Dji Spark Quadcopter

A well-packed little drone

An era of drones and DJI leading the common man's market worldwide. The DJI Spark Quadcopter is one of the first attempts to make the drone accessible to a larger base of people everywhere. Although small in size it is packed with great features like GPS, recognizing hand gestures as flight commands, stabilization and obstacle detection!

Built quite sturdy despite its size, the body is robust and durable which is great in case it has a crash. Easily portable being nearly the size of an average soda can! To make it compact it doesn't have landing gear per se but stubby rubber knobs at the base of the body. The 4 propellers can be folded when not in use and lock into place once they are opened and spinning, they also have rotor guards. Folded up it can fit in your bag very easily. 

DJI Spark's main specs

The main camera is a 12MP camera with a 1/2.3-inch CMOS sensor that can capture video in Full HD at 1920×1080 30p and images at 3968×2976 resolution. In front of the digital sensor is a 25mm (35mm equivalent) f2.6 lens that captures an effective 81.8-degree field of view. The DJI Go 4app catalogues all the visuals captured and allows you to easily select clips to form a highlight reel making the editing process quick and simple too. The battery lasts around 12 minutes but given how small the battery pack is that is pretty decent.

Features

Controllable from your smartphone the DJI Spark Quadcopter has automatic flight manoeuvres called 'Quickshots'. These 4 manoeuvers include 'Rocket' for sending the drone straight up into the sky with the camera looking down, 'Dronie' for taking an aerial selfie, 'Circle' for rotating around the user and 'Helix' which plots an upward spiral path. 'ActiveTrack' programs the drone to keep you in the same position in a frame while avoiding obstacles. The obstacle detection is great unless you're backing the drone up, as the sensor array consists of a main camera and forward-facing 3D Sensing System, so the reversing has to be monitored visually by the user as well. The separately sold controller can increase its flying range from 100m to almost 2000m and the controller also allows you to be more agile with the aerial manoeuvring due to the mini joystick.

Comments

For its size and price, the DJI Spark Quadcopter is quite a buy! It would be hard to find another drone in this range with all these features, especially the Palmcontrol that makes it simpler to fly. That being one of the most common concerns while learning to fly a drone.