My wife and I have embraced rockhounding as a hobby, and we enjoy observing the beauty of nature in the areas we hunt for our treasures. We have watched many YouTube videos presented by fellow rockhounds to scout new locations, but I noticed they didn’t usually emphasize nature in the areas they search for rocks. I realized we could document and present videos of the beautiful surroundings we explored with a drone. After much research, I chose to purchase the DJI Mini 3 Pro. In this review, I describe my experience and observations of this drone and answer the question, would I buy this drone again?

Weight and Battery Life

The DJI Mini 3 Pro is a quadcopter drone weighing 248 grams. Therefore, it is below the 250-gram limit that in the USA requires registration with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) part 107 regulations. With the included Intelligent Flight Battery, it can fly for 38 minutes and up to 18 km (11.2 miles) on one charge, which is more than enough time to capture a series of videos of your location.

You can also purchase the Intelligent Flight Battery Plus, rated at 47 minutes of flight time. This battery, however, puts the drone over the 250-gram limit. Thus choosing this battery will require registering the drone with the FAA.

The flight times above reflect perfect flying conditions. In practice, I observed actual flight time in normal wind conditions for these batteries to be around 28 and 38 minutes, respectively.

Camera System Brief Overview

The camera system comprises a 12 Megapixel 1/1.3 CMOS sensor mounted on a stabilized 3-axis mechanical gimbal. Photographs taken with the camera employ a fixed f/1.7 Aperture and an electronic shutter with speeds from 2 to 1/8000 seconds.  Pictures taken may be stored in JPEG or JPEG + RAW formats.

Video resolutions range from HDR, FHD, 2.7K, and 4K, with frame rates from 24 to 60 frames per second, depending on the resolution selected. DJI equipped the Mini 3 with forward, backward, and downward obstacle avoidance sensors that permit the drone to be flown with little fear of colliding with objects.

Controller Selection and Observations

The DJI Mini 3 Pro can be purchased with one of two controller types. First, the RC-N1 Remote Controller with an integrated screen. Second, the RC controller connects with a compatible smartphone for the screen. I chose the RC-N1 as I didn’t want to fiddle with connecting my smartphone to the controller while preparing to fly.

I found the 700-nit rated screen on the RC-N1 controller sufficiently bright to see on all but the brightest sunny day. On those bright days, the screen is a bit dim to see without using something to shade the screen. One lesson I learned is that wearing transition lenses reduces the ability to see the screen well on bright days. I would expect viewing the screen to be impossible with sunglasses.

The DJI Mini 3 Pro Flying Experience

I found flying the DJI Mini 3 Pro surprisingly easy. I had flown radio-controlled gliders many years ago, so I was experienced enough to know what to expect. The ease of flying this drone exceeded my expectations in every way. The drone’s integrated GPS allowed almost perfect hovering, even in moderately windy conditions. 

The drone comes with three flight modes, Cine, Normal, and Sport, selected by a switch on the controller. Cine allows smooth, slow, cinematic-style video shoots. Normal mode captures moving objects and their surroundings with great clarity, and Sport mode zips along to produce fast-paced action shots. 

Basic Flight Controls

I started learning to fly with Cine mode as that is the slowest mode. Two joysticks control the drone’s flight motion. In the default setup, the left joystick controls the drone’s motion on a vertical axis. Pushing the left joystick forward and back controls straight-up and straight-down motion, respectively, and moving the left joystick left and right spins the drone around the vertical axis in the respective directions.

The right joystick controls the horizontal movement of the drone. It is intuitive with the left, right, forward, and back joystick movements moving the drone in the respective direction relative to the drone facing forward. However, when the drone is facing you, all controller movements are opposite, and it takes some practice to fly with the drone with this orientation.

Smooth Videos Guaranteed with Intelligent Flight Modes

One of the DJI Mini 3 Pro’s most compelling features is the built-in Intelligent Flight Modes. Flying a drone smoothly enough to capture videos that don’t make viewers dizzy is difficult without much practice. The integrated flight capture modes automatically fly patterns that make smooth, professional videos that easily capture the beauty of your surroundings. Simply select yourself or an object as a target of the video, ensure no obstacles exist in the flight path, select the desired mode, and hit the start button.

Several patterns, such as the Dronie (drone flies up and away from the target), Circle (drone circles around the target), Rocket (drone flies straight up over the target), and more, allow the operator to use their imagination to best capture the object and its surroundings without having to think about flying.

The Master Mode executes a sequence of several of these patterns in one go, from which one can select the best outtakes to include when editing the final video. The modes described here are the ones I tried with great success, but there are more, such as hyperlapse, that I haven’t yet experimented with.

The Benefit of Integrated Sensors

Finally, I chose DJI Mini 3 Pro over the DJI Mini 2 because the included front and back sensors permitted the drone to be operated in Active Track Mode. In this mode, set yourself or your vehicle as the target, engage the mode, and the drone tracks you while filming your activity as you or your vehicle moves. I found this tracking mode fun and engaging as the drone followed my wife and me as we walked trails on the hunt for treasures. We also filmed our vehicle entering one of the hunt sites. I filmed all the videos in 4K 30 fps, and to my untrained eye, the quality of the videos was exceptional.

Conclusion

This DJI Mini 3 Pro review covered the basics of this device, and in the interest of brevity, I neglected to discuss features I have yet to explore. The ease of flying this drone, the excellent video quality, and the enhanced hands-free flight modes made my selection of the DJI Mini 3 Pro a winner. Would I buy it again? Absolutely!

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or want me to write a similar review article.