DJI Air 3S

Verdict

While the DJI Air 3S doesn’t represent a great leap forward over the Air 3 and its weight class throws up some obstacles to casual use, this is yet another great camera drone from DJI.

With superb image quality, battery life and flight capabilities, it represents great value for money for anyone who wants to take their aerial videography and photography to dizzy new heights.

Introduction

Having recently launched the tiny, cheap and social media-focussed Neo drone, DJI has turned its attention back to its enthusiast-friendly Air range. Wedged in the gap between the prosumer Mavic and the ultralight Mini series, the Air has always offered a tempting balance between price and performance.

This remains the case with the new Air 3S. Built on the template forged by 2023’s excellent Air 3, the first drone in the Air range to feature a two-camera setup, the Air 3S feels like an attempt to make improvements in key areas. The most obvious upgrade is to the camera (which replaces one of its 1/1.3-inch sensors with a larger 1-inch sensor), but there are also notable developments in onboard storage and obstacle detection.

Are these enough to make the Air 3S worth trading in your Air 3 or Air 2S for, though? After a week of flying it, I’m ready to tell you.

Price

The DJI Air 3S is available to order now from the DJI online store and a host of other retailers, and at launch is available in three different configurations.

It can be purchased with a single battery and DJI RC-N3 flight controller (which connects to the user’s smartphone, running the DJI Fly app, in order to take control of the drone) for £959/€1099/$1099/AU$1699. For those who want extras, there are two Fly More Combo bundles available, both of which include three batteries, a battery charging hub, a set of ND filters and a carrying bag, plus one of two controllers: the RC-N3 (£1239/€1399/$1399/AU$2129) or the 5.5-inch touchscreen-equipped RC 2 (£1439/€1599/$1599/AU$2429). I was sent the latter Fly More Combo for the purposes of this review.

Those who already own DJI drones and controllers may find the lack of an option to buy the Air 3S without a controller, thus saving a bit of money, disappointing. I know I would if I were in their shoes.

That said, I do think the Air 3S is priced very competitively for its specifications and capabilities. It’s significantly cheaper than the top-of-the-line DJI Mavic 3 Pro and only a little more expensive than the Air 3 or the Mini 4 Pro.

Design and Build Quality

• 724g take-off weight
• Folds down to 214.2 x 100.6 x 89.2mm
• microSD slot and 42GB of internal storage

Like most DJI drones, the Air 3S folds down for easy storage and carrying, with a plastic cover provided to keep the camera and gimbal safe while it’s in your bag.

All folded up, the drone is roughly the size of a 500ml water bottle and probably only a bit heavier. So it’s easy to carry around, either in your own bag or the excellent shoulder bag that comes in the Fly More Combo.

The 724g weight does throw up some problems, however. It means the Air 3S, like the Air 3 before it, is subject to stricter rules about where it can be flown and by whom.

In the UK, where I live, it falls into a drone category that requires it to be kept at least 50m away from uninvolved people (measured horizontally), and 150m from built-up or public areas (including parks and beaches). If I wanted to fly it in more built-up areas, I’d need an A2CofC certificate, which requires undertaking a paid course and passing a 90-minute exam.

You can see why many people just opt for a sub-250g drone instead; these can be legally flown anywhere without the need for pricey and time-consuming courses.

Still, those who are willing to jump through the required hoops can look forward to flying a well-made drone. Constructed of tough plastic, it feels like it will survive many road trips and long days of shooting, despite its folding parts and various lenses and sensors. The gimbal and camera are the most delicate parts, but as I say there’s a plastic cover included in the box to keep them protected when not in use.

Like the Air 3, there’s a microSD slot for storing photos and video, but this time it’s supplemented by 42GB of built-in SSD storage – enough space for about an hour of 4K/60p video or over 5000 JPEG photos. I solely relied on the internal storage while testing the drone for this review and had no issues with it whatsoever. It’s fast and reliable.

Next to the microSD slot is a USB-C port that can be used to transfer photos and videos to your computer or recharge a battery while it’s inserted into the drone. I generally used the Fly More Combo’s battery charging hub instead: it can hold three batteries at once, charging them in sequence, and when used in combination with a 100W adapter will fully charge them at the rate of about one per hour. It’ll also consolidate several partially used batteries into one full battery.

Flight Performance

• Up to 45 minutes of flight time
• Active Track 360º subject tracking
• Omnidirectional object avoidance

I found flying the DJI Air 3S to be a breeze, just like the majority of DJI’s drones. While the drone is controlled in the air with a simple twin-stick method, which is beautifully responsive and easy to master, things are also supplemented with user-friendly features like one-touch take-off and return-to-home and omnidirectional object sensing.

Thanks to having sensors pointing in all directions (including new LiDAR sensors at the front) the Air 3S can detect potential obstacles like tree branches, lamp posts and walls and either skirt around them or stop itself in mid-air to avoid collisions.

This detection is turned off when the Air 3S is in Sport mode but operates automatically in all other instances, including when autopilot modes such as the excellent Active Track 360º are being used.

Active Track 360º, which debuted on the Mini 4 Pro and was added to the Air 3 via a firmware update, allows users to draw a box around a moving object and have the drone perform movements around the object while keeping it centred in the frame.

It’s a great way to film yourself while on a skateboard or bike or in a car – but do be aware that you’ll still need to abide by the flight restrictions I mentioned above while Active Track is being used; these made it very difficult for me to test it properly during the course of my review, but I can say that object detection is generally reliable when taking on and off, as the controller’s screen clearly indicates the direction and distance of potential obstacles.

The Air 3S uses the same O4 video transmission system as the Air 3. This beams a low-latency Full HD video feed from the drone’s front cameras to your phone or controller’s screen, allowing you to accurately frame videos and photos and get a clear picture of the drone’s viewpoint and surroundings. It has a theoretical range of up to 20km, which is far further than anyone should be flying.

I tested it up to a few hundred metres and found it to be rock-solid the entire time. The LiDAR sensors perform better in low light than the vision-based sensors at the back, sides and top, so this should theoretically boost object avoidance at dawn, dusk or night-time.

Camera Performance

• 4K video recording at up to 120fps
• D-Log M, HLG and standard colour profiles
• 50MP and 48MP JPEG and RAW stills

Like the Air 3, the Air 3S boasts a two-camera setup, pairing a wide-angle (equivalent 24mm) camera with a medium tele (equivalent 70mm) camera. But while the Air 3 gave both 1/1.3-inch 48MP sensors, here the wide-angle camera gets a larger 1-inch 50MP sensor. This gives it slightly better dynamic range (up to 14 stops of it) and low-light performance.

Both cameras retain fixed apertures. This was one of the few criticisms often levelled at the Air 3’s cameras, as it necessitated the use of DJI’s set of three ND filters (which cost about £80 and require landing the drone each time you want to make a change) in order to control shutter speed on bright days. The Air 3S hasn’t addressed it, basically, so you’ll still need the filter set if you want to shoot videos at slower speeds in sunny conditions.

That aside, I’m really impressed with the camera performance. The Air 3 was already strong, so it’s little wonder that this slight upgrade is a winner. I shot the sample 4K footage you can see here using the 10-bit D-Log M profile, then colour-graded using DaVinci Resolve Studio. Detail and dynamic range really help the images pop, while the large sensors make night-time shots retain a lot more crispness than I’m used to seeing from affordable drones.

The drone offers a wide range of shooting options including slow-motion (up to 120fps in 4K, or 240fps in Full HD) and social media-friendly 9:16 portrait shooting in up to 2.7K resolution. On the photo front, it can shoot in DNG RAW format for great post-production editing scope – and that’s how I took the example shots here, tweaking them in Adobe Lightroom later.

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