First Look: DJI NEO Drone

I was rather hoping to take the new DJI NEO for a fly today, but wouldn’t you know it! Typical WA spring day at 28° but also blowing its guts out. (And yes, I know the NEO can also be flown inside, but my house is not that conducive to that sort of exercise. Apart from that DougieDoggy would go NUTS!).

So instead, I’ll give my initial impressions for those that may be contemplating buying a DJI NEO to hopefully help you along, and let you know what you can expect.

But first, I am going to go back in time for a second.

As many will know, during the pandemic, I spent a time in a sales gig at the local Jaycar store, and of course being a tech store, one of the items sold was a drone. It cost $79.95, used a phone as a controller, had a maximum resolution of 720p and a range off memory of about 300 metres with a 12 minute battery life.

There were no niceties such as automatic hovering, return to home, geo-locking or obstacle avoidance of course, but hey! For $80?

(In truth, whenever a prospective buyer asked me if they were any good, my stock answer was something like “well I’ll guarantee you will crash it as everyone crashes their first drone”, and left that sentence hanging …)

The reality was, as you’d expect for that $79.95, they were rubbish, and so many were returned.

Fast forward to the DJI NEO at a base price of $299 and whilst it is true that it is, what, nearly 4 times the price, this is a proper drone when used for the purpose it is designed. And that is not to take sweeping panoramic photos or explore over mountain ranges. Nope. It is purely to have some fun, because there are some limitations that mitigate this.

Out of the box, the base unit has a limited flight height of only 30 metres (with the Fly More Combo and external controller adding over $200 to the price you get 120 metres which is legal height under Australian rules).

DJI claims a total range of 7Kms, but of course this takes it out of line of sight which is also outside the CASA parameters, and I am not that sure a battery life of 18 minutes would be sufficient to actually get it back, especially as the NEO apparently hates any wind at all.

The NEO does support a plethora of ways of being controlled. The first doesn’t need any physical controller at all, just your voice. Next, you can use your mobile phone and the DJI Fly app with virtual joysticks for even more control or again, with the Fly More Combo, a dedicated controller (still using the mobile phone) for the maximum.

Also supported are the DJI Motion Controller and you can even use DJI Goggles 3 for point of view flying.

DJI Quikshots are available letting you perform various manoeuvres such as Circle, Boomerang, Helix and Rocket and these can be set on the drone control panel prior to take off if required.

Video can be shot in 4K/30fps with tracking available as well as stabilisation, but stills are limited to 12Mp JPEGs only.

A major departure from other DJI drones is that there is no SD card utilised in the NEO. Imagery is instead stored in 22GB of internal memory allowing approximately 40 minutes of 4K and 55 minutes of 1080p.

Having said all that, the initial overwhelming reaction to the NEO is that it is tiny! (And cute as my wife opined).

Hopefully tomorrow the wind will drop, and I’ll give it a test flight. I am especially looking forward to flying from and back to my palm (hoping I do NOT get an incident as I did from the blades of a GoPro Karma drone a few years back where I still have the scars).

I am sure I’ll find a few more things out too.

In the interim, if you need a bit more info such as detailed technical specs, click here.