Well talk a little bit more about this. This is the dji mini sc, and i said that this is the best drone that you can get for less than 300, and i think that is true. If youre interested in getting into videography or photography right, you want to take good pictures and video with your drone. Now there are a handful of drones out there that seemingly have better specs than this at a lower price point. You know their drones. That claim to have 4k and follow me this doesnt have either of those things. So is it really better well lets take a look at some of those drones and how they actually compare this. Okay. So here are your competitors. This is the mjx bugs 16 pro. This has a 4k camera and a 28 minute flight time to go along with follow me in orbit and a handful of different intelligent flight modes, and over here ive got the sjrcf7. Uh also has a 4k camera 25 minute flight time. Follow me handful of intelligent flight modes as well. Now you can actually get both of these drones for less than 300 dollars, theyre, actually a little bit cheaper than the dji mini se, depending on where you buy them. So, if youre really interested in these things, i have some links to where those are, but i think in the end you may side with the se now these guys are actually sold under a ton of different names on amazon and other places.
So, for example, this one here is the be wine f7 and ive, seen it for like 400 same thing, with this guy, the mjx also rebranded and sold on amazon for close to 400. Now, if youre, just looking at the specs, that may seem like a decent deal but lets take a look at what theyre actually producing. The big question is: can the 2.7 k video of this mavic mini stand up to the 4k video coming out of some of these other drones now remember resolution isnt the only factor we got to look at sensor, size, gimbal, quality and all of that right. All of these have three axis gimbals. The bitrate and frame rate are also big factors in the quality of the video okay. So im gon na fly a pattern here with all three of these drones. First, the sjrc f7 im getting up in the air and im kind of getting it into position, and you can kind of see that it isnt super stable right. It isnt a very stable drone. It is gps. I had plenty of satellites here, um, but its not as stable as either of the the next two drones that will fly now uh. This video here was recorded in 4k right at 15 frames, a second thats, the best itll do and 15 megabytes per second, which also isnt super great ill. Let you kind of judge the quality yourself. You know the colors, i didnt change them.
This is what they look like out of the box um. You know i didnt, i wasnt super confident flying this drone um, so so theres that you know the app is okay. Well, take a look at the app here in a minute im going to kind of turn this around. You can kind of see some of that stutter as a yaw and thats due to a low frame rate. You know it does have a 3000 meter range. I would definitely not fly it that far im at a fly time of up to 20 minutes now it does have some other cool features. Um. You can zoom, it says up to 50 times, but when look at that it just its a digital zoom right youre, just not gon na be able to see whats going on, and it does have follow me um, which the dji mini doesnt have, but just keep In mind this is a gps, follow me and its following the remote control. Now it claims to have you know like an optical follower, you kind of draw a picture on the subject or, but that it just doesnt work um. So you can see im not in the center of the frame here and i do have control over the drone, so i can kind of move it up um or down or kind of work with the gimbal. If i wanted to, but its not, you know you can see it lost me here and im kind of working, the gimbal thats, probably not what you want to have to be doing uh.
You just want the drone to follow you right all right. Next up is the mjx bugs 16 or bug 16 pro and uh. Once upon a time i used to say this was my favorite uh beginner drone at about 240 250 dollars um. I i find it to be a little bit more stable than the f7 that we just flew uh. Now this one is recording at 4k. Also, 4k uh 30 frames a second um. We have a higher bitrate of 50, which is definitely nice right, so uh that just kind of is like the right speed, how much information it can kind of process and write um, but there are some. There are also some other problems going on right at times. Youll see the propellers in the upper right and left hand corners, thats kind of disappointing, and this drone has a a shorter range than the other two at just 600 meters and actually right right around here chris lost uh. He lost his uh signal to the drone. He wasnt able um to see the picture um so hes kind of he. He was flying this one here, uh kind of trying to figure out. You know where is this drone whats going on uh, and you can kind of just see that here uh right about here, he kind of walked a little bit closer, got video back and well start to push this drone back. So we get kind of a similar shot.
I do like the colors. I think this camera is actually pretty darn good, but i do think it could be better right, so it has a 600 meter range, like i said, and a flight time of 28 minutes which hey not bad uh. You know keep in mind youre not going to get uh manufacturer flight time out of pretty much any drone. Dji included now lets take a look at the follow me with the bugs here. Um. You know similar to the f7. Its a gps follow based on where the remote controller is right, so its following me in in with the remote controller in my hand right. So as i walk it, it does follow me but again, im not centered in the frame. So i have to do some work in order to make that happen. So i guess maybe it is better than not having follow me at all right, dji doesnt put follow me on drones. That dont have obstacle avoidance. You know they dont want to deal with that headache, but is it you know how good is this thats for you to decide? Okay, so now were going to look at the dji mini s e, and this was the most stable of the three drones. I felt the most confident flying it, um, just the way that it handled and responded to the stick inputs was clearly superior right. I flew this thing. Chris flew this thing and we both agree its more stable it handled the wind better.
Its just you know in terms of flying it, a more enjoyable experience plus you know, the dji app dji app is is pretty darn intuitive. So this is 2.7 k, its not 4k um, you know. Does it look as good, if not better than 4k yeah? I think so right, thats, you know 4k. A lot of times is just upscaled now this was at 30 frames per second and at a write, speed of 40 megabytes. So keep that in mind. Those are kind of the specs, but you know these are colors that i did not touch right. This is just straight out of the box. Now the mini has a range of 4000 meters thats like two and a half miles um, and it outperformed these other two drones for sure um its supposed to right, and it does have a flight time of 30 minutes. So you can fly it for quite some time now again, youre not going to get 30 minutes out of this drone, but youre going to get a good chunk of that right. You can probably expect 24 25 minutes pretty much every flight right. It just is smooth and easy to fly. You know it does have its own intelligent flight modes, theres, the droney theres, the orbit or the circle. The helix is a really good one, but there is not a follow me right, so you do have to kind of keep that in mind. But then again do you want a follow me like one of those other drones? You know i dont know thats thats a decision youre gon na have to make, but i think personally that this camera just is better right, its better than those other ones um.
So you know you got ta kind of have to think right at 299. Is this? What you want, or do you want to sacrifice some of this camera quality um, the ease of use, the stability um, you know for 50, or so i cant make that decision. Youre gon na have to do it ill. Let you make your own decisions on what drones you want to buy, but when it comes down to it, you know for three hundred dollars. I think the sc is king right between 200 and 300 youre, going to find a lot of drones that tend to perform a lot like what weve seen. I would say you know at 199 these might be decent places. To start there are decent places to start. If you have a really fixed budget – and you cant stretch to 300 bucks now, once you get under 200 thats a different category of drone right, you really cant be expecting to get a whole lot in the end. This really is a pretty fantastic drone, plus its under 250 grams thats, actually, a really big factor both of those other drones over 250 grams, which means they have to be registered with the faa and, if youre in other countries, there are certainly other restrictions that will Apply so what do you think am i on? Did i miss something? Are those drones as good as this? Let me know in the comments down below anyway.
I hope this was helpful.
