DJI Mini 3 - Cool drone!

Here we go again.

Ah yes, it’s that time of year when I become a tech reviewer. This time up on deck is the DJI Mini 3, DJI’s latest drone in the sub-$500(ish) price range. I wanted to get this drone after seeing a friends new Mini 3 Pro and realizing holy smokes, drones have come a long way in 5 years! I need a new drone!

And I am not disappointed.

Some necessary context.

My previous drone is a DJI Spark, a drone released in 2017 that I received during Christmas 2018.

The DJI Spark is a really interesting drone. DJI offered it for $399 with your phone as an RC controller, but then offered it for a higher pricetag (somewhere around $500-$600) with an RC controller as part of the Fly More Kit (with an extra battery and charging hub, too).

Overall, the Spark was a great drone when I got it. Camera quality was more than enough, it had fun flight modes & camera stuff like panoramas, really the only big issues were how slow the drone got a GPS fix (it took and continues to take 3-5 minutes sometimes), the extremely short battery life of about 12 minutes of flight time, and the range. Oh the range.

See, the DJI Spark uses some wacky combo of Wi-Fi signals to transmit RC & video. However, my childhood home turns out to be surrounded by a lot of RF blocking trees. If you dare went beyond 2,000 feet in winter, you got an express train ride to video glitches and RC disconnections. 1,000 feet in the summer? Pipe dream.

And because my childhood home is in the middle of nowhere, the only real attractions were the two ponds nearby. And other peoples houses (but that’s a no-go for…obvious reasons). I mostly resorted to hovering in the air at 400 feet which is great fun to take panoramas and photos…until you see all the seasons and things rinse and repeat. So within a year I generally stopped flying the drone, only taking it out for special occasions.

New drone, who dis?

That was until my friend, in 2023, got a Mini 3 Pro. Up to this point I basically lost touch with the drone scene and I had zero clue how drones had progressed. When my friend got a Mini 3 Pro and I flew it, I was amazed at how far these drones had come. 30 minute flight time (and even longer with a bigger battery)? 2018 me would be drooling. 48 MP cameras? 4K recording? Under 249g so no need to sell your soul to the FAA? Color me so impressed I want one.

Most importantly, the range improvements. Oh my the range had increased by a buttload. Compared to my dinky little Spark which, once I started flying it again, found out that it has a RC range of ~4,000 feet under the MOST ideal circumstances and you are damn straight in visual line of sight AND in the fresnel zone as well.

Mini 3 Pro vs Mini 3 - don’t be fooled by Reddit!

In the process of buying this Mini 3, I was debating extensively whether or not to splurge and get the Mini 3 Pro. And at times I was going for the Mini 3 Pro because the internet was saying buy the Mini 3 Pro (and very few videos exist on the Mini 3).

Nonetheless, between the Mini 3’s release and now, it got a price cut of $100 (bringing the gap between the drones to $300), which is actually huge. It’s now $658 for a Mini 3 Fly More Kit versus $950 for a Mini 3 Pro Fly More Kit.

What do you get for $300 more? Well, things that matter to pro drone users but don’t to me. Sure, ActiveTrack is nifty and all but I’ll be real, I never used it on my Spark. Crash detection is cool but I usually go for high aerial shots where…crashing the drone is an accomplishment. MasterShots, again, cool feature, I don’t care (okay I do, the timelapse feature looks cool but it wasn’t worth spending so much more). The Pro using 1080p video transmission vs 720p on the Mini 3 (which, can you really tell them apart in the wild? not really). There’s some other technical differences but they really don’t matter for the upcharge.

I think for a lot of people the Mini 3 is that nice in-between where it’s a really solid drone that can go for the long-haul and has the important features that people like to use (like QuickShots), but excludes the advanced features and says fuck it, if you crash, you crash and we ain’t gonna help you not crash.

(which again, crashing a drone is really hard to do if you’re not stupid and fly in open areas like you’re supposed to)

Most importantly though, the Mini 3 retains the same camera sensor as the Mini 3 Pro, including the 48 MP mode which was added in a firmware update. The only things you lose from the Pro to the Mini with the camera is burst mode, 4K60 (which just eats up SD card storage anyway), lack of ISO 6400 (which isn’t a loss), no H.265/MOV support and a lower max video bitrate (100 Mbps compared to 150 Mbps on the pro). Technical crud that I don’t really care about.

What do we get for $658?!

Actually quite a lot. I opted for the Mini 3 Fly More Kit without DJI’s fancy pants RC controller, rather, the one you hook your phone up to.

You get the drone (important), 3 (!!) batteries that are rated for 38 minutes of flight time (and keep the weight at 249g to avoid the wrath of the FAA), a charging hub for all the batteries, the controller, all the necessary cables, and lots of extra propellers if you do manage to crash the drone, all in a really high-quality shoulder bag.

That’s a banger deal for $658 if you ask me.

Aside: The charging hub sucks ass

The charging hub included with the Mini 3 is what I can only describe as a downgrade from the charging system included with the Spark. Let me explain.

The DJI Spark came with a really neato charging system with a brick & a hard-wired proprietary cable that spat out 13V at 3A to a charging base with docks for 3 Spark batteries. The best part was that all the batteries would charge concurrently.

In addition, the brick had 2x USB outputs, for a max of 5V @ 2A on two ports. The Spark’s battery life may have sucked, but the lower capacity of each battery (at about 1480 mAh) combined with concurrent charging meant that you could be fully charged and ready for another flight in ~70-80 minutes, including a fully-charged controller.

Now, the Mini 3’s charging system sucks ass. First, the voltage configuration. DJI was high when they made the spec for the hub. 5V @ 3A (okay, normal), 9V @ 3A (okay, fine), and then 12V @ 3A? Who on earth has a USB-C charger that can do 12V @ 3A? I certainly don’t. And, best of all, not even DJI’s official 30W power adapter can do 3A on the 12V rail!

Aside from having to lose out on 9 watts of charging power, the hub SEQUENTIALLY charges your batteries. One battery at a time. Okay, that’s fine, maybe each battery can pull ~30W to charge and these batteries do have quite a high capacity at about 2500 mAh (and even higher for the extended life ones that make the craft exceed 249g). But the charging hub does not at least do sequential charging when a battery is above 80% and very presumably not drawing the full 3A over any voltage rail and you could say, make up the rest of the amps to start charging the next battery.

Worst of all, if there’s an external accessory attached (e.g. your controller), that charges LAST once all the drone batteries are charged since the hub has to now renegotiate to use the 5V rail. Which makes sense, you can only draw one voltage at a time on USB-C. But man is it a downgrade from the Spark. I don’t care about power bricks being proprietary if they give additional functionality! The Mini 3 from start to finish with mostly dead batteries (and a 50-70% charged controller from all that flying) takes about 3 hours to fully charge.

There’s also the fun issue of if you pop out a battery of the hub when it seems to be above ~90% then pop it back into the hub, that battery will no longer charge and display as full. It’s not a huge dealbreaker (a loss of 1-2 minutes of flight time at most), but a bit annoying if you prefer having all your batteries at 100% before you fly.

But alas, the rest of the fly more kit is great. I love it. Shoulder bag makes you look professional, and there’s so. many. pockets for storing things. Okay, with that over, let’s get this thing in the air.

Flying the drone.

Flying the Mini 3 at first is pretty easy. DJI requires you to actually charge the batteries to get them activated (which, again, they activate one at a time due to that sequential charging). But I was able to charge one battery for a bit then plug it into the Mini 3 just so I could run firmware updates (especially to unlock the 48 MP mode), then wait the few hours for all the batteries + RC to charge up.

Actually flying the Mini 3 in the field isn’t too bad. There’s a decent bit of legwork you have to do to prep for flight (remove the gimbal cover, unfold the motor arms, install the battery, get the controller out, put your phone in the controller, connect the controller to your phone, get out the thumbsticks, turn on the controller, open DJI Fly, turn on the Mini 3) and it is a lengthier process compared to the Spark (which didn’t involve removing gimbal covers & unfolding motor arms), but that’s okay.

On first boot, I noticed that the Mini 3 is FAST to get a GPS fix. It isn’t instant but it doesn’t take any more than 15-20 seconds to get a fix to update the home point. A huge improvement compared to the Spark which not only takes a while but also likes to bamboozle you by saying it has a GPS fix but it’s only moderate, loses it during takeoff, and then you’re in the air waiting for GPS (and wasting even more battery!).

Then during flying, oh my how fast the drone flies in normal mode! The Spark was limited to 6-8 mph in normal mode but the Mini 3 can easily reach 15-20 mph in normal mode and go up to 35 mph in sport mode. That is CRAZY fast.

Range wise, the Mini 3 is insane. I was easily able to send the Mini 3 places that I couldn’t with the Spark. I was easily able to fly over 5,000 feet away with direct line of sight to the drone (because that’s how signals work at such far distances, get shreked FAA) with strong video signal coming back and around 2,000 feet with some trees and such in the way. It’s actually insane because you forget how long it’ll take for the drone to come back.

My Spark would cut out at 3,000 feet even with direct LOS. The Mini 3? No problem at all. I absolutely love this. And I love being in an actual mid-sized city and not in the middle of nowhere, but I’ll have to do some range testing when I’m back home and see how that works out.

Signal was still a bit iffy at times, and especially when you’re flying farther than 2,000 feet you really need to take great care to ensure you are within LOS of the drone so the signal can penetrate, otherwise you will get RC disconnections. It’s really nice though that if the drone loses connection for too long, it’ll just automatically return to home so you can control it again.

Overall, the flying experience with the Mini 3 is really smooth and steady. It definitely feels quite refined compared to the Spark and very smooth (sometimes almost too smooth!). The best part is that the controller has a much more smooth beeper in it, compared to the awfully sharp and annoying beeper in the Spark controller.

Except when you go below 20% battery and the Mini 3 RC is like ayyyyy-YOOOO (your battery is low).

The end result - photos & video

Photos & video from the Mini 3 are excellent as I would expect from a DJI drone. DJI has really upped their game with cameras lately and the Mini 3 is no slouch.

What really impressed me with the Mini 3 is how shockingly smooth the gimbal is. When I was initially flying the drone, it was pretty windy outside and the drone was giving me strong wind warnings. Despite that, the footage of the drone looks super stable and crisp even though the drone was absolutely compensating hard for the wind. Even in sport mode. A huge contrast to the Spark where once you turn on sport mode, the gimbal just quits.

Video just after sunset also looks great with really nice exposure balance. I need to fly more to conclusively say how good video is overall in these conditions, as around sunset is when I like to fly my drone (and not sunrise, because well, the only time I’m up for the sunrise is if I pulled an all-nighter).

So long as you are keeping it straight on the sticks, this thing is a video champ. It also has a Cine mode which decreases the max speed for even smoother video, which I need to try.

The 48 MP photos from the drone are super cool. They do have a bit of smoothing in them, but you can easily make out details in far away buildings with ease and they look amazing compared to the DJI Spark.

Should you get a drone?

With the time ticking quite late, it’s best I finish writing this. So, should you go out and buy one of these nifty little Mini 3 drones?

Honestly, if you have $650 to blow and you’ve always been curious about drones, go for it! I think it’s a more than reasonable price for a drone that’s really capable and can blow you away with high-quality photo & video. The Mini 3 sits at a nice point now with the price cut where it’s a step up from the Mini 2 SE when it comes to the camera sensor (arguably the most important part of a drone), has important features for newcomers (like QuickShots), and the features it doesn’t have really only matter to people who actually fly drones for content creation and need the most powerful drone on the market (which this is clearly not).

For a casual flyer like myself who enjoys going up in the air to see the world around for personal enjoyment, but also wants some of the best camera tech you can get in a mini drone, the Mini 3 is the perfect drone for me and I think it’s an underrated drone people gloss over.

It’s also very important to say this, but please, if you’re gonna buy one of these drones, buy the Fly More Kit. It is worth every penny (and saves quite a lot of money) to have the extra batteries for longer flight time. Trust me, even if you don’t think you need the extra batteries, you’re gonna want them because flying drones really is so much fun.