Hello and welcome to the fireplace.
My name is Alex and this is TechFlow!
So, I have used drones throughout my entire life.
I mean, heck, I have been flying drones before DJI even existed.
I was back in the drone game when you had to build your own drone by putting on your
own gimbal system, a GoPro back in the day and build the whole thing.
Now, you can just go to the shop and pick up a DJI Spark.
It's mad how it's come on in the last five years.
So, this is the DJI Spark - the smallest drone in DJI's entire line up.
But just because it's the smallest, doesn't mean it leaves the ecosystem at all and that
is one major thing that I love about the Spark - more on that later.
First off, let's go over the looks of this thing.
So, the DJI Spark is very, very small - it's about the same size as an iPhone without the
prop guards on it.
And that's one thing I love - included in the package is a set of four prop guards.
So, you guys can go ahead and put these prop guards on, if you're a newbie at flying drones,
and with a little bit more safety, navigate around the inside of your house or outside
without having to worry about ruining paintings or painted walls inside of your house or crashing
your drone in to a tree and ruining it and totally putting it out of action until your
new pair of props arrive in the post.
The drone fits very nicely with the other drones in the DJI ecosystem.
Following on from that it has a very, very high build quality.
It's a lovely, lovely piece of equipment.
The same is said for the controller - it has two arms at the bottom which, when extended,
make this controller feel really, really nice to hold and when it's all folded up, it's
really small.
This whole package, including the drone and batteries, can easily fit in a small to medium
sized backpack.
The arms at the bottom retract and extend to then fit a device in to that - whether
that is an iOS device or an Android phone.
The controls for the drone are much like any other DJI drone.
They're very, very simple and, pretty much, after two minutes of flying, anybody can do this.
So, that's the first thing that I absolutely love about this drone - the build quality.
Everything from the props down to the battery - it's all premium stuff and that is something
that, typically, I'd want to expect from DJI.
They know what they're doing with this type of stuff.
They know that people are going to crash it and that it does need to attempt to survive.
OK, so once you've unboxed the drone and had the battery on charge on its included
charger for about half an hour until it reaches 100%, you've whacked it in the drone, turned
on the controller, inserted your phone in to the controller dock - you're probably thinking
- hang on a minute - how do I connect my phone up to the controller so that I can have a
live view of what the drone is seeing?
And this is really, really cool.
So, the actual controller itself gives off a WiFi signal and depending on your interference,
you have the option to choose 2.4 or 5 gigahertz.
Once you've gone ahead and connected your phone to the controller via the wireless network
that it gives off, you can go ahead and launch the brand new DJI Go Four app, click on "fly"
and there you go - you'll be presented with a live preview of the drone and if it's your
first time flying, it will check for firmware updates and map updates and go ahead and apply
those accordingly.
Once your drone is all updated...
Once your done is all updated...
Once your drone is updated, fully charged and ready to be taken off, you're pulling
the two joysticks, the props will fire up and then, depending on your controller layout
which you can choose upon set up, you push up on the left stick and the drone will move
up and complete to a still hover.
From there, you click "record."
On screen right now, you can see some footage pulled straight from the DJI Spark's camera
in full 1080p glory.
It's about 6 PM here when we were shooting this, approaching winter time here in the season.
DJI kind of like to hide these specs about the camera on the drone - they want this thing to
be more of a fun little toy.
But I can tell you guys that the centre size is a 12 megapixel seema sensor with a full
resolution in recording video of 1920 x 1080 - so full HD - at 30 FPS.
That is the only option you get.
As far as stills are concerned, I'm not going to bore you with it but you're getting close
to 4K imaging on the stills, which I suppose is pretty cool.
Now, once you've got your drone in the air, DJI say that you're going to get about sixty
minutes of flight time and, in my testing, I haven't found that, unfortunately, at all.
However, it's close to that; around twelve to thirteen minutes I've had mine in the air.
To be fair, I have been hammering it.
When my drone's in the air, I'm moving back and forward, left and right at full speed
and I'll tell you guys - this little thing is fast.
And also here in the UK, to the extent of my testing, it's been fairly windy so I'm
sure that that has a detrimental effect on the battery life too.
So, you'll notice that if you've flown any other DJI drone i.e. a DJI Inspire or a Phantom
series or even a Mavic, you'll notice that all of the features on this drone carry over.
And I'm talking about the features that you can see on the iOS or the Android device you've
got connected to it.
So, you can go in here and you can change things like your stick layout, you can go
ahead and change the photo quality, you can go ahead and add filters and different bits
and bobs like that.
You can even go in and turn off GPS and put this in to special modes.
And these "special modes" are where the DJI Spark really shines.
This is what sets this drone apart from all of the competition.
And it's the fact that you don't even need the controller once this thing is in the air
to take control of it.
And for this, we got an electric skateboard and did a little bit of testing.
So, pretty much, you can put this thing in the "follow me" mode where you draw a circle
or a square or a box around what you want the drone to track and once you've done that,
you click go and the drone will simply try its best - its best ability - to follow whatever
you've drawn that square around.
So, I was here on an electric skateboard and for the extent of our testing here, it worked
really, really well.
The drone managed to track me and I was going at about thirteen miles per hour on my electric
skateboard, which is really, really good stuff.
I thought that it was going to lose me but it didn't.
Taking that a step further, you can actually control the drone's features by putting it
in a different mode with gesture controls with your hand.
So, you can actually put your hand up like this, the drone will recognise that you've
got your hand there, and then you can actually move the drone around by moving your hand
up and down and left and right and also moving back and moving forward.
It's really, really cool.
And by doing a simple gesture - by putting both of your hands in the air - the drone
will automatically know to follow you so you won't even have to go ahead and draw a box
around yourself.
Just put your arms in the air and it's going to follow you.
And, again, during our testing this worked absolutely brilliantly.
This thing is awesome.
As well as all of the other features as well, it has object avoidance, so it won't let you
physically fly in to objects - forward, not backwards though - so please bear that in mind.
It has too many features to talk about.
You can even get the drone to take a selfie just by going like this.
I love this little thing - it's amazing.
The drone can do things like take off from your palm which is really cool.
It also has different effects like a panorama effect so that you can get a really wide image
from the drone and it also has some features that modern phones have now where it can actually
emulate a depth of field if you're taking a selfie and a plethora of more and more things
that you can do with this drone which I'm not even going to list in this video.
So, go ahead and click on the link in the description - I'm going to provide two - one
for pricing and availability and to purchase and one that's going to take to you straight
to DJI's website if you want to learn more about the drone because there's honestly too
much to talk about.
But those are the things that I tested.
It all worked really, really, really well and I'm really, really proud of owning this
little thing.
You can literally just throw it in your bag - it's so robust - and take it anywhere.
I take it places even if I think I'm not going to need it just because; what's the point
in not taking it?
It's so, so small.
DJI - next year, chuck a 4K camera in there and three axis stabilisation instead of two
on the camera and you have yourself an absolutely little golden masterpiece.
But for now, I'm sure that this is just the beginning and the beginning is awesome.
Guys, my name's been Alex, this has been TechFlow - hope you found this informative and we'll
catch you guys in the next one.
Adios.