Xiaomi Mi Drone Review

Introduction

Absolute­ly new cre­ation of Xiao­mi Cor­po­ra­tion. Xiao­mi Mi Drone is a high-tech quad­copter whose arse­nal allows you to real­ize high-qual­i­ty ama­teur pho­to and video con­tent from the air with­out being tied to the expe­ri­ence of own­ing a UAV. The first unof­fi­cial ship­ments of Mi Drone out­side of Chi­na began in July 2016. Despite the ini­tial “damp­ness” of the drone, which the devel­op­er refined from time to time, the mod­el still received con­sumer recog­ni­tion and is in demand at the moment.

Peculiarities

• Ease of oper­a­tion
• Brush­less motors 2212 800kv
• 4K/1080p WiFi FPV Cam­era
• 3‑axis high-sen­si­tiv­i­ty gim­bal
• Autonomous flight modes
• Max. flight time 27 min­utes
• Max. flight dis­tance 1km/2km (for ver­sion: 1080p/4K)
• Posi­tion­ing GPS/Glonass + 2 × ultra­son­ic and opti­cal sen­sors
• Con­trol drone loca­tion in real time
• No Fly Zone Con­trol
• Intel­li­gent low bat­tery detec­tion
• Con­trol at 2.4GHz
• Sound record­ing dur­ing the flight
• Mod­u­lar design
• Fold­able land­ing legs
• Ready to fly out of the box

Equipment

The man­u­fac­tur­er offers two ver­sions of the quad­copter — 1080P and 4K. These spec­i­fi­ca­tions say that in addi­tion to the qual­i­ty of the pic­ture, the flight range will also be dif­fer­ent. The 1080P ver­sion will be able to move up to 1km, the 4K ver­sion up to 2km.

The kit will include:

• Quad­copter Xiao­mi Mi Drone
• Bat­tery 4S 15.2V 5100mAh 77.52Wh LiPo (with charge indi­ca­tor)
• Con­trol equip­ment with inte­grat­ed smart­phone hold­er
• 4K/1080P Wi-Fi 3‑Axis Gim­bal Cam­era
• 4 × rotors
• 4 × spare rotors
• 4 × screw pro­tec­tion
• Charg­er
• Cable 220V for charg­er (requires an adapter for our sock­ets)
• MicroUSB cable (for pair­ing smart­phone and trans­mit­ter)
• Tool + fas­ten­ers
• Instruc­tion (Chi­nese)

Specification

Posi­tion­ing:

GPS/Glonass + 2 × ultra­son­ic and opti­cal sen­sors

Return home func­tion:

Yes

Dis­tance con­trol func­tion:

Yes

Max Range (1080p/4K):

1km/2km

Alti­tude hold mode:

Yes

AV sig­nal trans­mis­sion fre­quen­cy:

5GHz WiFi

Radio fre­quen­cy:

2.4GHz

Con­trol equip­ment pow­er sup­ply:

3.7V 5000mAh 18.5Wh LiPo

Con­trol equip­ment weight:

500gr

FPV dis­play:

any smart­phone on IOS/Android

Drone bat­tery type:

4S 15.2V 5100mAh 77.52Wh LiPo

Max. flight time:

27 min

Max speed:

36km/h (in PRO mode)

Max­i­mum lift­ing speed:

14km/h (in PRO mode)

Max lift­ing height (Beginner/PRO):

50m/500m

Autonomous flight modes:

Way­point / around object / return home

Motors:

BK 2212 800kv

Drone light­ing:

LED on each drone beam

Charg­ing time:

≈ 1.5h

Drone weight with­out bat­tery:

670gr

Drone dimen­sions:

310×380×53mm

Fly­ing envi­ron­ment:

Indoor/Outdoor

Rec­om­mend­ed microS­Ds:

Appearance

About the product

Quad­copter Xiao­mi Mi Drone is a high-qual­i­ty prod­uct, as indi­cat­ed even by its pack­ag­ing. All in Apple style. The drone is ready to fly out of the box with­out being tied to the expe­ri­ence of own­ing a drone. The main pur­pose of the drone is high-qual­i­ty ama­teur pho­to and video shoot­ing. Despite the fact that this is Xiaomi’s first drone, it should be not­ed that the “First Pan­cake” occu­pies a Pre­mi­um niche in the price range “up to $ 500” and at least deserves the atten­tion of the con­sumer.

Motors

The quad­copter is equipped with 2212 800kv brush­less motors. The poten­tial of the pow­er plant is quite enough for a drone with an empha­sis on pho­to / video shoot­ing. To date, the motors of the 4K ver­sion have received a mech­a­nism for quick­ly remov­ing the main rotors, which can­not but rejoice, since the clas­sic ver­sion is rather out­dat­ed.

Camera

On board Xiao­mi Mi Drone, two cam­era options can be hung using a 3‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal: 1080P / 4K. Both received a sen­sor from Sony at 12MP. Thanks to the built-in micro­proces­sor inside the cam­era, which cal­cu­lates on-line com­pen­sat­ing move­ments depend­ing on the quadro­copter flight modes, the tan­dem exem­plar­i­ly copes with its work. The out­put is high-qual­i­ty both pho­to and video mate­r­i­al. The 1080p cam­era records video at a max­i­mum res­o­lu­tion of 1920×1080p at 60 frames per sec­ond. The 4K cam­era records video in res­o­lu­tion: 3840 × 2160p at 30 frames per sec­ond, or in qual­i­ty: 1920 × 1080p at 60 frames per sec­ond. FPV image via Wi-Fi the cam­era broad­casts as 720p at a fre­quen­cy of 5GHz.

To imple­ment sta­bi­lized shoot­ing from the ground, an addi­tion­al acces­so­ry has become avail­able, adapt­ed for Mi Drone cam­eras, hand-held steadicam — Xiao­mi FIMI X1BH.

Food

Quad­copter Xiao­mi Mi Drone is equipped with a lithi­um-poly­mer bat­tery with impres­sive char­ac­ter­is­tics 4S 15.2V 5100mAh 77.52Wh LiPo. The quad elec­tron­ics mon­i­tors the cur­rent bat­tery charge online and, based on the data received, cal­cu­lates the opti­mal flight time, tak­ing into account the return. Thanks to such intel­li­gent con­trol, the drone will warn the pilot in time about the low bat­tery, and if the warn­ing is ignored, the drone will go into autonomous RTH mode and return to the take-off point and then land. In the test, the bat­tery pro­vid­ed a flight time with a mixed style of pilot­ing — 24 min­utes (at the declared 27 min­utes). Which is gen­er­al­ly the norm for UAVs of this for­mat.

Control

The kit comes with con­trol equip­ment that is clas­sic for mod­ern Smart drones. It is not over­loaded with but­tons, all des­ig­na­tions are clear and did not raise ques­tions about their pur­pose. Pro­vides radio con­trol at a fre­quen­cy of 2.4GHz. The video stream is broad­cast over Wi-Fi at a fre­quen­cy of 5 GHz. Pow­er is sup­plied from a built-in lithi­um-poly­mer bat­tery 3.7V 5000mAh 18.5Wh. In prac­tice, it pro­vides reli­able radio mon­i­tor­ing at a dis­tance of more than 3 km.

The stock smart­phone hold­er on the con­trol equip­ment elim­i­nates the pos­si­bil­i­ty of installing a tablet in it, which would be use­ful for a drone with an empha­sis on aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy.

Pilot modes

1. begin­ner mode — sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­its the activ­i­ty of the drone, in this mode the dis­tance is 100 meters and the height of the rise is lim­it­ed to 50 meters.
2. pro­fes­sion­al mode — reveals the max­i­mum poten­tial of the drone, the ceil­ing height increas­es to 500 meters (lim­it­ed by elec­tron­ics), the removal dis­tance, depend­ing on the con­fig­u­ra­tion, is 1km / 2km (1080P / 4K).

Flight modes

Quad­copter Xiao­mi Mi Drone cur­rent­ly has four autonomous flight modes:

1. Flight on the planned route
2. Flight with des­ti­na­tion
3. Cir­cu­lar flight around the spec­i­fied point
4. Autonomous RTH return (on loss of con­nec­tion, insuf­fi­cient bat­tery charge and forced by the pilot)

If it becomes nec­es­sary to can­cel its exe­cu­tion while in the return home mode, move the switch on the con­trol equip­ment from the “RTH” posi­tion to the “Drone” posi­tion and the quad will hov­er wait­ing for the next com­mands.

“No Fly” control

Xiao­mi Mi Drone autonomous­ly mon­i­tors the bound­aries of “No fly” zones. The drone freezes if it is in the bor­der zone and informs the pilot about it on the dis­play of the smart­phone paired with the drone equip­ment. In prac­tice, it was found that “No fly” zones can some­times cov­er half the city, and why this is so, only Xiao­mi devel­op­ers know.

Test Drive

In the test, the quadro­copter proved to be excep­tion­al­ly from the best side. The poten­tial of the pow­er plant is more than enough. In windy weath­er, it hangs as “tied”. The man­age­ment is pre­dictable, in gen­er­al, there is noth­ing to com­plain about. Per­forms auto take­off and land­ing flaw­less­ly. The return to take­off func­tion (RTH — Return to Home) with auto­mat­ic land­ing works flaw­less­ly. Land­ing almost instead of tak­ing off. The return is trig­gered auto­mat­i­cal­ly in case of loss of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, with a low bat­tery charge, and at the request of the pilot, by press­ing a but­ton on the con­trol equip­ment.

Pre-flight condition

Prepar­ing for the first flight:

1. After the bat­ter­ies are charged and the drone is assem­bled in a flight state, the user needs to down­load the Mi Drone mobile appli­ca­tion, the inter­face of which will be in Eng­lish. Works on IOS and Android.
2. The con­trol equip­ment is acti­vat­ed first, then the drone. The pow­er-on process for both devices is real­ized by dou­ble press­ing the pow­er but­ton, the first is short, the sec­ond is long. Each device acti­va­tion is accom­pa­nied by sound and light indi­ca­tion.
3. Place the smart­phone in the con­trol equip­ment hold­er. Launch the down­loaded “Mi Drone” mobile appli­ca­tion and fol­low the visu­al instruc­tions. The appli­ca­tion will tell you about two ways to pair the remote con­trol with a smart­phone: Using the microUSB cable includ­ed in the kit, or via Wi-Fi. Pri­or­i­ty remains with the cable.
4. This is fol­lowed by a sim­ple pre-flight cal­i­bra­tion of the drone, accom­pa­nied by visu­al prompts from the mobile app. The process takes no more than 20 sec­onds.

Range of flight

As not­ed above, in an inter­fer­ence-free zone, the max­i­mum FPV flight range of Mi Drone 1080P is 1km, Mi Drone 4K is 2km. In the test, the 1080P ver­sion was able to retire to a max­i­mum dis­tance of 500 meters. Then there is a grad­ual slow­down of the FPV pic­ture, fol­lowed by loss of the video sig­nal. The radio con­trol in this case con­tin­ues to func­tion, and the fur­ther move­ment of the drone can con­tin­ue to be tracked on the map (via the appli­ca­tion). The FPV flight range of the 4K ver­sion ful­ly cor­re­sponds to the data stat­ed in the spec­i­fi­ca­tion and even more. In prac­tice, it pro­vides an aver­age removal of up to 3 km. Both ver­sions showed the max­i­mum height ceil­ing — 500 meters.

Identified shortcomings

1. Peri­od­i­cal­ly does not cor­rect­ly set the cam­era on the hori­zon.
2. “No fly” zones can some­times cov­er half of the city, and in order to fly, you need to ride out of town.
3. Video stream trans­mis­sion from the Wi-Fi cam­era 1080P is car­ried out no fur­ther than 500 meters. The con­trol remains active, the drone obe­di­ent­ly ful­fills com­mands from the equip­ment, but with­out FPV.
4. In point-to-point flight mode, there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty to con­trol the cam­era.

Price

Due to the start of sales of the long-await­ed ver­sion with a 4K cam­era, the 1080p ver­sion has become irrel­e­vant. Xiao­mi Mi Drone 4K is sold through all known Inter­net trad­ing plat­forms at a price of $437–500. The aver­age price of the Xiao­mi FIMI X1BH steadicam is $60.

Conclusion

Xiao­mi Mi Drone 4K $500

Func­tion­al­i­ty

8/10

Flight time

9/10

flight qual­i­ties

8/10

com­pact­ness

6/10

Equip­ment

10/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

8/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Exe­cu­tion qual­i­ty
• Dynamism / Han­dling
• BC motors
• 4K cam­era + 3‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal
• Autonomous qual­i­ties
• Posi­tion­ing accu­ra­cy
• Mod­u­lar design
• Portable prop­er­ties (fold­able legs)
• Inex­pen­sive steadicam Xiao­mi FIMI X1BH (for ground use of the drone cam­era) (pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly)
• Fly­ing out of the box

Minuses

• Peri­od­i­cal­ly incor­rect­ly sets the cam­era on the hori­zon
• Does not rec­og­nize and does not fly around obsta­cles
• The flight range of the 1080P ver­sion is far from the declared 1km
• You can’t con­trol the cam­era in way­point flight mode

The Xiao­mi Mi Drone quadro­copter, after the devel­op­er elim­i­nat­ed the short­com­ings known to all, relat­ed sole­ly to the “damp­ness” of the prod­uct, received every chance of recog­ni­tion. Most of the bugs iden­ti­fied by the first own­ers of Mi Drone were fixed pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly almost imme­di­ate­ly, through a soft­ware update. Today it is one of the best RTF solu­tions for those con­sumers who are look­ing for a drone for high-qual­i­ty ama­teur aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy with­in $500. The man­u­fac­tur­er set the age lim­it to 18+.

A photo

Pho­to for Xiao­mi Mi Drone quad­copter.

Video

Mi Drone 4K vs DJI Mav­ic Mini vs Hub­san Zino.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01yjIN9DtFU

Com­par­a­tive video qual­i­ty test Mi Drone 4K vs DJI Mav­ic Mini.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu-74Rkg60A

Video with Xiao­mi Mi Drone 4K quad­copter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br6v0pMvCP0

Video with Xiao­mi Mi Drone 1080P quad­copter.