Xiaomi Mi Drone Hands on,Hardware, Battery, Camera Review

As you know, Xiaomi has released its Xiaomi mi drone on May 25, which has attracted many fans including me. right now we will introduce Xiaomi Mi drone 1080p version for your review. After you read it, you will know which one you will choose between Xiaomi Mi drone and other RC drones.

Xiaomi MI Drone Hardware

Please see Xiaomi mi drone and its accessories

This is all about xiaomi mi drone, because we take if off outdoors, it doesn’t include Xiaomi mi drone power adaptor.

Xiaomi Mi drone stents used folding design, it can be put down when using it. When taking it, we can keep the parallel between stents and its body. Xiaomi mi drone design is very compact and its camera can be removable in view of convenience.We can put the UAV and its accessories in the computer bag when we go out. So we don’t have to take the other bag to pack the Xiaomi mi drone. But the chassis of mi drone is very thin, it will be a hard test for folding the stent and body.

Xiaomi Mi drone is built in antenna, meanwhile, it has printed the safety logo outside specially.

In order to keep safe, Xiaomi UAV also provides four orange-red protection stents. Due to the weight of stent and air resistance, after adding stent, it will affect the flying time and speed of mi drone to some extent. When the new users use to fly this mi drone under the complex environment, protection stents can protect the drone and persons to the maximum limit. But this bracket is not everything, we need to put safety in the first place when flying.

Before flying, we can fix the bracket to the radial position by screwdriver and screw. Meanwhile we can see the light notification of mi drone, the former one in front of the body has two white light notification. And the latter has two red, green light. After the drone fly away, you can see the light to know the direction of UAV if you can’t know the flying direction exactly.

The tight screw propeller blade takes the separated design with screw. According to Cai Wei, Feimi CEO, 60% of the cost of uav propeller is on the screws parts, the cost of the blade only accounted for 40%.  In use process, if the blade is damaged, you can replace the blade only, rather than replace the screw. Owing to uav propeller belongs to consumable product, the separate design can further reduce the consumable cost for users further.

When  installing the propeller, you only correspond to the color of the logo on the arms, and the direction of the installation of screw. Although Xiaomi uses  self-tightening propeller installation, you don’t have to tighten by Xiaomi official, it is necessary to tighten the screw propeller according to the experience.

Xiaomi officially claims this mi drone uses GPS+ GLONASS (US GPS and Russian GLONASS satellite positioning), dual satellite positioning and optical flow auxiliary localization system. In addition to using satellite positioning, unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) typically requires auxiliary locator for auxiliary positioning. Xiaomi mi drone optical flow auxiliary locator is located in the bottom of the fuselage. ultrasonic locators are like two eyes to accurately measure the relative position between the UAV and the ground to keep flying safety under 2.5m height. It has specially increased camera for optical visual location. It has used  1/5 inch CMOS photoreceptor with 640 * 480 screen resolution. After adopting Howe OmniPixel3 – HS technology, it can easily realize automatic hover, automatic follow, and other functions.

From the flying performance, the function of one key to return automatically of Xiaomi Mi drone should use the satellite to position, the positioning difference is a little big which controls 3 meters to 5 meters for civil level. If it can make full use the visual AIDS locator at the bottom of the fuselage, it will locate more accurate when return automatically.

It has also used the removable camera. Open the cover plate at the bottom of the fuselage, you can see the bayonet of the camera and data interface. It shows used for engineering mode, camera USB port mouth, and the code of Mi drone and the remote controller.

In order to reduce the fuselage vibration influence on the camera, the camera base adopted the structure of flexible rubber connection.The base also adopted a detachable structure with camera which launched a handheld gimbal for Xiaomi. You only need to buy the extra xaiomi gimbal, and combined with its camera, then you can take the video or photos outside. Right now DJI OSMO has used this way to reduce the cost for users.

The front of the camera has WiFi logo. It’s said 1080p version used 5G Wift to transmit. Official data is about 1 km distance. TF card interface, fan ventilation and USB interface are on the back. Photos and video camera is stored in camera TF card, when it generated video files,it also can save a version of the small storage which is for transmit the photos and quick view on the phone. From the point of actual usage, due to the low 1080P video stream, if the tf card has better quality, it can use TF card at the low speed for urgent use.

About Xiaomi mi drone battery, it uses 15.2 V / 5100 mah, 77.52 Wh in total which can support 27 minutes flying time, considering the battery depletion, standby, departure and return, etc,  the actual battery life is shorter than the official.

It is using a 4.35V lithium battery, whose capacity has improved 8% around than the common 4.2V in theory. This specs of battery has used in high-end smartphones in recent years. The battery adopts double redundancy design, power supply and communication have made double backup,  reducing the failure probability when touch point contact caused bad result in flight.

It’s said Xiaomi mi drone design is affected by Lei Jun, Xiaomi CEO, although this remote controller is similar to the others in functions, it still has some difference. For example, the remote control looks like game handle, Mobile phone stents used the capacitor design, making its appearance more concise.

The most important of a remote control is the right and left handle which can control the various movements of the fuselage. Red orange toggle switch can be used to switch to normal flight and return mode automatically. Lower rocker flying is the power switch, automatic button, the power indicator light. On the back of the fuselage is video and camera keys  respectively. On the left side of the roller can adjust camera’s pitching angle, and the right of the roller is used to adjust the brightness level of mi drone’s white light.

Others’ right roller is used for adjusting the camera exposure level. Because UAV cameras all work automatically. It will adjust automatically the light according to the environment. This model can sometimes lead to take video brightness  to change sharply, and affect the video effect. Obtained by manual regulation of exposure  on the right side of the roller, it can avoid video brightness to change too violently under the some extreme environment. Xiaomi UAV has cancelled the function, but use the notification light to change the direction of the head of the mi drone.

This kind of change should consider it as an entry-level UAV.  Most users are possible not to use the function of adjustment of exposure compensation. Automatic model can meet the needs of the vast majority of their shots.Through the roller to adjust the brightness of the light, you can know the head direction when it happens to emergency for new beginners for better control your UAV.

Lower part of the remote control handle is USB charging port and the data port. The fuselage with built-in 5000 mah lithium electricity can charge the remote control  through the standard 5v charger or computer USB port.

Control communication between Remote control and UAV uses  radio frequency hopping communication rather than WiFi,  because using TCP/IP non-real-time WiFi  agreement, the signal has delayed which is not suitable for such equipment with real-time requirements for UAV remote control. The picture used 5G Wifi to keep the clarity of 5G format when transmit. But the transmission distance becomes shorter, and it claims to spread distance to 1000 meters according to the official. But 4K version use  2.4G WiFi frequencies, the official said the figure spread distance can reach theoretically to 2000 meters.

My Feeling about Xiaomi mi drone

When we test it, it appeared  protection stents of Xiaomi mi drone upper left corner or the upper right corner of the picture. Normally it will not happen this, due to the strong wind,  the phenomenon of the shaking happened after flying. Although it looks a little shaking, the overall scene is stable. This also reflects Xiaomi UAV three-axis stabilization gimbal does play a proper role.

As can be seen from the scene shooting video images, appeared many pictures the upper left corner or the upper right corner of the unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) the protection of the stents. Normally protect scaffold should not appear in the picture, because the wind is bigger, unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) after liftoff is affected by the wind, the phenomenon of the shaking. However, we have also seen, although drones appear shaking, but the picture is very smooth, this also reflects from one side millet uavs three-axis stabilization yuntai does play a proper role.

We need to connect the phone with Mi drone well before flying, turn remote control on, and then turn power button on, after the remote control power button turns red to white, it shows the remote control has connected successfully with your UAV. Then you can open Xiaomi mi drone App on your phone to let the UAV connect with your phone APP.

The Drone flying at different locations needs to calibrate the compass first before.According to the prompt of the APP, after calibration, switch UAV host, can let Xiaomi drones keep the normal state. In addition to calibrate the compass, if the remote control operation is unusual, you can also use the APP to correct the remote control.

Xiaomi mi drone has set up a “newbie guide” tutorial. Hope you can learn it carefully.

Xiaomi Mi drone is built in  more perfect no-fly zone information, you need to try outside the zone to experience the fun of aerial and remote control flying. At the same time we will strictly comply with the relevant safety standards.

When you start the Xiaomi UAV, its camera can’t touch anything,  otherwise it may cause the failure self-inspection of camera and gimbal.

Sohu technology based on the actual encounter situation, when you start the millet uav, uav cameras can’t touch anything, otherwise it may cause the failure of camera haeundae self-inspection. In this case, if for aerial will be failure.

After Xiaomi Mi drone completed self-checking and search positioning, if it meets the requirements for take-off, users can press the button on the remote control and control the state by  left and right roller. When landing, it also needs to press the button for safety landing. On the left side of the button of the app can also be in transmission photos mode switch.

If the UAV fly under the lower power, it will return automatically. And it will have warning notification for low power and app notification in the phone. Xiaomi mi drone increase the notification function of low power on its remote control, too for better safe flying.

Conclusion

Xiaomi Mi drone has focused on its convenience and easy operation, and it has also stood out in some functions. It sells much cheaper at 2499 yuan about 1080p version compared with DJI 3 Standard version. It will be a good choice for new beginners who like UAV, don’t forget to use this coupon code:   midrone  to save a lot for you at $485.

Update on Sept.12:
XIAOMI Mi Drone 4K WiFi FPV RC Quadcopter
Coupon code: MI4KGB
SP: $396.99