DJI Phantom 4 Review - This thing is magical. Seriously.
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,938 words · ~9 min read
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the Phantom 4 from DJI is BU a Longshot
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the best flying vehicle I have ever had the pleasure of using and I'll spend the
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next seven or so minutes telling you
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why Intel skull Canyon knck features a
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sixth generation cor7 quad core processor and Thunderbolt 3 learn more
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at the link in the video description right out of the box the Phantom 4
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impressed me it's small it's light thanks to the Magnesium chassis and the
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packaging can actually be reused as a really robust carrying case it'll hold
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the quad a metric wack ton of spare propellers the controller and either two
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batteries or a battery and a charger that's pretty much all that a
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recreational user will need although there's still room for accessories like
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hard cases and backpacks for the pros
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the setup process is fairly easy thanks to the document ation but still a little
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tedious so after charging the batteries it took about 20 minutes of you know how
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do I turn this on it's a quick press followed by a long press by the way
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screwing on the pill bottle style locking propellers running around
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looking for a lightning cable I used an iPhone 6S for this review by the way
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updating the firmware and figuring out where to put a Micro SD card only to
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realize that a 16 gig one is included out of the box bonus I did my first
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latency test of The firstperson View camera feed and it is hard to say how
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much of this is generational improvements I mean my solo is just
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about a year old now and how much of it is dji's use of a Hardline USB
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connection instead of that whole cledy connect to a Wi-Fi access point here
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that connects wirelessly to the Drone relay but wow this is Head and Shoulders
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better than anything I've used before I mean it's not like twitch reflex
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high-speed flying capable gear like those BLS in the Drone Racing League are
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using but it is certainly responsive enough to not be an excuse for a
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photographer or a videographer to miss a shot at least when it's sitting in the
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entryway of my house literally one meter away from the controller more on that
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later now some folks can go on and on about how sexy the Phantom 4 is
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but drones don't really turn my crank
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and I feel like if you seen one quadcopter you kind of seen them all
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it's got like you guessed it four propellers yay so
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it's the underlying Tech that gets me excited here and let's get it up in the
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air while we discuss the motors have been upgraded for about a 20%
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Improvement in top speed that's up to 72 km per hour in sport mode with the 5300
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Milah LiPo battery rated at a maximum of 28 minutes though this assumes a very
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steady flight and optimal conditions not
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being a drone Ace I personally didn't find much reason to whip around that
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fast but there is more to the improved Motors than just I want to go faster and
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in the normal P mode the most impressive
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thing to me about the Phantom 4 is its stability in the air P or position mode
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uses a combination of GPS downward-facing cameras ultrasonic
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emitters their new inertial measurement unit and these upgraded Motors to
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achieve something I just hadn't seen yet
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nearly perfect hovering and shockingly
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fast self-correction during small gusts of wind or when the user suddenly lets
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go of the sticks in the middle of a maneuver and it needs to compensate to
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get back to a hover it's so confidence
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inspiring to see it behave so predictably in the air that I was
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actually willing to let my four-year-old son help me fly it in my lap something I
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wouldn't have even considered with any of drone that I have touched some of
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which theoretically hover when you let go but in practice require a fair bit
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more user intervention than that which doesn't mean it flies itself if you
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don't want it to purists can switch to the less helpful attitude mode which
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turns off the GPS system and lets you bank and drift through corners much more
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naturally I mean I think the bottom line about the Phantom 4 is that flying it is
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just such a pleasure however ever manual
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or not manual you want it it behaves smoothly and predictably and the
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firsters view is fantastic just fantastic I mean to be
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clear I am aware that there are DIY solutions that can handle even lower
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latency and longer range but to say I
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was blown away when I flew for 20
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minutes around the corner of a building and up to a kilometer away which is as
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far as I can go maintaining line of sight with my binoculars anyway without
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so much as a compression artifact on the video feed would be an
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understatement again the 3dr solo also a
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very good drone went a similar distance
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but not in a confidence inspiring manner I mean it would glitch out here and
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there and the video feed was anything but HD by that distance which leads us
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pretty well then into the camera it is
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great I was quite critical of DJI
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initially for moving to their own propriety camera system instead of
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collaborating with a market leader like GoPro except whether they saw this
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coming or it was just a lucky guess GoPro has sat on their ass and done
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absolutely nothing noteworthy in the last year and a half while DJI has been
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innovating so the camera is slightly sharper than the Phantom 3 professional
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and while I lack one personally for a comparison it is really really similar
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to the Inspire one based on this fantastic video from Fon RC Hobby and
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the gimbal actually has an added support link as well for better stability the
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120 FPS 1080 recording mode was quite
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disappointing and I'll let you be the judge of its lowlight performance so
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this is 1080 60p footage as we were approaching dusk on an otherwise sunny
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and beautiful day but my overall takeaway here is that the footage is
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professional grade stable and looks
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amazing what a payoff for DJ on that gamble which leads us pretty well then
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into the phantom for touted autonomous
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flying modes I have no use personally
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for click to fly where you touch the touchcreen and it goes where you touched
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I can operate control sticks but the object tracking mode that I'm using on
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my bike here is freaking sick you drag a
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box around the object you want to track and the Phantom 4 follows it using its
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front mounted cameras to either avoid oncoming obstacles or go around them and
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under carefully controlled conditions it's amazing it actually uses the visual
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tracking rather than a link to the remote control unit the way most of
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these Solutions work yet it actually managed to produce more usable footage
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of a moving subject running around below it than my 3dr solo with that said
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though it has a long way to go before I will trust it in the way that I do the
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Phantom 4's other features a quick moving subject can easily shake off the
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Drone and from my experience taking my bike for a very sweaty stressful ride
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around the neighborhood even under what I would consider to be pretty ideal
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conditions with a high viz yellow object to track the altitude and the following
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distance of the Drone was all over the place it lost me twice while maneuvering
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slowly and the collision avoidance system managed to scrape a street L
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though fortunately without crashing stop dead in front of a branch that it wasn't
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going to hit instead of going around it and not stop itself as I crept towards
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fairly dense foliage pulling into my driveway it works sometimes but it's not
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a mode that I would actually use unless I had the kind of income that would make
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buying a new Phantom 4 basically inconsequential which leads us then to
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the conclusion here because the Phantom 4 is not cheap is it worth the money
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well not if you don't have $1,000 lying around I suppose but if you were
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shopping for a fancy quadcopter for pleasure or even light professional use
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man the lack of an HDMI output on the
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controller without a $100 add-on module and some tinkering is a bummer but I
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can't criticize much else about it it's not as much of a blast to rip around in
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the park as a fully manual even a fixed
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quite frankly and it feels more like a tool to use than a toy to go out and
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play with but that doesn't mean that it's boring and combined with some
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creativity the Phantom 4 really packs a lot of fun into its functionality bottom
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line this thing spanks I'm going to try
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and popularize that that spanks bro so
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here's some good news massdrop you might know them from such deals as deals on
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knives deals on camping supplies deals on keyboards or deals on audio gear the
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way that mass drop works is they find authorized resellers or manufacturers
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and they say hey we've got this huge community of enthusiasts if you drop
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your price we can get a bunch of people to buy and then they go to the
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Enthusiast they say hey if a bunch of you guys commit to buy we can get them to drop their price and they've recently
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branched out into exclusive products as well so they're actually working with
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HiFi man to bring back their H300
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headphones with a special MD or mass
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drop Edition twist so at the beginning
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solely under the high-f man brand these
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entry level can you really call them that headphones were priced at
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$300 so the new ones are very similar to
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the older H 300s but with an updated and
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more lightweight structure a more neutral sound signature and an all black
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appearance compared to the silver and black of the older generation product
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but the most important change is they have reduced the price to an actually
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legitimately low $99 so check out those headphones and
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more over at drop. pslt
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dh350 or more conveniently Linked In the
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video description so thanks for watching guys
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