Review Drone Autel Robotics X‑Star

About company

Autel Robot­ics is an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in the devel­op­ment and sub­se­quent pro­duc­tion of high-tech prod­ucts in the field of UAVs. The main office of Autel Robot­ics is locat­ed in the USA, Wash­ing­ton state in Both­ell. The com­pa­ny’s team is a team of pro­fes­sion­als with a true pas­sion for tech­nol­o­gy with many years of expe­ri­ence.

Autel Robot­ics is focused on trans­form­ing com­plex tech­nolo­gies into sim­ple solu­tions that are then imple­ment­ed in home drones with a focus on pho­tog­ra­phy and video. It is very impor­tant for the com­pa­ny what each con­sumer thinks about their prod­uct and there­fore is very scrupu­lous about qual­i­ty.

Their ser­vice cen­ters work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week and all this is done with the aim that the con­sumer would get the max­i­mum plea­sure from the pur­chase any­time and any­where. That is why Autel Robot­ics is known all over the world, and their prod­ucts are very pop­u­lar among con­sumers.

Peculiarities

• brush­less motors
• High Speed ​​4K Cam­era
• 3‑axis mechan­i­cal high sen­si­tiv­i­ty gim­bal
• Autonomous flight modes
• Max. flight time 25 min­utes
• Max. hor­i­zon­tal speed 56 km/h
• Pop­py. flight range 2km
• Posi­tion­ing GPS / Glonass + sys­tem of ultra­son­ic and opti­cal sen­sors
• Star­Point posi­tion­ing sys­tem
• Intel­li­gent bat­tery charge detec­tion sys­tem
• FPV via Autel Star­link mobile app (IOS/Android)
• Trans­fer video from the cam­era online to YouTube
• Two col­ors White/Orange
• Ready to fly out of the box (RTF)

Equipment

• Quad­copter Autel Robot­ics X‑Star Pre­mi­um
• Intel­li­gent bat­tery Max­En 4S 14.8V 4900mAh 72.52Wh LiPo
• 4K cam­era in Xteady XI-5S 3‑axis gim­bal
• MicroSD card 16/64GB
• Equip­ment with a built-in mobile device hold­er (diag­o­nal up to 19cm)
• Charg­er with bal­ance and cool­ing func­tion
• 220V cable for charg­er
• Micro USB cable
• 4 × rotors
• 4 × spare rotors
• Spare set of dampers for cam­era sus­pen­sion
• Strap for hold­ing drone equip­ment
• Tool
• Doc­u­men­ta­tion (User’s Manual/Quick Start Guide/Packing List/Branded Labels)

About the product

The Autel Robot­ics X‑Star Pre­mi­um Quad­copter is a sophis­ti­cat­ed high-tech prod­uct, yet extreme­ly easy to use. Designed for high-qual­i­ty aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy, both in pho­to and video mode. Thanks to its autonomous qual­i­ties, it is not at all nec­es­sary for the user to have expe­ri­ence in pilot­ing a UAV, the drone does every­thing by itself, but the pilot can only enjoy the flight.

Pre-flight condition

There is absolute­ly noth­ing new here, when the drone is assem­bled, the pilot will need to install the Autel Star­link mobile appli­ca­tion on his device (the default inter­face lan­guage is Eng­lish).

Fur­ther, if the pow­er of the drone and equip­ment is charged, it remains to car­ry out a quick com­pass cal­i­bra­tion. The pro­ce­dure is clas­sic and does not take much time. With the opti­mal num­ber of satel­lites, this is one rota­tion of the drone clock­wise in a hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion and one rota­tion clock­wise in a ver­ti­cal posi­tion.

Pilot modes

The devel­op­ers of the drone took care of the safe­ty of the first flight in advance and left the Begin­ner mode active. In this mode, the drone will have min­i­mal activ­i­ty, the alti­tude and flight range will be notice­ably lim­it­ed. Advanced pilots will be able to dis­able begin­ner mode in the flight set­tings menu of the mobile app.

teaching mode

The “Teacher” mode implies the simul­ta­ne­ous con­nec­tion of two remote con­trols, where one remote con­trol is “Teacher” and the oth­er is “Stu­dent”. Step by step instruc­tions are avail­able on the offi­cial web­site. This mode also allows you to sep­a­rate the duties of the pilot and oper­a­tor, one con­trols the drone, the oth­er takes pho­tos and videos, con­trol­ling all the set­tings of the gim­bal and cam­era.

Flight modes

Autel Robot­ics X‑Star Pre­mi­um received 3 flight modes pro­grammed:

1. GPS — in this mode, the tilt angles are min­i­mal, the full poten­tial of the drone’s sta­bi­liz­ing elec­tron­ics is used, all autonomous flight modes are avail­able. Suit­able for aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy.
2. ATTI — allows you to fly with­out being tied to GPS. In this mode, the tilt angles are max­i­mum, the entire flight poten­tial is revealed. Thanks to the com­plex of ultra­son­ic and pho­to sen­sors, you can fly indoors. If you release the con­trol sticks, the quad­copter will not fall, but will hov­er, hold­ing the posi­tion.
3. IOC (intel­li­gent ori­en­ta­tion con­trol) — in this mode, the quad does not care where it is in front and where the back is, but at the same time, the elec­tron­ics strict­ly mon­i­tor the hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion of the quad. This mode is most appre­ci­at­ed by begin­ners.

Autopilot

The X‑Star Pre­mi­um drone has 3 autonomous flight modes in its arse­nal:

1. Orbit – the drone flies around a giv­en point. It has a num­ber of fine set­tings: (Radius / Num­ber of cir­cles / Choice of direc­tion / Fin­ish options). At any time, the pilot can change the speed and radius of the flight.
2. Fol­low – clas­sic “Fol­low me” mode, the drone will fol­low the con­trol equip­ment, or the paired gad­get (IOS / Android), while shoot­ing at the same time. Dur­ing the flight, the drone will fol­low the short­est path, it is worth con­sid­er­ing this, since the drone can­not fly around obsta­cles. It has a num­ber of fine set­tings: Fol­low­ing alti­tude / Return home options. The max­i­mum speed in this mode is 35 km/h. If the air­craft falls behind the user, it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly enter alti­tude hold mode, wait­ing for the next instruc­tions from the pilot. Using the sticks on the remote con­trol, the pilot can change the flight alti­tude and con­trol the cam­era.
3. Way­point – plan a future flight by indi­cat­ing on the map the points where the drone will fly by itself and sur­vey the route. The pilot can set the flight alti­tude for each point indi­vid­u­al­ly. In the process of fol­low­ing the right stick, you can adjust the flight speed.

Appearance

Specification

Drone

Max take­off weight:

1.6kg

Posi­tion­ing Accu­ra­cy:

Hor­i­zon­tal ±2m/Vertical ±1m

Max. yaw Rate:

150°/sec

Max tilt angle:

GPS Mode: 20°/ATTI Mode: 30°

Max. speed (take­off / descent):

20km/h/10km/h

Max. hor­i­zon­tal speed:

56km/h

Max. flight time:

25 min

Frame size:

352mm

Video Link fre­quen­cy range:

902MHz — 928MHz

Receiv­er fre­quen­cy:

5.727GHz — 5.8GHz

Flight modes:

GPS/ATTI/IOC

Oper­at­ing ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture:

0º — 40ºС

Stor­age tem­per­a­ture:

-20º to 80ºС

Weight (with bat­tery + rotors):

1.42kg

Camera

Oper­at­ing ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture:

0º — 40ºС

Pho­to modes:

12MP: Sin­gle, Series, AEB, Brack­et­ed frames, Time-lapse

Video shoot­ing modes:

4K Ultra/HD plus/QHD/FHD/HD+ advanced set­tings

Max. num­ber of frames:

4K 30fps / 2.7K 60fps / 1080p 120fps / 720p 240fps

Max. vision angle:

108º

Sup­port­ed SD card types:

Micro SD from 4GB — 64GB / Class 10 or UHS‑1

Sup­port­ed shoot­ing for­mats:

FAT32/exFAT, A pho­to: JPG/DNG/JPG+DNG, Video: MOV/MP4

Battery

Bat­tery Type:

recharge­able LiPo bat­tery

Capac­i­ty

4900mAh

Bat­tery volt­age:

14.8V

Ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture for opt. charge:

10°C ~ 45°C

Ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture for opt. dis­charge:

-20°C ~ 60°C

Stor­age tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty:

-10°C to 45°C at 5–70% humid­i­ty

transmitter

Fre­quent range:

5.727GHz — 5.8GHz

Video Link Fre­quen­cy:

902MHz — 928MHz

Oper­at­ing ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture:

0º — 50ºС

Stor­age tem­per­a­ture:

-20º — 45ºС/22º — 28ºС

Max. con­trol and video trans­mis­sion dis­tance:

2km

Trans­mis­sion pow­er (EIRP):

RF — FCC: 125mW

Work­ing Current/Voltage:

400mA 3.7V (with­out Star­link app) + 1400mA/3.7V (with Star­link app)

Food:

recharge­able Li-Ion bat­tery 6000mAh

Pow­er con­sump­tion:

5.2W

Weight with bat­tery:

840gr

Motors

The Autel Robot­ics X‑Star quadro­copter is equipped with BC motors, the com­pa­ny’s own devel­op­ment. The devel­op­er does not spec­i­fy infor­ma­tion about per­for­mance. The poten­tial is quite enough for the imple­men­ta­tion of high-qual­i­ty aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy.

Camera

On board the Autel Robot­ics X‑Star Pre­mi­um quadro­copter, a high-speed 12MP 4K cam­era is mount­ed using a 3‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal. Own devel­op­ment of “Autel Robot­ics”. It shoots pho­tos and videos in absolute­ly any qual­i­ty from 720P to 4K at fps from 30–240 frames per sec­ond. In terms of image qual­i­ty, one of the best tandems in the UAV niche that can com­pete with the leg­endary Phan­tom 3 Pro. Details in the spec­i­fi­ca­tion.

Test Drive

In the X‑Star Pre­mi­um test, it per­formed excep­tion­al­ly well, dynam­ic, wind-resis­tant, easy to dri­ve. The func­tions of auto take­off and land­ing, autonomous flight modes worked with­out com­ment. The return to the take-off point from the but­ton was car­ried out with amaz­ing accu­ra­cy. (returns with sub­se­quent land­ing in case of loss of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, or when the bat­tery is low). The removal dis­tance declared by the devel­op­er was con­firmed in prac­tice, which is pleas­ant­ly pleas­ing.

Price

At the cur­rent time, the man­u­fac­tur­er sells the Autel Robot­ics X‑Star quadro­copter at a price of $499. It is not offi­cial­ly deliv­ered to Rus­sia, there­fore, war­ran­ty oblig­a­tions and repairs from the devel­op­er are impos­si­ble!

Conclusion

Autel Robot­ics X‑Star $499

Func­tion­al­i­ty

10/10

Flight time

9/10

flight qual­i­ties

9/10

com­pact­ness

5/10

Equip­ment

10/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

10/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Qual­i­ty
• Reli­a­bil­i­ty
• BC Motors/Dynamic
• 4K cam­era + gim­bal
• Autonomous flight modes
• Teacher mode
• Range of flight
• FPV
• Easy to use
• Fly­ing out of the box

Minuses

• Can’t fly around obsta­cles
• No spare rotors includ­ed

One of the best con­sumer UAVs in its niche. Easy to oper­ate, safe, flies out of the box with­out being tied to the expe­ri­ence of own­ing a UAV. Ide­al for ama­teur and semi-pro­fes­sion­al aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy. Age lim­it 16+.

A photo

Pho­to with the Autel Robot­ics X‑Star quadro­copter.

Video

Video with Autel Robot­ics X‑Star Pre­mi­um quad­copter.