The DJI Phantom 4 is DJI’s ultimate masterclass and clearly peerless at present. It’s big, awesome, impressive as hell and sports a take-no-prisoners, bad boy attitude you can’t help but love. What’s more, its Einstein-smart and largely flies itself, making it truly a drone for everyone from your lovely grandma, an extreme sports junkie or a professional filmmaker.
It comes sheathed in a magnesium alloy skin gloriously finished in glossy white that glistens on sun-filled days like a supermodel’s. The body is more streamlined and robust, the overall look changed and made meaner looking and faster, while tipping the scales at 1,380 grams. The battery is most noticeably upgraded, with a DJI claimed 28 minutes of blissful flying time. Which translates to about 25 minutes in actual life. Need even more juice? An extra battery would be definitely advisable. A classy-looking carrying case comes provided.
DJI Phantom 4 Specs
According to DJI, their newest creation is five times more stable than the Phantom 3 and that incredible as it seems true. In hover mode, the drone stubbornly stays inches from where you parked it, and will not move save at your command. This is due to a slew of singularly effective new IMU and other DJI sensors and gizmos. And boy is it fast! Speed is 22 MPH with terrain avoidance on, rocketing to 35 MPH in normal flight mode. On to a meteoric 45 MPH in the positively awesome sports mode. Even at full speed, the DJI Phantom 4 is agility personified, with effortless barrel rolls, jaw-dropping zooms, screaming dives aplenty to make even a fighter pilot blanch.
Not to worry, as previously noted this drone is Harvard smart and comes with terrain avoidance. When enabled, the feature enables it to smartly dodge obstacles you either didn’t see or were too busy shouting yourself hoarse in wonder at what it can do to notice. This is known as the Obstacle Sensing System and uses up to 5 cameras to build a constantly updated map about its surroundings. It can then autonomously decide when and where to stop, hover or redirect itself based on what it senses. With this feature on. The drone is idiot proof, sentient and virtually uncrashable. But it does come with a small limitation as its cameras and sensors are frontally located. Meaning if you back it up into something, you might as well be prepared to lose your pricey acquisition.
Available intelligent flight modes include Course Lock, Waypoint, Follow Me, Point of Interest, Home Lock, and Auto Track. With all familiar and self-explanatory to all drone lovers out there.
The camera is pretty much the same as its earlier predecessor and pretty good at what it does. Still, it gets a new lens that is supposed to result in way sharper and better pictures. The camera gimbal is truly one of the wonders of creation and does what its designed to do with great aplomb, resulting in blur/motion-free videos/images no matter how windy the day is or how fast the drone is moving. Supported images include JPEG and PNG, while video formats are MP4 and MOV. To store all these, an SD card can be installed with a max size of 64 GB.
The controller is pretty simple, easy and exciting to use, and supports the addition of either a phone or tablet to view the live feed via the DJI Pilot app for Android and iOS.
Price is around $1,399 for the normal unit with batteries and varies according to your choice.
- Weight: 3 lbs
- Max Forward Speed: 45 MPH
- Max Ascent Speed: 13.4 MPH
- Max Descent Speed: 8.9 MPH
- Max Ceiling: 400 ft
- Max Flight Time: 28 min
- Operating Temp: 32° – 104°F
- Satellite Systems: GPS & GLONASS
- Obstacle Sensory Range: 2 – 49 ft
- Gimbal Control Range: -90° – +30°
- Lens FOV: 94° ISO Range 100-3200
- Max Image Size: 4000×3000
- Max Video Size: 4096×2160
- Max Video Bitrate: 60 Mbps
- File Systems: FAT32, exFAT
- Photo Formats: JPEG, DNG
- Video Formats: MP4, MOV, MPEG
- Remote Frequency: 2.400-2.483 GHz
- Max Transmission Range: 3.1 mi
- Charger: 17.4v, 100w
- Battery: Intelligent Flight PH4 5,350 mAh, 15.2v