DJI Flip Review – Why Does This Drone Exist

When I first saw the design of the DJI Flip, my first thought was “why?” Why would DJI make a GPS drone with built-in propeller guards that you can’t remove? This is the first of its kind, but propeller guards are nothing new for any drone that DJI has made. Propeller guards have been designed that attach to the arms, making them an optional accessory that could be attached when you might be flying in close proximity to people, trees, buildings, or any other objects that could cause a crash.

To get technical here, the Flip actually uses propeller cages which fully enclose the props. This means that while the drone is flying, it’s basically impossible to get nicked by them, making it a very safe drone. The DJI Avata 1, Avata 2, and Neo have a variation of propeller guards that are built into the actual body of the drone, making it all one piece. The Avatas are classified as cine whoops and the Neo is a tiny whoop, and to fit these classifications, they need this design. That’s why seeing this design wasn’t out of the ordinary on these drones—it was just fitting in with what everyone is used to.

について DJI Flip, on the other hand, takes an optional accessory that I would say not many people use for general flying and makes it a permanent fixture for any and all flights. As a fun throwback for those of you that have been flying drones for a long time, you might remember the clip-on cages for the Mavic Pro, but the key word there is “clip-on”—they could be added for scenarios where you needed them and taken off to fly freely without them.

Understanding the Design Choice

Now we still haven’t answered the why—why did DJI make this drone when in reality it’s just a niche version of the Mini 4 Pro? If you think about it, both of those drones are so similar: they’re the same size, the same weight, they use the same controller, the same transmission system, they’ve got the same camera. Both of them are so similar, but the biggest difference is that the Flip has these built-in propeller cages.

Being a niche version of the DJI Mini 4 Pro, I think its different design helps it excel in a few different areas. The first of which is close proximity flight around people and objects. This drone does have the smart features of the Neo built-in, so you can take it off from your hand with the push of a button, which is super safe because the propellers are enclosed—they won’t nick up your hands. And also, if you’re just flying around other people trying to get photos and videos, you can rest assured it’s not going to cause any damage to people or property because the propellers are fully enclosed.

A Perfect Drone for Children

Now this brings me into the second point, which is that this is going to be a great drone for young children. If you have a son or daughter that wants to get into flying drones, this is going to be the one to get because it still offers great specs—it’s fast, it’s nimble, it has a good camera on it, it has a great transmission system, but the propellers are fully enclosed meaning that they won’t injure themselves.

Now the final thing personally that I’m interested in the most probably is the tracking on this drone. The tracking features are going to be great because of the fully enclosed propellers. It doesn’t mean that this drone is going to do a better job at keeping up with the subject you wanted to track, but it’s going to do a better job at bouncing off of objects that it might run into because of these propeller guards.

The Weight Factor

You might wonder why DJI didn’t just make propeller guards or cages available for the Mini 4 Pro, but don’t forget the magic weight number of 250g. The Mini 4 Pro is under 250g, which allows people in certain 国名 to fly under different rules, and by adding these propeller guards, you’ll push the weight over, thus making it heavier than 250g. The benefit of the Flip is that it stays under 250g with these propeller cages on.

That there is the reason this drone exists—to have a drone with built-in propeller guards that stays small and lightweight. We see rules and regulations here in the 米国 being relaxed so that it’s much easier to get a waiver to fly over people as long as you have a drone that is lightweight and has propeller guards on it, so the Flip here really does fit the bill well with everything already built in and ready to go out of the box.

Pros and Cons of Propeller Guards

With that said, as a whole, propeller guards, no matter what drone they’re attached to, have a list of pros and cons which I want to briefly highlight. By now you can probably guess what they are as they’re in line with what we’ve already discussed. Propeller guards allow for safe flight around people, they allow you to do things with your drone from a regulation standpoint that you couldn’t do without them, you can launch and land from your hand without slicing your fingers, and if you bump into a wall it won’t be a devastating crash where the drone tumbles down to the ground.

All of that is great, but that extra weight comes with downsides like a decreased flight time, worse overall aircraft performance from a handling and speed standpoint, the extra plastic can make a louder noise, and it overall makes the drone more clunky. But those cons don’t seem to apply to the Flip as much as they would to another drone that uses these propeller guards as an extra add-on accessory, especially considering the Flip uses these propeller cages which fully enclose the propeller, which usually are the most restrictive type.

Because the drone has these built in, the design and performance was specifically made to fly with them always attached, therefore having propeller guards goes from being a negative to an added positive. For example, I can easily get up to a good speed in the normal mode despite these windy conditions we’ve had here in the Philly area—I was able to rotate up and around the art museum with no sweat at all.

Design and Physical Features

So with all the talk about propeller guards and cages out of the way, why don’t we finally talk about the actual drone itself now, shall we? The Flip is a very different looking drone from DJI’s other offerings for the main reason that we have been talking about for this entire video. When unfolded, it looks like a regular drone, but the way it folds together for travel is actually genius. Instead of folding close up to the body, the legs fold under the drone, making it compact and easy to throw in your bag. This isn’t much bigger than the Mini 4 Pro folded up, and there’s no need for any extra brace to hold the propellers in place as the cages around the propellers keep them from getting snagged on anything for easy storing in your bag.

For a quick walk around, you have your power button on one side with the LEDs to display battery life, and on the other is the auto launch button beside the USB-C port and the SD card slot. The drone here does not have omnidirectional obstacle avoidance, so the only obstacle avoidance is forwards and downwards with two vision positioning sensors underneath and an infrared sensor in front. If this looks or sounds familiar, then you might be thinking of the DJI Spark that shares a very similar design with that forward-facing infrared sensor through the big plastic piece on the front.

The Flip is really just like any other drone we’d get from DJI. We’ve got the three-axis mechanical gimbal on the front to take stable photos and videos, we’ve got the battery that goes in the back, of course we have the same four propeller design—really the biggest difference is just the fact that it has these propeller guards.

Performance

Now with the idea of the propeller guards still in our mind, how the drone performs is definitely the topic of conversation here. As with the size, this drone surely has its limitations. For instance, the flight time is one of the main things that has been slightly decreased from the Mini 4 Pro. With most GPS drones from DJI having an advertised flight time of over 43 minutes, the 31-minute advertised flight time is probably the most drastic difference, but it’s not only the propeller guards that are affecting this. To account for the extra weight of those propeller cages, the overall capacity of the battery has been decreased, which is also why the flight time isn’t up to par with those other drones. It sure is better though than the real-world flight time of 12 minutes I’ve been getting with the much smaller Neo.

The speed, on the other hand, is unchanged with a top speed in sport mode of 16 m/s or 36 mph. This is the same exact speed as the Mini 4 Pro, which is impressive considering the extra drag added by the propeller cages. Despite the top speed on paper being the same, I do find that the wind has a greater impact on the drone’s flight, so you won’t be able to reach the top speed as easily.

Overall in my time actually flying the Flip, I didn’t feel like the propeller guards were holding me back as much as I expected them to. When I got the drone up out and away from me, I was able to zip around from spot to spot, get the photos and videos that I needed, and I felt like the speed was right on par with what I expected. Now sure, in strong gusts of wind I did feel like the drone needed to fight a little bit harder to get through, but all in all I’m super happy with the performance of this drone considering it has built-in propeller cages.

There’s really no good way that I could perfectly describe the performance of this drone unless I handed you the controller and let you fly it for yourself, but I think sharing screen recordings does give you a good understanding to look at the speed and see how the drone performs when moving through space. I still think that the best clip I shared is the one from earlier going up and around the art museum on a windy day—the drone was able to move side to side, increase its altitude and pitch the gimbal down with no issues whatsoever despite high winds.

Camera Quality

Now the camera on this drone is where it really starts to shine, as this is the same exact camera as the one on the Mini 4 Pro. That means the photos and videos are highly detailed with good dynamic range, leading to some of the best aerial photos and videos you can capture on a drone of this size. DJI doesn’t skimp when it comes to the cameras on its drones, and the specs of the Flip alone show that. The photos max out at 48 megapixels so you can capture high resolution still images, and the video is right in line with most cameras today that can capture 4K video at up to 60 frames per second. There are even some pro video tools sprinkled in here like the ability to capture 10-bit D-Log footage and a sensor that has a dual native ISO.

Getting to the example photos and videos, these are images that I’ve been used to seeing for the past year or so, as remember this is basically the Mini 4 Pro camera, and that is a drone that I’ve used quite extensively. There are a lot of drone cameras to compare within DJI’s lineup, some of which are far better than what’s on the Mini 4 Pro and now the Flip. To me though, the differences are amplified by the on-paper specs. If I were to show you a bunch of images between all the drones that make up DJI’s current lineup, you’d probably have a hard time discerning the difference between them by just looking at them with no context. This is a big plus for the Flip as it’s an inexpensive drone that can hang with the others, giving you more than usable photos and videos you can share.

The one thing I will say is the performance limits you in the shots that you can get with it, and I actually feel this way with the Mini 4 Pro as well because of its size. People often won’t correlate how the performance of a drone will impact the camera, but it’s true—if I have a smaller drone, I can’t get fast sweeping shots of a city skyline or chase a fast moving subject like a boat or a car. I think I’m just getting picky here though, as the camera quality is great and I think the examples that I shared here speak for themselves. If you’re interested, feel free to check out the link in the description to download some sample photos and videos for yourselves.

Smart Features

Now I mentioned the Neo earlier in this video, which is one of DJI’s newest, smallest, and least expensive drones, but despite all of that, it actually introduced some features that has really changed the landscape of DJI’s offerings. If you’ve seen any of my videos on this drone, you know that it can be flown without a remote, so you can cycle through the different automated modes using the button on the drone, and once you have the desired flight mode selected, you can long press and the drone will take off out of your hand and do its thing.

The same is true with the Flip, so it has a button on the side towards the back that allows you to cycle through these different modes. Once you’ve selected the one you want, like Active Track, then you long press and the drone will launch and begin its flight. This is really where the propeller guards come in handy as you can take off and land from your hand without the fear of nicking up your fingers. 信頼 me, I have done it a lot—I hand launch and land my drone often because I’m usually on a dusty construction site, so I’ll go and catch the drone or take off from my hand, which has led to some cuts on my fingers. But with this drone, it actually feels so idiot-proof—like I can just kind of hold it out there, start the propellers, let it take off from my hand and catch it as well super easily.

Probably my favorite way to use this drone is with Active Track, simply because it has those propeller cages. Even though it doesn’t have omnidirectional obstacle avoidance, it has physical guards in place to protect the drone in the event of a crash. Depending on the impact, the drone might bump off and keep moving, or if it crashes, the damage will be mitigated as it has the protection built right in.

I say this as if crashing is a common occurrence, although the drone actually does a great job at staying in space and tracking a subject without crashing in the first place. Just like the Neo, the drone tracks the movement of the subject it’s following to better navigate through space. It figures if you as the subject were able to make it through an area, then it too should be fine by following the same path. Don’t forget this drone does have a forward-facing infrared sensor to detect some obstacles—it’s just not like some of DJI’s more advanced drones that have the obstacle avoidance sensors in every direction to detect obstacles no matter which way it’s flying.

Flight Controls and Modes

Now it’s also worth noting that there’s a lot of different ways to fly the Flip just like the Neo, making it a very versatile drone that gives you many different options. To quickly run through them: you can have it fly standalone with no phone or remote connected, so it just follows you or performs an automated quick shot right from your hand. You can instead connect your phone with the Fly app to get better control and a live view from the camera—there’s even a set of virtual sticks if you want to push the drone around. But by far my favorite way to fly this drone is with either of the remotes with physical sticks for the best control. You can choose between the RCN3 that uses your phone as a screen or you can use the RC2 that has the built-in screen.

Both of these controllers operate over the O4 transmission system, so you’ll get a crazy amount of total range, but more importantly, it’s got a great signal for uninterrupted flight at distances under a few miles. A drop in frames or a black screen while flying is very rare to see.

Additional Features

Now as we get to the tail end of the video here, there are a few miscellaneous things that I want to cover, like the fact that the drone turns on when it’s unfolded. Now when you unfold the front two arms and the back left arm, the drone will stay off, but as soon as you unfold that back right arm, the drone then kicks on. Now this is a cool feature—it’s fairly neat, it does get the drone turned on faster so that you can get in the air a little bit more quick, but just know that you want to have your gimbal guard taken off of the camera before you unfold the drone.

This also goes for inserting a new battery, so if you land, turn the drone off and take the battery out, when a fresh one goes in, it’ll turn on immediately. So the drone gets on, gets warmed up, establishes its GPS connection so that you’re off to the races flying.

Now another thing that I really like about the Flip is the four-way battery charger, so you can put four batteries on one charging hub to get them charged for your next flight. Most recent drones from DJI are coming with three-way chargers so you can charge three batteries one at a time, but with this one here, you can actually charge two batteries at once if you have a high enough wattage output on the charger that you’re pulling from. So this is definitely one of my favorite charging hubs released by DJI for the fact that we’ve got four total slots and you can charge two at once.

Now the final thing I want to mention is that because this drone is fairly small, it does not have Remote ID built in, so you might want to go and get a Remote ID module for the drone. If you’re out of the United States then maybe this doesn’t apply to you, but just know that it doesn’t have Remote ID built in and you definitely want to plan for when you go and fly this drone depending on where you live and what your intentions are.

Ground Camera Capability

Now the final thing that I want to mention, and this is kind of a little bit weird, is the fact that this drone can kind of be used as a ground camera. Now look, pretty much any drone can be held and used on the ground, but just the way that these propellers or these arms fold up, you could hold it down here on the bottom and actually use it as a fairly comfortable ground camera.

Now of course you’ve got to go and hold the controller so you can see what you’re shooting, or you want to pull your phone out and connect using the Fly app. So while this is a little bit clunky, it might be good in a pinch if you can only bring one camera, one drone, and the Flip is your option. I will say that I’m always a proponent of just buying the right gear for the right situation, so if I want to shoot anything on the ground, I’ll use my mirrorless camera, I’ll use my phone, I’ll use the Pocket 3, but hey, again if you’re in a pinch, you can always use this on the ground just like all the other drones, but this one just feels a little bit easier to use because of the way the propellers fold underneath.

Anyway guys, that’s all that I got for this video. Please let me know your thoughts down below on the Flip. You think it’s a good release? If you were to right now buy a drone, would you purchase the Mini 4 Pro or the Flip? Would love to hear the thoughts—leave them down below and as always, I’ll talk to you later, peace.