(NEW) DJI Mini 3 Drone with 4K Camera (DJI RC-N1)

After being drone-curious for a decade, this was my first drone purchase. The Mini 3 is a lot of fun to fly and the video and photo quality is excellent, even in lower light in the evening. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the Mini 3 is to fly, which is true of probably every DJI mini drone. Installing the DJI Fly app wasn't difficult and it wasn't too invasive. I wish the DJI Mimo app to register their action cameras was as pleasant an experience. The 38 minute flight time is excellent for a 249 gram no-license mini drone. I fly 25-30 minutes and land as soon as the app starts telling me that the battery is getting low, both to avoid drama trying to limp home against a headwind with only a few electrons remaining in the battery, and to avoid deep cycle discharging the battery and reducing its life span. The battery is so intelligent it actually has its own firmware and the smart battery controller will do everything it can to protect the battery, up to but not including endangering the drone. The drone will always try to make it back and it'll fry a battery if needed, as it should. Don't deep discharge the battery and it should be good for hundreds of flights, even though drone flight is a high discharge activity that inherently isn't good for batteries. The Mini 3 doesn't have obstacle avoidance but that's mostly useful for following a person and the visual follow modes don't work all that well so I prefer to do the obstacle avoidance and tracking manually, and not having obstacle avoidance makes the batteries last longer. There are a few reasonably priced after market apps that extend the features of the drone. I use Maven EVO and it allows me to program waypoints, either by flying to them or by programming them on a map, and then fly the mission. It's a great way to have the drone fly itself and video me while I ride my motorcycle, or precisely fly a programmed course to video a particular scene, such as a coastline, river or cliff. There are also a few co-pilot features that automate some of the flying, or constrain the drone's motion (example: along a line) while allowing the remote control to do much simpler flying along the path. All of these features allow some up front setup time to be traded for a precise and safe flight path. I love how small and lightweight the Mini 3 is. That makes it easy to bring along on ultralight motorcycle camping adventures, while allowing me to get some dramatic aerial video and photography so my shared adventures are more compelling. The most challenging aspect of drone flying has been getting my old eyes to see my phone or tablet when flying on a sunny day. You may want to upgrade from the RC-N! controller that uses the DJI Fly app on your connected phone, to the RC-2 controller with the built-in screen, not to use the screen, but to have video out that can be fed into heads up glasses so the flight software is inside sunglasses but you retain situational awareness you wouldn't have with FPV goggles. This would be at least a few hundred dollars for this upgrade but may be worthwhile for some people.