DJI’s Tiny Neo Drone Is Lighter Than an iPhone

Weighing in at just 135 grams and measuring only 155 millimeters across, the DJI Neo is the smallest, lightest drone DJI has ever released. And with a preorder price of $199 (£169) it’s also the cheapest. It even weighs significantly less than the 221-gram iPhone 15 Pro Max, making the Neo a potentially great option for those of you who are traveling light but still keen to capture aerial footage. That tiny size brings trade-offs though.

Chiefly, the flight time, with the Neo providing a maximum of around 18 minutes of use per charge. That estimate is based on a windless environment, too — the drone’s tiny weight will make it extremely susceptible to wind buffering, so you can expect that flight time to drop dramatically if you’re flying in anything more than a gentle breeze.

The drone can be charged by directly plugging in a USB C cable, with DJI quoting a charge time of 50 minutes from a 15-watt charger. You can also get a charging hub that supports 60-watt inputs and can charge three batteries simultaneously in about an hour — definitely worth it if you want to fly for longer than roughly 15 minutes at a time. The charging hub comes as part of the Fly More Combo, which bundles the drone with the hub and three batteries and costs $289.

The drone’s small size does make it really easy to fly. I actually did a lot of my testing just flying it around inside my home, as it’s nimble enough to easily navigate through doorways, under tables and out the window (my cat was not a fan, however). Though it lacks the 360-degree obstacle sensing of its pricier siblings, it does have built-in propeller guards (plus an optional cage) that mean it doesn’t matter if you happen to bump into anything.

The Neo’s camera is based on a half-inch image sensor with an f/2.8 aperture, offering 4K resolution at a maximum frame rate of 30 frames per second. Dropping the resolution to 1080 allows you to up the frame rate to 60fps. Perhaps unsurprisingly for something so miniature, video quality isn’t on par with the company’s professional photography drones. While footage at 4K looks reasonably clear, it lacks fine detail and I found it struggled to keep bright clouds under control when shooting on a sunny day. Low light quality is predictably poor.

There are a variety of intelligent flight modes, including subject tracking and object circling, and it can even be flown without any kind of controller, by activating a flight mode from a button on the drone and letting it take off from your palm. I haven’t been able to try this yet, but it sounds like a handy way of keeping your pack-weight down by only needing to carry the drone — and not a bulky controller — on your travels.

While the drone lacks any expandable storage, it does provide 20GB of internal storage. I’m planning to spend more time testing the Neo to see what it’s really capable of, but so far it seems like a fun option for kids or for those of you simply wanting to take your first steps into the aerial photography world. People looking for more-professional footage for your YouTube channels will likely still want to look toward DJI’s compact Mini series.