C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL;DR
- At IFA 2024, DJI launched a new very small drone known as the DJI Neo.
- Designed to be lightweight and simple, the drone is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and requires no controller.
- The Neo will cost $199 on its own or $289 for a Combo with two extra batteries and a multi-charger.
In 2019, DJI launched the Mavic Mini, a small drone designed to serve as an easy entry point for novice pilots and videographers. It was a great alternative to the best camera phones because it can do a lot of things that a phone can’t (like flying, of course). Since then, there have been several iterations of the Mini line, each better – and more expensive – than the previous model. With increasing costs and technical know-how over the years, the original idea of the Mini line has been somewhat lost.
Enter the brand new DJI Neo, which the company just launched at IFA 2024. This new drone is small and simple to the point where it makes the Mavic Mini look like a huge and complicated beast in comparison. Neo is so tiny it can stay in the palm of your hand.
You don’t even need to learn how to fly with Neo to get started. Just press the ‘Mode’ button on the drone and choose from a variety of shots – including the classic Dronie – and the drone will take off from your palm, film or photograph your activity and land back in your palm when it’s done. It can also be controlled by voice commands entered into your connected smartphone if you want to get a little more into the reeds but still don’t want to touch the controller.
Of course, if you want to control the drone manually, that is possible. You can purchase a hardware controller from DJI, or you can also control it using the DJI Fly app on your smartphone. If you’re really ambitious, you can even use an FPV controller and a set of DJI goggles. These options make the little DJI Neo quite versatile.
Photos taken by the Neo will be captured by a 12MP 1/2-inch sensor. If you want to film with the drone, you can get up to 40 minutes of 4K/60FPS footage stored on its 22GB internal storage.
DJI Neo is so small it fits into a fantastic package and so easy to use you don’t even need a controller.
Unfortunately, you won’t get 40 minutes of recording at once with the Neo, as its flight time is only 18 minutes. Still, it should be enough for a quick selfie or even a vlog. The Combo model comes with two additional batteries that increase your potential flight time to 54 minutes without having to charge anything.
When you’re shooting video, it should be fairly smooth, though not nearly as smooth as you’d see with a Mini or other higher-end DJI drone. This is because the gimbal on the DJI Neo is a single-axis unit (up and down only), while more expensive drones have a six-axis gimbal, giving you much more stabilization. Fortunately, the camera on the Neo has Electronic Image Stabilization (EIS) which should help smooth things out a bit more.
Finally, one of the coolest aspects of Neo is that it can track you. For example, you can launch it from the palm of your hand, start tracking your back, and then it will record you walking, cycling, running, etc. You can also have it track your face to make a walking-talking vlog. If you connect your DJI Mic 2 to your phone, the algorithm will actually digitally mix the noise the drone makes, allowing you to get decent audio even if the drone is filming you just a few meters away.