do You Get?

My review unit is the fully blown Fly More combo that comes with a charging hub and 3 batteries, the RC-2 controller, and ND filter set, with a convenient shoulder bag rounding out the full kit. In the bag are a set of instructions and sets of blades – that you must click in place on the arms in the right sequence otherwise you will get horrible instability and worse (so I have seen from people in the various DJI Facebook forums who were too quick on the draw to get their drone in the air).

The most obvious difference between the Air2S and the Air3S is the increase in the number of cameras. But go a bit deeper and you’ll also find there are not one but two sensors in the Air3S with a 1” CMOS sensor for the wide-angle camera and the second 1/1.3” CMOS sensor for the medium tele camera. These are 50MP and 48MP respectively.

The obstacle sensing has also been beefed up quite markedly. The Air2S had 4-way sensing (up/down/forward/behind), but the Air3S has upped the ante with a complete nightscape omni-directional system with all the Air2S had, as well as left and right and forward-facing LiDAR.

For docco makers and videographers with the licencing qualifications to do so, you’ll be pleased to know that DJI has increased the video transmission range to 10km from the Air2S’ 8km, and also added 6 minutes to the maximum fly time to 45 mins.

Additionally, the onboard storage has more than quadrupled from 8GB to 42GB.

Also bigger are the physical size by around 20% and the corresponding weight – also around 20%.

Main Camera Differences

These are best expressed in a table:

Intelligent Features

All the standard MasterShots are still available, and like the Air3 over the Air2S, Waypoints are a big feature to the Air3S. Added to the available options however is a new feature caller Free Panorama letting you create seamless panoramic shots by stitching together multiple images with a manually selected subject or area.

Finally, the Air3S is also equipped with Visual Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (VLSAM) technology, enabling it to conduct real-time onboard mapping

Another upgrade over the Air2S and Air3 is ActiveTrack 360° which keeps any subject optimally in the frame and also in focus. These things are getting scarily good at this sort of stuff indeed!

Summary

I decided to do this First Look prior to having a fly. The main reason was that as is typical in WA at this time of year, we have had howling easterly winds in the area of 50Km / hr and I didn’t want to risk a $2.5K drone that wasn’t mine. Not that I would if it was mine you understand.

I also wanted to become more acquainted with the differences between the two so that I didn’t miss anything. Hopefully tomorrow the winds have dropped a bit and I can send the Air3S aloft for a bit.

I suspect I will miss one thing though, and that is this beast of a drone when it has to go back to the Aussie Distributor, CR Kennedy (with thanks to them for the opportunity).

If you want the full technical specs of the DJI Air3S, you can get them at https://www.dji.com/au/air-3s/specs