The 5 Best Drones for Photos and Video of 2024
Our pick
This drone offers impressive value, combining the 360-degree obstacle avoidance of the more expensive DJI Mavic 3 Pro with two fantastic cameras.
The DJI Air 3 is easy to fly, has an ample 46-minute battery life, and is equipped with two cameras, giving you options for more varied and interesting shots than its predecessor. We recommend buying the Air 3 as part of DJI’s Fly More combo because it’s the only package that also includes the DJI RC 2 controller, which features a built-in screen and is a marked improvement over the standard controller’s reliance on your phone’s screen for live view.
The Air 3 can sense and avoid obstacles approaching from all directions, as it adds side sensing, which our previous pick lacked. These new sensing abilities make the ActiveTrack feature, which directs the drone to autonomously follow and film a subject while also avoiding obstacles, easier to use in more situations.
It can hold its position steadily, even in moderate winds, so you can focus on your cinematography. And it can go with you almost anywhere: Measuring 8 by 3.5 by 3.25 inches folded and weighing roughly 1.5 pounds, the Air 3 fits well in most standard-size backpacks.
Upgrade pick
If you want the best cameras in a drone, get this model. Its main camera has a larger sensor than that of our top pick, and it adds 70mm- and 166mm-equivalent lenses to capture more-distant subjects.
The DJI Mavic 3 Pro takes many of the best features of the Air 3 and, for a little more than twice the price, ups the camera count to three. Not only does it offer a Hasselblad-branded 24mm-equivalent wide-angle lens with a Four Thirds sensor, but it also sports two telephoto lenses: a 70mm-equivalent with a 1/1.3-inch sensor and a 166mm-equivalent with a 1/2-inch sensor.
Thanks to the comparatively huge sensor on the main camera, the Mavic 3 Pro can capture more detail than our other picks and can do so in a much wider band of lighting conditions. As a result, it produces better images right out of the camera but also gives editing software more data to work with to improve the images even further.
This model can capture vibrant, detailed still images with its three cameras, and its video—at up to 5.1K resolution—looks more color-accurate than footage from the competition. It also has a 43-minute battery life, which isn’t the longest we’ve ever seen in our tests (our top pick beats it by a bit) but comes pretty close.
Budget pick
This drone offers DJI’s autonomous features (minus obstacle avoidance) and a 4K camera that can shoot in portrait or landscape, and it fits all of that into a tiny package weighing less than 250 grams.
If you’re just getting into drone photography, especially for personal use, the DJI Mini 3 is a fantastic starter package. Though it costs less than half as much as our top pick, it still offers a 4K camera, a long (38-minute) battery life, and a compact, lightweight build that just slides under the FAA’s 250-gram limit.
The Mini 3’s camera and sensor aren’t as high-quality as those of the Air 3, but the f/1.7 aperture provides surprisingly good image quality in lower-light conditions.
This model also comes with all the important features you need from a video drone, such as image and flight stabilization, an included controller, and smart flight modes, in which the drone flies itself to easily capture cinematic shots. But it lacks the obstacle-avoidance sensors of more expensive models.
You have the option to extend the battery life to 51 minutes via DJI’s Intelligent Flight Battery Plus, but using that add-on makes the drone heavy enough that you have to register it with the FAA.
Also great
Like other first-person-view (FPV) models, this drone trades obstacle avoidance and stability for more aggressive, immersive footage. But its software and hardware guardrails make it more beginner-friendly than most.
All of our picks are capable of capturing good-looking, high-resolution aerial footage. But while the others focus on smooth cinematic shots of landscapes or sweeping vistas, the DJI Avata 2 is designed to emphasize speed and agility, creating footage that makes you feel as if you’re riding onboard.
This small, buzzy fighter jet—DJI’s third iteration of its first-person-view drone—finally puts the FPV format inside an easily accessible and relatively practical package. It’s equipped with a 1/1.3-inch sensor that shoots 4K footage at up to 100 frames per second, motors that can propel it at up to 27 meters per second (in contrast to the Air 3 and Mavic 3 Pro’s 21 meters per second), and a sturdy plastic shell that can handle a wide range of impacts when you inevitably run it into a tree or wall.
The Fly More Combo that we recommend includes an updated headset, three batteries good for roughly 20 minutes of flight time each, and a new, smaller version of the motion controller that launched with the original DJI FPV drone. This upgraded controller makes flying more intuitive for new pilots, but if you want to unlock the more aggressive manual control mode, you should also have DJI’s more traditional FPV Remote Controller 3.
Also great
This easy-to-fly drone provides a 6K camera and 40 minutes of flight time, and unlike DJI drones, it has no known security concerns. But the video quality isn’t as crisp or colorful.
If you are avoiding the DJI brand due to security or human-rights concerns, or if you want a 6K camera, we recommend the Autel Robotics Evo Lite+.
This drone can fly for up to 40 minutes with autonomous options similar to those of DJI drones. And unlike the DJI Fly app, the Autel Sky app is available for direct download from the Google Play store.
However, we still prefer DJI drones for their value and image quality.
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