xDynamics Evolve 2 Cinema Drone – Is it worth $3,699?

 To be fair, this is a video that I wasn’t really sure I was going to make on my channel because I’ve been flying the xDynamics Evolve 2 cinema drone since March last year. I’ve been experimenting with it, trying it out in different conditions, in a variety of different scenarios. And it’s been a little rough, and I’ve been closely talking to xDynamics about it because I wanted to help them as much as possible to make this drone better and improve it in some real-life scenarios where I see some weaknesses.

xDynamics Evolve 2 cinema drone crashed

It’s actually my second drone because the first one crashed into the ground while I was doing a low-flying shot in sport mode. The drone suddenly dipped and just hit the ground, and it was completely in pieces. They were kind enough to send me another one so I can keep flying it and check it out more in-depth.

Because this is a very promising drone, at least for me. When it comes to new companies. I’m always open to checking out what they have to offer. And xDynamics is a great company. They have really great people that are just trying to make a cool product. That’s what it is at the end of the day. And I was trying hard to give them the best input I could so they can improve their product.

And I cannot lie. It’s been a little rough, because, even though they’ve put out a couple of updates, they weren’t really that good in terms of the flying experience in general, because the drone looks amazing. But it doesn’t fly as well as it looks, unfortunately. But now, maybe you’re wondering why I’m putting out this video now, after almost a year.

Now, I’m seeing some improvements that I can say are definitely going in the right direction. They have reduced the majority of the problems and complaints that I had. So now the drone is actually a lot better compared to what it was before.

However, it still lacks some things that for this price tag, it shouldn’t, and yeah. I’m going to get to that in a second, but let’s just examine the drone first, because everyone that has seen this drone is just mesmerized by the looks of it.

Beautifully designed cinema drone

I cannot tell you how many people have told me. Wow. This is a very beautiful, aggressive looking drone, and I have to agree. It is a very beautiful drone.

It’s probably one of the best-looking drones I’ve ever had the pleasure to fly. It has this beautiful carbon fiber shell on top, and it is plastic on the bottom. You can see this gimbal right here, which holds the camera, which is with interchangeable lenses of course. This is one of the biggest strengths of this drone, the fact that you can easily swap the lenses to achieve a different look for your footage.

Now, unfortunately, I only have this Olympus 17 millimeter f/1.8 lens. So I really can’t say much about their other lenses from personal experience, but I’ve seen some other lenses that create that compression and that definitely give that cinematic film look that this drone is aiming to create.

After all, this is a cinema drone that is geared towards professionals who are going to use it for commercials, for big projects. And, to create something epic with it. So, when I say the drone is really aggressive, I mean it.

And for a little comparison, check this out. This is the prop of the DJI Mini 3 Pro. This is the prop of the DJI Mavic 3, and this is the prop of the xDynamics Evolve 2. It’s certainly a lot bigger and it makes a big difference when you hear this drone in the air.

The drone has a very interesting design for the front. Two props. They are actually taller than the back two props. It creates a smaller overall footprint, and it’s also more efficient for the drone. And the design is very classical. Phantom 4-inspired, that is timeless, I would say. Everyone recognizes this design.

When they see it in the air, they immediately know it’s a drone. Nowadays, everyone has switched to foldable, smaller drones, but the xDynamics Evolve 2 is keeping it big, and they’re keeping this design alive by still rocking it in 2023.

It is a little bit of a pain in the back to transport this drone because it is huge. Even the battery is huge. Check it out. And speaking about batteries, they tend to last me between 15 to 20 minutes on a regular. Flight now, it really depends on the weather conditions, whether there’s a lot of wind or not. But they do go by very quickly. So you need to be prepared. If you’re looking to fly this drone, you need to have at least two to three batteries. That’s what I would recommend.

X-Dynamics Evolve 2 remote controller

Now let’s quickly talk about the remote controller of this drone, because it’s a massive talking point. It is a huge remote controller that is also quite heavy, so it is not the remote to use. That’s because it has two built-in screens. So you have one on top and one on bottom.

So here you can see your camera view, your live view, and then you have some telemetry here on the bottom, as well as your map and GPS. And other than that, it’s a pretty simple remote with your flight modes, your record button, the gimbal wheel, your takeoff or landing button, the return to home button, and some other camera buttons that are here on the other side.

You have these customizable buttons on the back. I tend to not use them too much because it’s just, I don’t know it, it’s not very comfortable to hold for a longer period of time because it’s also very bulky and very very heavy. I personally prefer to just keep it close to me and just fly with manual controls and not really rely too much on.

Those extra buttons on the back. For the most part, I would say the remote controller is working great. As long as you turn up the brightness to its maximum value, because if you set it to automatic, it will keep the brightness quite dim, I would say. And it’s not very easy to see what’s going on, but if you set it to manual and just turn it all the way up to its maximum, it is great for those outdoor shots where you have some sun glare, and you can still see everything on the screen quite well.

Amazing cinematic drone footage

Now my experience with this drone is that it shoots amazing. There is no denying that it shoots great video. You have all sorts of different resolutions. You have 4K, Cinema 4K, you have regular 4k, you have 2.7K and all the other resolutions below in different frame rates.

So you can shoot in 23.98. You can have 24, 25, 30, 60, or 120 frames per second in 4K. And you have all of these codecs that you can use. H.264, H.265. And if you decide you want to extract more out of this drone, you can simply ditch the regular SD card, insert a CFast card on the drone, and start recording in pro-res.

We have options for different pro-res codecs available on the drone. So it’s really up to you to decide which codec you want to use. You have a lot of freedom to decide. And on top of that, you also have X-Log available, which is their flattest color profile on the Evolve 2.

You can set it if you want to really push the footage as much as possible afterwards in post. Personally I had good experience with 4K, 25 frames per second, 200 megabits per second footage. Shot with H.265 codec in their regular, normal color profile and not the X-Log. I still feel like this works well for me and it’s not really necessary to switch to X-Log. So there’s definitely a lot of variety. There’s no denying that there’s a lot of different options that you can choose from for shooting video.

My experience flying the X-Dynamics Evolve 2

Now, when it comes to my experience flying this drone, I can say that it could be better. It definitely could be better. Now starting off from even taking off, sometimes you get an error on the screen letting you know that there is a problem with the gimbal. And the red is in red letters, so it’s a dangerous thing.

You need to be careful, and you need to check it. But the way to fix this issue is by turning off the drone and turning it on again, and then it’s all green and you’re good to go. It happens from time to time. And it’s weird because I am definitely sure that the gimbal is attached properly, but when you power cycle the drone, it’s gone. And, it’s all good then.

And moving on to taking off the drone is aggressive when it takes off. So usually when. Press the button to take off. You need to hold it for a couple of seconds. Then it’s ready to take off and the drone automatically rises to the height that is pre-selected.

So it’s usually a couple of meters on the xDynamics Evolve 2 sometimes probably because of that different design of the props. The front two props are a little bit higher than the back two props, probably because of that. I don’t know, that’s my way of explaining this. The problem is, it does take off a little bit more aggressively and to the side, so it kind of tips to the side or tilts to the side. It really depends if there is any strong wind around as well.

So if there is a strong wind. If it blows in the wrong direction, I would say the drone will probably tip a little bit on the side. And it’s again, scary when we’re talking about such a big drone because it can go wrong very badly and very quickly.

Video transmission is lagging on the X-Dynamics Evolve 2

Now, moving on to the flying experience, when you are already in the air and you are recording, With this drone my big issue is that there is a lot of lag, a lot of latency between what you’re seeing on the remote and what the drone is actually seeing in the sky.

And I’m doing this little experiment to show you my hand movement on the display of the remote controller. And you can see the lag; it’s very visible, very noticeable. and it could be the difference between getting a great shot and missing a great shot because sometimes, when you are moving the drone around, it just takes a little bit of time to really move it in the direction where you want.

And since the drone doesn’t give you that instant feedback, you can get confused while shooting with it. So I’ve had this happen to me a couple of times. So with this drone, it’s like you really have to work hard for your shots. I would say this is probably my biggest takeaway from flying this drone for almost a year now.

You really have to work hard to get your shots, whereas on other drones that we’ve seen before, everything happens instantly. Everything is very smooth and everything. Easier. You have to really work hard for your shots. So you have to battle the system in a way that you can extract the most out of it.

Conclusion

And unfortunately, that’s the summary of what I can say about this drone. You can achieve great things with it, but you have to really work hard to achieve them. It has a lot of potential. It has a great camera. Maybe it has great lens options that, like I said, I haven’t tested yet. The compression that you can deliver might be amazing, but since I’ve only flown this 17-millimeter Olympus lens.

I can only say that it shoots great during the daytime, I haven’t really tested it during the night because I don’t really want to risk flying this drone in a populated area where lots of people and cars are passing by. That’s just my personal preference. I will not fly this drone at night. But during the day I can say that it is filming in a way that creates great results

But the whole experience to get to those shots is a little bit nerve wracking. It’s a little bit confusing at times, and it can definitely be improved still. Now I can appreciate xDynamics and their work that they have done since they have released their drone and the way they’re trying hard to make it better.

However, it’s still not up there with the best drones out there on the market. It definitely has its own niche of potential customers that can probably be very happy with this drone. However, for. Most of the users out there, it’ll be hard to get used to the system. To the size. To the flying experience. To the lag, most importantly.

So at least until we see a better transmission system that heavily reduces or completely removes the lag, I would say that this drone still has a lot of work to be done on it. So it can be great. Now, I did my best to gather some of the shots for the intro because, as many of you know, I lost a ton of my footage in a crash of one of my SSDs that didn’t have any backup.

And unfortunately, a lot of my footage was also stored there, the footage from the xDynamics Evolve 2. I have limited footage from this drone, but my experience is still the same. Like I said, it is a great product. It needs a lot more work to be excellent.

For now, though, this is everything I have for you in today’s video. hank you so much for watching. This has been interesting video to say the least to make. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know. What do you think about the drone below?

And this is everything I have for you today. This is Mike from Drone Supremacy. I’ll catch you in the next one. Ciao!

Let us know what you think about the xDynamics Evolve 2 cinema drone in the comments below. We are curious to hear what you think about this very special, and beautifully designed quadcopter.

Photo credits: Drone Supremacy.