The DJI Neo 3 has flown on camera. A 91-second video posted to X on Wednesday at 11:34 a.m. Eastern by Jasper Ellens, who writes for DroneXL, shows the unannounced drone lifting off a residential street in Indonesia, hovering over a row of potted plants and landing on the pavers, steered from the DJI RC Mini controller the pilot holds in one hand.
Ellens said the clips come from an Indonesian owner who has been posting videos of his new Neo 3, including a comparison with the DJI Neo 2 and a first flight. He posted them, in his words, “to end the AI questions,” after readers asked whether the earlier Neo 3 footage, including Tuesday’s unboxing video, was AI-generated.
The video also shows the one part of this kit DJI can legally sell in the United States. The RC Mini has held an FCC grant since December 19, 2025. The drone it is flying has none.
Jasper Ellens (@JasperEllens), October 7, 2026
The RC Mini Pairs From Its Own Screen and Carries a Scroll Wheel on Its Back Edge
The RC Mini’s screen walks the pilot through pairing with no phone involved. It reads “Connect to Aircraft,” says to press once, then press and hold the aircraft power button, and offers “Pair now” when the drone does not connect by itself. In flight it shows the camera’s live view.
Below the screen sit the DJI logo, two short control sticks, a combined return-to-home and pause button, an orange shutter button and four green battery LEDs. When the pilot turns the controller over, a ribbed scroll wheel appears on the back edge, next to a sliding cover and a hinged clip on the side. Ellens called it “a new control wheel on the bottom.” Nothing in the footage shows what it adjusts. On DJI’s full-size controllers, a wheel in that position tilts the gimbal.
The pairing screen, the sticks and the wheel are the first look at how the RC Mini works. The retail box DroneXL went through on September 15 only showed its face. The RC Mini AG, the pocket controller DJI launched for its spray drones in China last November, has a 1.97-inch, 800-nit display and three hours per charge. Whether the consumer RC Mini shares that hardware is not something the video can settle.
A reader asked Ellens whether the RC Mini could fly the Mini 5 Pro. “DJI should do that, but don’t know man,” he answered. DJI planned a pocket controller for its bigger drones once before: the RC Track leaked alongside the Air 3S in October 2024 and was cancelled before launch.
The Neo 3 Makes the Neo 2 Look Small on the Same Table
Early in the clip the owner stacks the Neo 3 on his grey Neo 2, and the new drone appears to overhang the old one on every side. The production listing puts the Neo 3 at 192.7 grams, against 151 for the Neo 2, or 160 with its transceiver.
The Neo 3’s cages are taller and its arms thicker. The top of the Neo 3 carries a power button, four battery LEDs and a small rectangular screen behind the gimbal that glows blue when the drone is on. The underside is ribbed with vents along the full length of the fuselage. Both details match Tuesday’s unboxing video and the spec sheet Igor Bogdanov leaked on October 1.
The flight itself is short and uneventful: a takeoff from the pavers, a slow hover a few feet up along a garden wall, a landing. The footage is shot on a phone from behind the pilot, so it does not show what the Neo 3’s camera recorded.
Asked why the drone surfaced in Indonesia with no test program behind it, Ellens wrote that DJI’s smaller drones often show up early in Malaysia and Indonesia, and that it takes one or two people to treat an NDA unit like any other drone they can show customers. He has seen no sales date, and when asked for a guess he said six weeks. DJI has not announced the Neo 3.
DroneXL’s Take
The remote is the story now. DJI has spent two years trying to get a controller this size into pilots’ hands, and the RC Mini is the cancelled RC Track idea finally shipping, with a screen, a pairing flow that needs no phone, and a gimbal wheel on a controller DJI could have left as a two-stick toy. My read is that DJI built this controller for more than the Neo 3, and the reader asking about the Mini 5 Pro is asking the right question. The twist for American pilots is that the controller cleared the FCC and the drone did not. The Neo 2 never launched here either. Until DJI pairs the RC Mini with a drone that already holds a US grant, Americans get the approved controller and nothing to fly with it.
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.
