DJI Air 3S Review: I wish this ace flyer wasn’t restricted by UK regulations

introduction

Flying to supplant the Air 3 in 2023 as DJI’s mid-range a drone with a camera the flagship Air 3S is aimed at aerial photography enthusiasts who are looking for a little more video and photo power than the ultra-lightweight DJI Mini series can provide, but don’t want to spend big on one of DJI’s top-of-the-line Mavic drones. .

I like it air 3 Before it, the Air 3S is equipped with a dual camera that combines a “standard” wide-angle camera with a special medium telephoto camera. It also opens up a number of improvements not only to image quality, but also to flight safety and on-board data storage capabilities.

With starting prices from $1,099/£959, the DJI Air 3S looks like a drone for the money. I spent a week flying it to find out if it’s the perfect mid-range camera drone or a worthy upgrade for current Mini or Air owners.

Design and build: weight limitations

The elephant in the room when it comes to the DJI Air 3S is its weight. Not that it feels like a big, heavy drone, mind you: it folds down to a handy portable size, and at 724g you can throw it in a small bag if you want to take it for a day.

The problem with its weight is that it weighs over 250 grams and falls into a class of drones that are legally difficult to fly anywhere you actually want to fly a drone, at least in the UK. In my opinion, the Civil Aviation Authority’s drone regulations are overly complex and restrictive, but simply put, you can fly a drone weighing up to 250g almost anywhere (provided you register as an operator, get a leaflet ID number and a passport free online rule test).

As your drone gets heavier, flight restrictions come into play: you must stay 50m horizontally from bystanders, never fly over anyone, and stay 150m (horizontally again) from residential, recreational, commercial and industrial areas objects It’s not just built-up areas, it’s also places like parks and beaches, so you can see how this would limit legal flying in almost any town, city or even village in the UK.

If a drone owner passes the A2 Certificate of Competence (CofC), which requires spending around £100 to complete a course and sit an online exam, they can fly the Air 3S in the so-called A2 sub-category of the open category, meaning the 150m rule is waived. but they must still stay at least 50 meters away from people or places where people may appear. Note that this only applies to recreational flights; if you want to monetize your Air 3S videos or photos, you’ll have to jump through a bunch of other, more expensive hoops.

So, the Air 3S is really only for drone enthusiasts. Casual users who want to fly it often and with minimal fuss or risk of breaking the law should choose an ultralight drone like DJI Mini 4 Pro or recently released DJI Neo.

That being said, I will say that the Air 3S is designed and built to DJI’s usual high standards. The only parts of the drone that seem delicate are the propellers, the camera and its gimbal; the last bits can be protected with a hard plastic cover when not in use. I reviewed the Fly More Combo kit which also included extra batteries, a battery charging hub, a set of ND filters, an RC 2 touch screen controller and a high quality shoulder bag to hold everything in, and while that obviously adds a lot to the price , it makes it much easier to keep all the items together and in good condition.

Flight characteristics and features: safety first

Air 3 was a safe aircraft equipped with omnidirectional vision sensors that prevented collisions with trees, walls, lampposts and other obstacles. This has been updated slightly for the Air 3S, now using powerful LiDAR technology in the front of the array. This improves the ability to avoid obstacles at night, although of course only from the front – the rest of the sensors remain vision-oriented and therefore much less effective after sunset.

Due to the aforementioned limitations of flying the Air 3S, I wasn’t able to test this low-light avoidance technology as much as I would have liked. Every time I flew the drone, I noticed that the controller screen indicated the direction and proximity of potential obstacles. So it’s clear that detection works, but I’d like to see how it works in conjunction with autopilot modes such as ActiveTrack 360º, which follows a moving object and captures it with the camera as it performs various movements and navigates around the detected obstacles

In the ways I was able to test for myself, I found the flight to be completely painless. The Air 3S handles wind very well (in fact, it will hover in place even in winds up to 30 mph), responds quickly to commands, and has the usual features like automatic takeoff and return-to-home. It also features the same excellent O4 transmission technology as the Air 3, which means an excellent control range (theoretically up to 10km) and clear, low-latency 1080p/60fps live streaming from the drone’s camera to the controller’s screen.

Battery life is very solid indeed. According to DJI, the drone can fly for up to 45 minutes on a fully charged battery, and while that number will actually be slightly less, it’s still an impressive amount of time in the air.

Camera performance: twice as good

As mentioned, DJI has made some improvements to the Air 3’s dual camera setup. But only slightly. The Air 3 used two 1/1.3-inch 48MP CMOS sensors; The Air 3S upgrades the wide-angle camera sensor to 50MP 1in CMOS. The average TV sensor remained the same. There may be some other very minor changes in imaging, but the main improvement is that the wide-angle camera now performs better in low light and is able to capture a greater dynamic range than the Air 3 had.

A 70mm-equivalent telephoto lens is great for a 24mm-equivalent wide-angle camera, even if it hasn’t been much improved over its predecessor. Having a telephoto lens meant that I could compress the perspective in photos and especially in videos to create a more dramatic look to the shot, or to simply “get close” to a distant subject without having to physically bring the drone closer.

One thing that disappointed me is that both cameras still have fixed apertures. This limits the user’s ability to adjust the shutter speed and means that installing neutral filters is almost mandatory in bright sunlight – at least for users who want full control over the look of their video.

The Air 3S’s image quality is excellent for the price and size of the drone. You can record 4K video at up to 60 fps (or 120 fps in slow motion) using 8-bit and 10-bit standard color profiles or 10-bit HLG and 10-bit D-Log profiles M. I used the latter for the sample shots you see here, grading and correcting the footage in DaVinci Resolve Studio to maximize dynamic range. As you can see, the drone performs very well at dusk, with low noise and clean colors, especially with the wide-angle camera.

Photos can be taken with a resolution of 12 MP or 48/50 MP and taken in JPEG or DNG RAW format. The sample photos you see here were taken in RAW format and processed using Adobe Lightroom.

DJI Air 3S Verdict

As much as I enjoyed looking at the Air 3S and capturing images with its cameras, it’s hard to recommend it to UK consumers. This is not DJI’s fault at all, but CAA’s. The organization’s rules about where you can and can’t fly just seem too restrictive (even for A2 CofC pilots) to the point where, unless you live by the sea or have access to a patch of private land, there doesn’t seem to be much point in owning by him A sub-250g model from the DJI Mini series makes a lot more sense.

For those who live elsewhere or are willing to put up with the extra paperwork, cost and property restrictions, this is a fantastic buy for the money. It builds on the Air 3’s dual-camera capabilities (not that Air 3 owners need to upgrade, mind you) and delivers excellent aerial and photo quality while being easy to fly and carry.

Specifications of DJI Air 3S

Flight time	45 minutes
Cameras	1 x 50MP wide-angle, 1 x 48MP medium tele
Video quality	4K/60p (120p in slow motion)
Connection	42 GB of internal memory plus a slot for microSD memory cards
Dimensions	214x101x89 mm (folded), 724 g