The DJI Neo is a tiny 4K camera drone which can take off and land from the palm of your hand. It has a number of autonomous flight modes, with intelligent subject tracking that can easily create so-called Smart Snaps. For example use the Mode button to choose Follow, then press and hold the same button with the drone on your outstretched arm and the drone will lock onto your face, take off and track you as you walk, run or cycle. When you’re done, turn around, hold out your hand beneath the drone and it’ll land.
You can also control the drone with DJI’s mobile app, an optional controller or even FPV goggles. Which could make it the perfect drone for the complete beginner and more experienced users.
I’ll run through all its features and thoroughly test its capabilities to see if this drone lives up to all the hype.
Overview
You can either get the DJI Neo on its own with its single battery already installed, or you can get the Fly More Combo Kit that comes with the new RC-N3 controller, two additional batteries and a two-way charging hub.
In some countries there’s a more basic Combo package that comes with the drone and the spare batteries and charging hub, but without the controller.
Disappointingly there’s no included case with any of the variants, but I bought this DJI Mini 2 case off eBay which works pretty well, albeit a little roomy.
Both versions come with a USB-C charging cable and spare propellers with spare screws and a screwdriver to install them.
I’ll cover the standalone drone initially. Setup is about as easy as it gets. The hardest part is removing the gimbal protector. It needs a fairly substantial squeeze with your thumb and forefinger.
The battery is already installed but is in hibernation mode – activate it by charging the drone with the supplied USB-C cable.
The drone is super lightweight, weighing only 135g (4.76 oz) with the battery installed. And it’s very small – pretty much the size of my hand.
Turn on the drone with a press and then press and hold and open the DJI Fly app.
Tap on Connection Guide and choose the Neo. Choose the Connect Via Mobile Device. This will connect to the drone via WiFi and on the initial connection it’ll also complete the activation. You’ll also have a chance to purchase DJI Refresh which I’ll discuss later.
Make sure you update the firmware if you’re prompted.
If you just have the DJI Neo without any controller you can control it just via its Mode button which DJI calls palm control, or via the Mobile app over WiFi. I’d recommend flying the drone with the DJI Fly app initially, but you also have access to most of the intelligent flight modes or Smart Snaps as DJI call them, just using Palm control with the Mode button.
When you’re flying the drone with the app, the WiFi connection limits you to 30m height and 50m flight distance. Also very importantly, there’s no Return to Home via the mobile app or Palm control for that matter, where the drone automatically returns to its take off location if battery is low or it loses connection.
For the first flight I’d recommend a manual flight – so you know how to control the drone with the app’s virtual joypads, just in case you get into any trouble. If you’re not already connected, tap on Connect in the app. In the app you’ll see a live preview of the video feed. Tap on Follow and choose Manual control from the drop down list.
Let the drone rest on the palm of your outstretched hand and press and hold the mode button for 2 seconds. Hold your hand still and the drone will countdown before taking off. You could also hold the Take Off icon in the app to take off if you want to take off from a table or the ground. But I generally find it easier to take off from your hand whichever method I’m using to control the drone.
The left joypad controls the height and orientation, the right joypad the forward, backward, left and right movements. If you’ve never flown a drone before, the right controls can take a bit of getting used to, since it depends on which direction you’re facing. It’s worth mentioning at this point that the drone has no obstacle avoidance, so make sure the area around you is clear.
Tap the red record icon to capture video at the default 4K, 30fps or tap the video icon to switch to capturing JPG photos at 12MP – there’s no RAW option on this drone. Tap on Settings in video mode to set the resolution. Probably my biggest disappointment with this drone is the lack of a 4K 25fps mode, the standard frame rate in PAL regions like the UK. Of course this might change with a firmware update. There is a 1080p 50fps option which is fine on a 25fps video timeline and you have the option to slow down footage, but most of the time you’ll want to record at the highest framerate.
Just underneath the live preview is the Voice Control icon to control the drone with your voice. Under its Settings you see the various commands and also enable Voice WakeUp with Hey Fly. Voice commands work pretty well and are a useful way to interact with the drone if you’re using the mobile app. It’d be even better if the drone itself supported voice commands.
If you tap on the mic icon you can record audio via your phone, which is in sync with the drone footage. This is a great feature that I’ve not seen with any drone I’ve tested so far. It’ll also attempt to eliminate the sound of the drone from the footage.
You can hear examples with the built in iPhone mic, a DJI Mic 2 and a pair of AirPods Pro in the accompanying video.
You can transfer footage off the drone over WiFi. There’s no microSD card slot on the Neo, only the 22GB of built in storage. Tap on Album, select the files you want to download and click on the download icon. Transfer speeds over direct WiFi are pretty quick. A 1.45GB file took 45 seconds which is 32MB/s. The drone can get quite hot if you leave it connected to your phone over WiFi and not flying and it will eventually shut down. So make sure you get your files off and then turn off the drone.
You can also connect the drone to a computer or smartphone via USB-C. The drone can be on or off – it doesn’t even need the battery installed which is brilliant. It basically behaves just like a thumb drive and doesn’t get too hot. Unfortunately transfer speeds are only marginally quicker than over WiFi – the same file transferred in 39s which is 37MB/s. This is still only USB 2.0 speeds.
I briefly mentioned Palm Control earlier. The drone functions just using the Mode button. This is what really sets this drone apart from any other DJI drone. With the drone on, pressing the Mode button cycles through the 6 Smart Snap modes: Follow, Dronie, Circle, Rocket, Spotlight and Custom which by default is set to DirectionTrack, but Helix and Boomerang mode can also be set in the app.
You can configure all the Smart Snaps in the app – and these settings will be remembered the next time you press the Mode button. For example I like to set the Follow Distance to Far and Follow Height to High most of the time – although you’ll need to alter this depending on where you are flying.
Hold the drone on your outstretched hand. Make sure the camera is facing you since it locks onto your face for the various Smart Snaps. Keep your hand still and press and hold the Mode button to instruct the drone to take off, start recording and perform its operation.
After it’s finished its operation, hold out your palm underneath the drone – it needs to be less than 70cm. The drone will land in your hand and shut off its motors. You can see the various Smart Snaps in action.
If you’ve purchased the Fly Combo with the RC-N3 controller you can fly the Neo like any other DJI drone. Remove the control sticks from the storage slots on the base of the controller and screw them on. Pull out the mobile phone holder and USB-C control cable. You can swap this out with the included Lightning cable if you have an older iPhone, but there’s no micro-USB cable for older Android devices included – you’d need to purchase that separately.
Slide in your mobile phone – my larger iPhone 15 Pro Max with its case fits in just fine and is held very securely. Connect the cable then turn on the controller with a press and press and hold. Turn on the drone – it doesn’t matter which device you turn on first. Open the DJI Fly app. The drone is already paired with the controller – you can just tap on Go Fly. Tap on the Take Off icon and press and hold Take Off to launch the drone. Or pull back and in on both controls to turn on the motors and then use the left joystick to take off. You can still use the Mode button on the drone to take off in Manual mode from the palm of your hand. To land use the Land or pull down on the left stick. Or you can hold your palm out and it’ll land on your hand which is brilliant.
There are many advantages to using the controller. From a safety perspective you get Return to Home functionality and up to 7 km of range using DJI’s latest OcuSync 4. Once the drone has acquired enough satellites for a fix, the drone can automatically return to its take off location when it’s low on battery or it loses connection to the controller. Or you can hold down the Home|Pause button.
Just like on the DJI Mini 4 Pro – you’ll see an augmented reality view of the Return to Home path which is very useful to check if there are any obstacles in the way.
You also get the various FocusTrack modes: Spotlight, POI and ActiveTrack. You do get Spotlight without the controller, where the drone remains stationary and tracks you as you move around. But POI and ActiveTrack are only available with the controller. Additionally without a controller you can only track humans. With the controller you can track objects too, by drawing around them with your finger.
POI or Point of Interest will fly around a person or object and you can set the radius and speed. ActiveTrack can follow a moving subject, a more advanced version of the Follow Mode when you can set the precise distance and height for the tracking.
But it’s far more basic than ActiveTrack on the DJI Mini 4 Pro.
There are a few more benefits using the controller. You get a dedicated button for starting recordings and taking photos. There’s also a dedicated button to switch between these two modes. And there’s also a super useful Function button which can be customised.
There are a few shortcuts you can set but I have a single press set to Recenter Gimbal which toggles the gimbal between facing forwards and directly below the drone. And a double press for Cruise Control. It’s brilliant to see Cruise Control on a budget drone like this. DJI’s other cheaper drones don’t have it.
This is great for filming – you can set the speed and direction using the joysticks, double click the function button and Cruise Control will lock these settings. The drone will continue flying perfectly smoothly based on your initial input until you hit the red Cancel icon.
There’s also the gimbal dial to precisely set the gimbal angle, something confusingly missing from the manual controls in the app, on the current firmware at least.
Finally there’s a switch to configure the speed of the drone from the default Normal to Cine Mode for slower cinematic footage or Sport Mode for faster, more nimble flying.
It’s way better flying the drone with the controller. Even in Normal Mode it feels much more responsive and nimble.
There are also endless settings that can be configured in the app when using the controller, which I won’t cover in detail in this video. But I would recommend checking the Auto RTH altitude in the Safety tab is set appropriately depending on where you are flying the drone.
And I’d also recommend setting the Sharpness in the Camera tab to -1 or even -2. Out of the box, DJI is pretty heavy handed on the sharpness, which can make the footage look a little over processed.
There are even more ways to control the Neo that I won’t cover in detail in this review. The RC2 controller with built in screen that comes with the Mini 4 Pro works brilliantly – just make sure you have the latest firmware on the controller and drone. And you can also fly the Neo in FPV mode with the DJI Goggles 3 and the Motion 3 controller or the FPV controller. Although you’ll end up paying a lot more than the drone costs for all this!
If you purchase the Fly More Combo or Combo package you get the spare batteries and two-way charging hub. The charging hub will fast charge up to 3 batteries simultaneously with a 45W or faster power delivery charger in around 60 minutes. A 30W charger can fast charge two batteries simultaneously. If you use a charger with less than 30W of output it’ll charge the batteries sequentially, starting with the battery with the highest charge level, like previous DJI chargers. A fast charger isn’t included but you can pick them up pretty cheaply. I’ll link to the one I use down below.
You can also use the charging hub like a portable power bank to charge other devices like the controller or your smartphone. There’s no fast charging unfortunately, it’s limited to 10W of output, but it’s still useful. It’s slightly hidden how this works – you need to hold down the power button on the charging hub for 3 seconds to output power rather than receive it.
I like this implementation though, since you don’t have to rely on any often random negotiation to decide which device charges which, which is the norm with other two way devices like power banks and smartphones. With 3 full batteries each 10.5Wh, you’ve got a useful 31.5Wh portable power bank.
Performance
This is a tiny drone, but it still has a very capable camera system with a ½” 4K sensor and an F2.8 lens, all mounted on a single tilt axis gimbal. Stabilisation is achieved using a combination of this basic gimbal and Electronic Image Stabilisation.
In bright conditions with the sun behind the camera, footage looks comparable to my DJI Mini 4 Pro which has a larger 1/1.3” sensor and a 3-axis tilt, roll and pan gimbal.
As I mentioned earlier, by default footage can look a little over sharpened and over exposed.
But if you use the Neo with the controller, you can adjust sharpening and exposure. And even without changing settings I think most people would be happy with the footage, especially considering the price of this drone.
The image quality does suffer flying towards the sun – there just isn’t enough dynamic range from the Neo’s smaller sensor.
And in low light the smaller sensor is even more of an issue. Image quality suffers, and additionally the Neo will automatically land if the conditions aren’t bright enough.
If there’s enough light, it is good fun flying the Neo indoors – but I’d recommend using a controller for finer control.
As I briefly mentioned earlier, at 4K there’s only a 30fps option. No 25fps for PAL regions, or 24fps popular with filmmakers. I’m not sure if this is a physical limitation or something DJI can change with a firmware update. I really hope it’s the latter.
I found the autonomous modes worked very well in most situations, and although it has no collision sensors like more expensive drones in DJI’s range I didn’t find this a major problem.
The propellers are protected so it can fly through fine branches without crashing. And even when I have crashed it, it’s escaped mostly unscathed. Its light weight really helps in this regard too. Additionally the Follow mode in particular is pretty clever.
It’ll follow your movement quite closely – which means if you avoid obstacles, it will too most of the time. In fact, although I’d normally recommend purchasing DJI’s Care Refresh coverage, you could probably get away without it with this drone.
If you’re feeling brave, you can remove the prop guards which reduces the weight and consequently increases the run time. DJI quotes 18 minutes of runtime without the guards, and 17 minutes with. In practice, depending on wind conditions I got between 10-12 minutes with the guards attached, which is more than it seems, especially using it for short autonomous Palm Control clips. If you have the bundle with extra batteries and the fast charge hub and pair this with a decent portable charger, you should be able to run the Neo almost indefinitely!
Considering its size and weight, I wasn’t expecting the drone to cope very well with wind. DJI gives it a Level 4 8 m/s or 18 mph rating. But it coped admirably even flying it on a pretty gusty day. I’d have far more confidence flying my DJI Mini 4 Pro with a Level 5 10.7 m/s 24 mph rating, but it was more comparable than I’d have thought. Although I wouldn’t fly it in without the controller on a windy day. Without any GPS, you could be asking for trouble. At least have the mobile app connected so you can try and manually control it if need be. But remember that range over WiFi is very limited.
One thing you do notice flying the Neo and Mini 4 Pro side by side is the Neo is quite noisy (see accompanying video), in a fairly unpleasant sort of way. Fortunately, you barely notice it when it’s further away but it’s something to be aware of.
I can’t comment on other countries, but in the UK since this drone is under 250g but has a camera, you do need an Operator ID which costs £10 per year to fly it. You don’t a Flyer ID which requires a free online test, but I’d recommend doing the test anyway. Under UK drone rules I can’t get close to testing the spec’d 7 km of range, since the drone needs to remain visible at all times.
But I had no connection issues flying the drone with both the RC-N3 and RC2 controllers, always maintaining a strong connection and a reliable live video feed.
Conclusions
The DJI Neo has got to be one of the most impressive bits of tech I’ve reviewed in a long time. And at a very attractive price – at least without any of the extras.
It’s well made and robust, I love the easy hand take off and landing, the autonomous modes are great fun to use, work well and are genuinely useful, and it’s incredibly versatile with numerous ways to fly it.
But it’s not perfect. The footage is ok with good lighting but really suffers in low light. The lack of 25 fps is annoying for anyone who shoots in PAL regions. Although the drone is pretty tough, there’s no obstacle avoidance and if you’re not using the controller there’s no Return to Home either. And there’s no microSD slot for additional storage. Although I didn’t find that a massive issue – DJI makes it pretty easy to get your footage off the drone.
But the drone only price sets it apart from any drone around at the moment – check the current price down below. The most comparable drone is the HoverAir X1, also with autonomous modes, but that’s twice the price and nowhere near as versatile.
If you’re tempted by the Neo Fly More Combo, at that price there are other options to consider if you don’t care about the autonomous modes. From DJI themselves there’s the Mini 4K which has better image quality, longer flight times and will be more stable in stronger winds.
There’s also drones like the Potensic Atom, which is similar to the Mini 4K but has a waypoint feature and tracking, lacking on the Mini 4K.
Overall I’d have no trouble recommending this drone to either a beginner, or an experienced user.
Don’t forget to take a look at my YouTube video at the top of the page, and again please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I’m releasing videos every week on the latest technology and how to get the most out of it. If you tap the bell icon when you subscribe you’ll get a notification as soon as I release a video, and there’ll be a link to my site here for the written article. YouTube is also the best place to leave a comment. I read all of them and respond to as many as I can!
Amazon (affiliate) links:
DJI Neo: https://amzn.to/3BsX2j5
DJI Neo Fly More Combo: https://amzn.to/4gPiAq4
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