DVP REVIEW | Drone Vibes Video: DJI Phantom 4 Long Term Review

[nathan]

Drone Vibes Podcast Video Segments are now available on Youtube! Enjoy your favorite drone content library, neatly organized into playlists by topics: Business Interviews, Reviews, and Tutorials.

In this video review, Petr and Erick cover a long term review of DJI Phantom 4.

As always, we will be happy to answer any questions – leave us a voice message at DroneVibes.com, look for the voicemail bar along the right edge of the page.

 

[John Locke]

Great review guys, however nothing was mentioned about the reduced range the P4 exhibits, versus the P3P. My P3P flies 2+ miles with a windsurfer on the antennas, almost never losing control signal, the video fades first. The P4 keeps loosing control signal starting at 4000'. I have measured the RF power output of the P4 controller with the Immersion RF meter. The P4 control signal is 25% less powerful than my P3P RC. The control signal is the most important so video signal is lost first, before control of the craft when you reach the fringe limits of communications. I'm puzzled why DJI reduced the control signal strength in the P4 RC, makes no sense to me.

 

[moonpie57108]

If they were sticking to LOS rules, you would not really be able to determine that your range is now 4/5th a mile instead of 2 miles.

First guess would be to reduce range quietly to not affect sales while trying to reduce the number of times they have to appear in the news for someone breaking the law or just not using their head.

 

[John Locke]

If they were sticking to LOS rules, you would not really be able to determine that your range is now 4/5th a mile instead of 2 miles.

First guess would be to reduce range quietly to not affect sales while trying to reduce the number of times they have to appear in the news for someone breaking the law or just not using their head.

Range is displayed in the GO app, it's easy to know distance. For me, it's affecting DJI sales because I know what they are doing, lying, and I don't like it. They have the technology to provide a 3mi range, and they are advertising it, but now they are not meeting that promise. The P4 RC is considerably weaker radio than P3P and Inspire. A year ago they didn't state 3mi range in their specs, it wasn't until around Sept 2015 they changed their propaganda to increase it to 3 miles. But today that 3mi range spec isn't realistic. I think they should reassess their range capability, kinda how they should reassess the battery duration, nobody gets the claimed 28min. 23min is the most I've gotten on a good day, landing at 13%.