You Might Also Like For the last few years there was a simple rule of thumb for drones. If you wanted the best picture and the most advanced features, you had to stick with a unit that was fairly large and expensive. If you wanted something easy to carry, you had to sacrifice on image quality, battery life, and range. A lot of drones on the market still feel this way. Sure you want to snag some epic aerial footage on your next vacation or weekend trip, but do you really want to lug around a case that seems designed for the nuclear codes? Luckily there is a new breed of drone available. These units deliver stable 4K footage and battery life of 20 minutes or better, but they are small enough to slip into a slim backpack. The very best of the bunch can fit inside a purse or large jacket pocket. Suddenly a drone becomes something you can bring along just in case, a piece of gear that doesn’t have to be an awkward burden when you’re hitting the ski slopes or hiking up a mountain.

A week and a half ago, there were two new drones that fit this description, the DJI Mavic Pro and the GoPro Karma. The Mavic was the more powerful drone, but the Karma offered a more flexible set of tools for capturing great footage of an adventure. Unfortunately GoPro’s drones have been falling out of the sky, and the company wisely issued a recall on the product. That leaves one clear option for the drone you should buy this year: the Mavic Pro, a unit so far ahead of the competition that it’s hard to see why you would choose anything else. The Mavic Pro is an amazing drone because it doesn’t force you to compromise. Its small size and clever form factor, with wings and rotors that fold up against the body, make it extremely portable and less intimidating to fly. But it still delivers great imagery, 27 minutes of battery life, and a whopping four miles of range. Beyond the basics, the Mavic Pro has a strong selection of advanced features. It has forward-facing optical sensors that can see obstacles, and it will dodge them autonomously or put on the brakes if a space is too tight to navigate.

It also has downward-facing optical sensors that help it safely land and allow it to hold its position indoors even when it doesn’t have a GPS signal. The Mavic’s computer vision capabilities allow you to intelligently track subjects. Tap on a person or vehicle you see in your video feed and the Mavic will then follow this target. A new Profile mode allows the Mavic to perform this kind of tracking while flying alongside a subject, opening up options for some very cool tracking shots. You can fly the Mavic with just the remote, just a mobile device, or a combination of the two. You don’t have to take the rotors on and off between flights, making it much simpler to set up and break down. And despite its relatively small stature, it can still keep up with action at 40 miles an hour. Being so small does have a few drawbacks, however. You don’t have a lot of clearance from the ground when you land. The Mavic also gets pushed around more easily by strong winds. It does an admirable job correcting for them, but all that work also eats up its battery.

If you’re a professional looking for the absolute best-quality footage, larger drones may be better suited to your needs. But for the average consumer the Mavic is the obvious choice, offering all the features of a high-end camera drone in portable form factor that puts everything else on the market to shame. The Typhoon H drone seemed promising when Intel showed it off at CES earlier this year. macdev drone dx quad modBut it has been rapidly left behind. macdev drone dx firmwareSure it can capture crisp, smooth footage, and it delivered on its promised battery life, but the imagery you can get with it isn’t noticeably better than units which are far cheaper and smaller. parrot ar drone casablanca

This drone is too much, too late. If you’re planning to fly your drone in punishing conditions, the Typhoon H, with its six rotors, was much better than the Mavic at holding its position against strong winds. And if you happen to lose one rotor in an accident, the unit can stay airborne and safely land itself. Like the Mavic it has forward-facing sensors that allow it to see and avoid obstacles, and downward-facing sensors that help it to stabilize and land.flying camera drone reviews But for most people, most of the time, this drone doesn’t offer a meaningfully better experience than drones half its size. ar drone 2 battery specsThe unit requires a bulky backpack for traveling. price of ar drone parrotAnd its remote is monstrous.

The DJI Mavic drone is actually smaller than the Typhoon H remote, which kind of says it all. Photography by Amelia Krales. Video by Mark Linsangan and Max Jeffrey. (Affiliate links are automatically generated by our partner, Skimlinks. For more information, see our ethics policy.)In just the past few years, drones have transformed from a geeky hobbyist affair to a cultural phenomenon. They’re everywhere now, and they’re available in just about any shape, size, or configuration you could ever want. The market is saturated with them now, so to help you navigate the increasingly large and ever-changing landscape of consumer UAVs, we put together a definitive list of the best drones on the planet right now. So without further ado, here’s the cream of the quadcopter crop. Why you should buy this: It has all the features you need in a drone, it has a great camera, and it comes with a standalone touchscreen controller Who it’s for: Amateur filmmakers, beginner/intermediate pilots, anyone looking for a highly capable but easy-to-fly drone

How much it’ll cost: $1,300 Why we chose the Yuneec Typhoon H The Typhoon H takes our top spot because it offers the most bang for your buck. Its sticker price is $100 lower than DJI’s Phantom 4, and it boasts a handful of key specs and features that the P4 simply doesn’t have. Don’t get us wrong — DJI’s latest Phantom is a top tier drone and it takes a close second here — but Yuneec’s Typhoon just brings more to the table. For starters, the Typhoon H boasts all the fancy autonomous flight modes you could ever dream of. There’s Watch me, follow me, selfie mode, cable cam, orbit, and even dual-pilot mode. Add that to the fact that it’s equipped with a 360 degree swiveling 4K camera, retractable landing gear, and obstacle avoidance; and you’ve got a drone that can film anything, anywhere. One thing that really sets the H apart from DJI’s P4 is the fact that it comes with a dedicated touchscreen controller. This is a big deal because it means you can use the drone and watch a live video feed from the camera even if you don’t have a tablet or smartphone attached to the controller (something that DJI’s drones require).