...and I haven't even received it yet.
I will post this here since photo/video is the only reason to buy this drone. The DJI Phantom Advanced is down to $800 and I bought it. Then I realized I can't really take advantage of it as I wanted to.
It is an amazing quadcopter, finally seems to be ready for primetime for a reasonable price. It can zoom very high very fast, follow you in your car, follow GPS waypoints, do cool 2K video with a stabilized 360 degree gimbal, avoid walls indoors via sonar. Amazing technology compared to a few years ago at this pricepoint!
Problems? I live in the city limits in the "most treed city in America" and this thing is loud. I saw a few videos that convinced me this was an amazing amateur video toy. It can also be useful for aerial inspection, surveillance, and observation. The biggest problems for me would be trees (too many in my yard to launch and train in my yard - I have come to realize that I have more trees in my yard than 98% of Americans, and sometimes I regret that), noise (it will always attract attention and likely annoy neighbors), helicopters (if I did get it launched above the trees it would be in space used fairly frequently by helicopters). I realized that I would have to use this pretty much always on a special trip to some wide open space. Then things are not nearly as convenient for me, and a video drone in those circumstances becomes much more expensive and less fun for me. I realized that all the cool videos show either a house in a sparsely populated new development, or way out in the rural farmlands, or on some athletic campus. I would love the drone to follow me down Independence Blvd/74 but it ain't happening as long as there is an FAA. In my dreams I could launch from my convertible, have it follow me down the road, and land in my convertible. I believe it could actually do this out in a rural area.
