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 light and simple, the drone is small enough to rest in your palm and doesn’t require a controller.
- The Neo will cost $199 on its own or $289 for the Combo with two extra batteries and a multi-charger.
Back in 2019, DJI launched the Mavic Mini, a small drone meant to act as an easy entry point for budding pilots and videographers. It was a great alternative to the best camera phones out there since it can do a lot of things a phone can’t (like fly, obviously). Since then, there have been multiple iterations of the Mini line, with each being better — and more expensive — than the previous model. With costs and technical know-how increasing over the years, the original idea of the Mini line has kind of been 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 that it makes the Mavic Mini seem like an enormous and complicated beast by comparison. The Neo is so tiny that it can rest in your palm.
To get started with the Neo, you don’t even need to learn to fly it. Just hit the “Mode” button on the drone to select from a variety of shots — including the classic Dronie — and it will take off from your palm, film or photograph your activity, and then land back in your palm when it’s done. It can also be controlled through voice commands given to your connected smartphone if you want to get a bit more in the reeds but still don’t want to touch a controller.
Of course, if you do want to control the drone manually, that is possible. You can buy a hardware controller from DJI, or you can also control it with the DJI Fly app on your smartphone. If you’re really ambitious, you can even use the FPV controller and a set of DJI goggles. These options make the little DJI Neo quite versatile.
Stills shot by the Neo will be captured with the 12MP 1/2-inch sensor. If you want to film with the drone, you can get up to 40 minutes of 4K/60FPS footage saved to its 22GB internal storage.
The DJI Neo is so small it can fit into a fanny pack and so easy to use that you don’t even need a controller.
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to get 40 minutes of footage all at once with the Neo because its flight time is only up to 18 minutes. Still, that should be enough to grab a quick selfie or even film a vlog. The Combo model comes with two extra batteries, increasing your potential flight time to 54 minutes without needing to charge anything.
When you’re capturing video footage, it should be fairly smooth, although not nearly as smooth as you’d see with a Mini or other higher-end DJI drone. That’s because the gimbal on the DJI Neo is a single-axis unit (up and down only), whereas more expensive drones have a six-axis gimbal, which gives you a lot more stabilization. Thankfully, 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 the Neo is that it can track you. For example, you could launch it from your palm, start tracking your back, and then it will film you as you walk, ride your bike, go for a run, etc. You can also have it track your face so you can film a vlog in a walk-and-talk style. If you connect your DJI Mic 2 to your phone, an algorithm will actually digitally mix down the noise the drone makes, allowing you get decent audio even with the drone filming you only a few feet away.
