A 49-second unboxing video of the DJI Neo 3 Fly More Combo reached X on Tuesday morning, and this time the drone itself comes out of the box. Jasper Ellens, who writes for DroneXL, posted the clip at 7:48 a.m. Eastern. He said someone had leaked it on TikTok and a friend of his captured a copy. Ellens added the DroneXL watermark that appears on every frame.
The DJI Neo 3 drone comes out of its sleeve with spoked cages over all four propellers. Next to it go a DJI RC Mini controller with its own screen, a charging hub, a USB-C cable and two small sealed bags. The hub holds two flight batteries, and a third sits in the drone.
Each battery has rows of black slots across its top. On September 21, Ellens said slots like those made him think a circulating Neo 3 image was AI-generated, and DroneXL wrote that slots in a flight battery were not something DJI ships. Clearly we got that wrong.
Jasper Ellens (@JasperEllens), October 6, 2026
Neo 3 Fly More Combo Matches the Box Panel Leaked in September
Everything in the video matches the in-the-box panel DroneXL went through on September 20: the aircraft, three flight batteries, a charging hub, the DJI RC Mini and a USB-C cable.
The panel also lists spare propellers and a screwdriver. Those would fit in the sealed bags, but in the clip we do not get to see their contents.
Ellens wrote on X that the drone is almost 200 grams, citing DroneXL’s reporting, and that the figure includes a transceiver now built into the airframe. That number traces to the production listing Igor Bogdanov posted last month, which puts the Neo 3 at 192.7 grams. The DJI Neo 2 weighs 151 grams on its own and 160 grams with its screw-on transceiver. If the Neo 3’s radio is inside, the like-for-like gap is about 33 grams.
The RC Mini in the box has held a U.S. FCC grant since December 19, 2025, as DroneXL reported in September. The aircraft has no grant, and without one DJI can’t sell it in the United States.
Neo 3 Carries a Small Screen on Its Nose, Behind the Gimbal
The Neo 3 has a small rectangular screen on top of its nose, just behind the gimbal, and it glows blue in one close-up. DJI has not announced the Neo 3, and nothing official says what the screen shows. The video never catches it displaying anything readable.
Those close-ups come from the middle of the clip. It cuts away from the table to shots of a Neo 3 against an edited-in fire backdrop, some with the drone standing on its retail box, then returns to the table for the last nine seconds.
The rest of the airframe is dotted with obstacle avoidance sensors. A round lens faces up from the rear of the fuselage, and the vented underside has a sensor set into it too. The nose has a slit above the camera and dark “sensor windows“ on the arms either side of it. The Neo 2 already pairs forward LiDAR with additional obstacle avoidance sensors on its top and bottom, as Shawn from Air Photography noted in his one-year Neo 2 review for DroneXL, and the leaked spec sheet promises omnidirectional obstacle detection for the Neo 3.
Neo 3 Flight Battery Carries the Slots DroneXL Doubted
Near the end of the clip, we see the battery being inserted into the DJI Neo 3, a regulatory label sits in the bay underneath.
Each Intelligent Flight battery also has four status LEDs and a button on its top face, so the charge level shows on the battery itself. The video can’t show whether the slots move air or are only styling, and the leaked spec sheet Bogdanov posted on October 1 gives no battery spec or flight time.
The September 21 story was right about the image itself. The picture Ellens posted then was the drone printed on the retail box, in the same pose and with the same picture on the controller’s screen, and nothing in this video changes that. DJI drew the slots on the box because they are on the battery.
DroneXL’s Take
This is the most complete beginner kit DJI has shown for the Neo line. Spoked cages take the knocks a new pilot will give it and makes it safe for indoor flights, and a three-bay hub means a first afternoon doesn’t end when one battery runs flat. The RC Mini matters most to me. Ellens called it a downgrade last month, and he has a point if you already fly with a DJI RC 2 with a built-in display. It seems that with the DJI Neo 3, the Chinese drone maker has created the perfect, easy-to-fly, safe beginner drone, that many American drone pilots would have loved to find under the Christmas tree this year…
Source: Jasper Ellens on X
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
