My First Drone

I got a drone! I have waited forever to get a drone and I finally did it.

Once university had finished up for the year I had a little more time on my hands. I worked all the way up to Christmas saving every last penny I could as I had my eyes set on one big prize. I managed to save up enough money just in time to get it before the shops closed for the Christmas holidays. I literally spent ages researching and trying to figure out what drone to get for most of the year tossing up between a few different options and settled on the DJI Spark. It was only released in 2017 so it was relatively new but a perfect fit.

The DJI Spark is a tiny quad-copter weighing about 300 grams flight ready, which means it has the battery on and everything connected ready to take off and is about the size of an A5 piece of paper (143x143x55mm). The Spark is pretty quick too, with a top speed of 50 kph without any wind though, but I will say, even with the wind it’s still quite fast. The DJI Go app will warn you when the drone is battling high winds but will still allow you to fly the drone with caution. Flying in strong winds will shorten your flight time but with about 10-20 minutes of flight time, that’s enough to have some fun. If you get the Fly more combo you can get extra batteries and keep the fun rolling.

The camera isn’t the best quality but still is able to shoot in HD (1080p) and save that to the drone. Unfortunately, the video playback to your phone is worse and doesn’t record to your phone is HD but you will still be able to get the original shots off the SD card on the drone or through the DJI Go app. This means you can still get some high-definition pictures from the drone, but if you are using the drone specifically for aerial photography I would suggest one of the sparks bigger brothers, like the Mavic and Phantom. They have higher resolution cameras and are able to go higher and further than the spark.

I’ve taken my drone to heaps of different locations without it being an issue because of how small it is. The one thing that irks me is the range issue the spark has, with and without the dedicated controller. It never seems to perform as well as DJI quoted. But besides that, the spark is so much fun to fly. It is very nimble and quiet compared to the Mavic and phantom. I still can’t get over how powerful this little drone is. Check out some of the photos I’ve taken with it on my Instagram and let me know what you think!