Release Date: 15.01.2025 (technically 14.01.2025 but late at night in Australia!)
Launch Day – we’ve been out and picked up our DJI Flip at 9.01am this morning :). We are not one of the lucky ones who get sent one before launch day to play with or anything – we generally head out to a retailer and buy the latest drone on the day of launch!
We’ve purchased the DJI Flip Fly More Combo with the RC2 Remote Control – pretty good value overall, cost about $1158 AUD > puts it cheaper than the Mini 4 Pro Fly More Combo – so would expect the quality to sit less than that as well.
Opening it up – as all the images have shown before release, it is small with foldable propellers in propeller guards. The feeling, even with the battery on is super light weight considering the size of it. The propellers are tiny, and it comes with a spare set of propellers (work out how to change them later!). From what I’ve read the propeller guards are carbon fibre – so assuming they are pretty strong – i don’t think they are an easily replaceable part (so likely a service repair) – happy to be corrected here as we all get to know the drone!
The Fly More combo comes with the 4 battery charging hub – which will charge two batteries at a time in parallel. Nice neat little unit – a bit more design thought has gone into it, and when it has four batteries in it would look good (although – the looks aren’t really important lets be honest!)
The drone itself, as mentioned – feels really lightweight but balanced – on the scales i did stress a bit when I put it on and it was over 260grams – but then once the gimbal cover and the small silicon gimbal guard came off – it came in at 248 grams. Not so important in Australia as the sub 250gram thing is only if you want to fly near airports really – doesn’t give you much else at this point in time.
We will set it up soon and put DJI Care Refresh on the unit – we always get asked if Care Refresh is worth it – we put it on ALL of our drones. We think it is great value – even though I don’t think we have ever made a claim (our one big drone crash ended up being a warranty claim as a P4 fell out the sky!). It is a good cover for the ‘just in case’ – and even more so if you are a first time drone owner – although crashes happen to everyone 🙂 🙂
Before the First Flight
So, it is always a good idea to run all the updates etc when flying a new drone – as we have chosen to use an existing RC2 as well, we have downloaded the latest DJI Assistant 2 onto our PC to update everything – but it can also all be done via the remote control with no issues (just a bit slower).
First Flight – Indoors
The updates were done nice and quick, no calibrations seemed to be needed – so we set off on our first flight just around the house. Quite surprised at how quiet the drone is compared to others, the pitch seems a lot lower on the noise as well. Flying indoors we weren’t getting any satellite signal to the remote so weren’t expecting too much – but were quite surprised with how well the drone handled around the house. It seemed stable and easy to control.
Tested out the active track and the DJI Flip happily followed the five year old around the living area and hallway.
Would i fly this in the same way as I fly the DJI Neo – probably not. The Neo around the house gets crashed into walls, chased around by kids and sent through the hoops on the Hot Wheels track – I don’t think i’ll try that with this one, just given its much bigger size!
First Flight – Outdoors
Still to come!
Overall view –
Overall, it is a weird looking drone when compared to what we have seen from DJI over the years – but so far have been pretty impressed with what I have seen. Seems easy to control, easy to fly, lower noise.
More to come as we test it out further!