hello welcome to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand and today we're going to be
flying my brand new drone the dji mini 3 pro i do have the rc the fancy controller the 150
added on extra option and we'll be testing that today there's good things and there's
bad things about this drone i'll talk to you about that throughout this test this
is the first time we're going to be flying it and we're surrounded by elephants cute dogs buffaloes
and beautiful mountains of chiang mai thailand so lots of things to test
including quick shots and the 4k 60 frames and a bunch of other things drone footage is a big
part of my youtube channel because i drive around countries on a little motorcycle and drones are
amazing it's showing you the landscape and what's around you i believe it or not have always used up
until this point a dgi spark one of the oldest drones there are it's rugged it's plastic and
it does the job i was really apprehensive about whether or not to upgrade to this
but alas i've decided to pull the plug and get a professional drone for the first time in my life
and there's some pros and cons as i'll talk about in this video footage is incredible but there are
some downsides so enjoy the video and let's get straight in the air with our new dji mini 3 pro
okay let's do this flight now the first thing we're going to do is we're going to test if we
can take off in a tight situation because normally when i'm out and about on the motorbike i don't
really have a safe place to take off so we're just taking off on this uneven white chair here got a
coffee over here so for reference as you can see on the screen here we're shooting in 4k 60 frames
a second which is the optimal most professional level that this drone goes all the way up to so
we'll just start from there and we can slow down the footage if we want okay it's giving me a
warning there we go it's actually very quiet can you hear let's see what happens when we take off
wow so as you can see below there the lady in the picnic table she's surrounded by little
dogs and they haven't gone crazy because it's not very loud what we're gonna do is we're gonna do
a few different types of shots the shots that i would normally use on the dji spark you can
see the elephants now look here they are they seem pretty happy just chilling out by the river
let's test one of my favorite shots which is the quick shot modes so i click on the little um
cinematic image and i go down to quick shots and it gives me a little instruction
if i select the elephants there we go and set a distance for this shot to go back
60 meters this will literally just drone me backwards and i do this all the time on my videos
instead of it being elephants it's just doing the countdown
here we go so instead of it being elephants it's normally me with the horizon getting revealed or
me on my motorbike and some kind of epic shot in the background all you have to make sure is
that there's nothing behind the drone which there isn't because it doesn't have detection so when
it's doing these automatic modes if you are going to go reverse into a tree it will do that and i've
done that many many times with sparky and that's the end of that shot and now it will automatically
return home now you can see here look at the gimbal speed okay that's not good we'll have
to fix that but i think that's because i'm not in the correct mode if we go back to video mode
oh it's very very we can change that right now if we go to camera sorry control
oh you know what it's cause we're in sport mode and i haven't i haven't played around with the
settings there we go that's much better isn't it see that we'll go sideways past this house
beautiful okay let's try another quick shot here but this time what we'll do is we'll line it up
with the with the house we'll use the house as the subject matter this gorgeous little white house
here i'll just select that um we'll do we'll do circle i love circle mode it's dead simple
it just simply goes in a circle you've got to make sure that nothing's going to get in the way
looks like it might hit that tree so i'm going to go up a little bit higher
and then i'll press start and it'll just go and hopefully hold the house in the middle of the
frame here we go and it's going to go around in a circle and i have to don't have to control it
obviously this is one of the questions i get all the time who's flying your drone well the sparky
had it and the dji mini 3 has this it's computer generated basically there's a pilot in there doing
itself the computer is flying in a circle around the house you just have to make sure that there's
no tree that's uh high higher than the line of sight which here there's not which is good but
that's a really easy mistake to make and here it comes back around and it just looks absolutely
gorgeous on the controller guys this is an amazing drone let's go
let's come a little bit over here i'll put you down because i really want to get like a really
nice shot just want to pop in really quickly and talk about a concern that a lot of you guys
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let's get back out in that field with the elephants and keep learning about this new drone
okay i hope you can still see me uh there's a there's a lady coming here
with a buffalo so this will be a really good time to test out
the 4k 60 frames okay so what i'm going to do is go back to video mode
and start recording and here she is you can see it you can see her coming over with the buffalo
now i'm in sport mode so let's go to cinema mode and let's see if we can capture this buffalo and
this farmer lady here in 4k 60 frames a second so we'll pitch up a little bit and we'll slowly move
left and down and we'll try and turn to the to the right as we do so
um that needs a bit of practice there's pan across okay this is a nice shot and how's it
looking in 4k in 60 frame if we slow it down in 60 frames how's that looking very nice
and up and away we go
and this is still in cinema mode so it's actually moving quite quickly
quite happy with that there are loads of other modes and other shots i could do today but um i
just trying to get a quick feel for the drone first thing i notice is it's incredibly quiet
you know i was actually worried and the lady did say don't fly the drone near the elephants but
you know you can barely hear it you can barely hear it let's just keep capturing this buffalo
the buffalo has gone to feed we're in cinema mode we'll get nice and low to the water oh my
god the elephants are swimming guys oh my god this is so epic here we go watch this
wow
isn't this amazing
and we're just we're hovering just over the over the bush here
and these elephants by the way if you're wondering they're not like chained up or
anything they live here they're taken care of they used to i think they used to belong to the
sanctuary just down the road here but now they kind of just hang out here and the cafe takes
care of them no chains or anything it's not it's not unethical here it's very nice i'll
leave the link to the in the description if you want to come and visit just outside of chiang mai
and it looks like it's bath time for these elephants maybe we could try
so this is just so much fun watching them swim oh that's so sweet let's go up and above him
i still need to adjust that gimbal speed it's a bit too quick for me
i think he's spotted me guys he's spotted me
just checking the battery life we've got 10 minutes here so you know we've
been out here filming for a good what 12 minutes already right now sparky she'd be
back i'd be on her second battery but here we're chilling with 10 minutes left
oh this is so much fun what a great start to this drone's life buffalo and an elephant
and you can see me can you see me waving
let me come up a little bit you'll see me here i am see hello wave at the drone
i just wanted to listen to how quiet this is it's in sport mode now here it comes you hear it
look i'm standing right next to it
it's so quiet
have a look at all the uh the dogs behind me
see the dogs aren't even going mad they're going more mad at the buffalo
all the little dogs going for him
oh they're all going for him
they're like we're gonna get this buffalo this stupid buffalo
and you know they're not triggered by the drone which is a really good news because uh
i've almost lost many a drone in the past to dogs right here's one last shot because
we've had so much fun here by the river let's switch it to sport mode
and let's go super fast over the water towards that bridge in the distance there you ready
and we'll pitch up nice shot paddy i love flying over the water
oh i'm getting a low battery warning because i'm flying in sport mode
oh okay so it's returning itself to home it's returning itself to home home by the way is set
to the controller i'm going to cancel that because i can fly home myself in sport mode
so that's probably going to be the end of the test guys just because we run out of battery we've
got it says we've got three minutes left which is plenty but i don't want to risk it the controller
is freaking out it's saying fly with caution you've got no battery so let's call it a day
let's see if we can land it
how i like to land it which is in my hand
voila the dji mini 3 pro first flight it was a fun one
let me tell you what i really like um first about the drone after buying it and using it today
it's so quiet which is really good for being inconspicuous and sly and getting a drone up
and quickly getting it up and getting up quietly and not causing much attention which can be really
useful when you're out and about traveling so that's a bonus i like the battery life
we got i think we got 21 minutes in the end before it started freaking
out and then we were doing a lot of screen recording we were going in sport mode a lot
and uh but it doesn't come with extra batteries which is coming soon but i am leaving for
a new trip very soon and uh i would love to have a couple more batteries to be honest
but that's okay maybe they'll come out whilst we're in that country the controller now this
is where things get a little bit annoying guys because the controller was an optional
extra okay you can get a normal plastic controller or the professional rc with the three
pro um you don't have to get this um with the mini three i think the mini three pro comes with this
but anyway it was like another 150 and as you can see i'll show you a close-up in a minute
earlier today when i just turned on the controller and i just flew the drone really quickly um just
to test to make sure that the software was updated and everything because i didn't want to drive all
the way here and then find out that the controller and the software was out of date and it would take
45 minutes and the whole battery to update which it did by the way i dropped this like
waist high onto the ground and it's cracked the screen the screen's absolutely fine it's
working and there's no issues with that but you know what it's like when you crack the screen of
your phone or something new and electronic it breaks your heart and it was such a minuscule
nothing drop and it's cracked the screen so i'm devastated about that i might get it replaced
and get a screen protector on there i don't know if dji offer that service i'll go back to bangkok
in a couple of days and ask because i'm triggered big time about that crack but the screen does work
but it just shows you that it's not really built for ruggedness and clumsiness because that's what
i am i'm very clumsy very careless very stupid with my equipment that's why it was a big deal to
upgrade to the three pro because i usually use the spark because it's so rugged and because it's so
easy to bash around and it won't break on you and one little drop and that controller has cracked
but apart from that um the drone seems incredible the footage looked amazing especially when we slow
it down to um 50 so that it comes out at 30 frames a second and uh it won't be super slow motion it's
not gopro but still that's a drone there was one other element that i didn't show you which
is the back of the controller has a button which will flip the camera to vertical and so you can
get like you know shots for instagram and you know social media platforms like tic toc and
stuff really easily just with a touch of a button overall really happy with it really excited to use
it um in the future and it'll step up the level of our cinematography and our footage from a spark
but um it's not the perfect drone it's already a little bit broken and only got one battery
but apart from that fantastic let me know in the comments what you think was this a good upgrade
or not i'd be keen to hear what you think and let me know if you pick one up too
you