DJI Neo
Also known as: Neo
A palm-launched micro drone that films a subject without a controller, aimed at quick self-shot clips rather than planned aerial work.
Updated
What it means
The Neo removes the controller from the equation. It launches from a hand, flies one of a few preset patterns around whoever launched it, and lands back in the same palm. No goggles, no sticks, no setup.
That makes it a camera accessory more than an aircraft. The nearest comparison is a Selfie stick that lets go, which describes the result better than any specification sheet.
Preset moves are the whole product. An orbit, a follow and a Dronie style pull away cover the situations it was built for, and nothing beyond them is on offer. The limitation is the design, not a gap waiting to be filled.
How it works in practice
It earns its place at the start of a session. Launch, let it orbit once, catch it, and there is an establishing clip of the group before anybody has started riding.
Propeller guards make it safe to use near people, which is the point. Flying it inside a crowd is a normal use rather than an Obstacle avoidance gamble.
Footage holds up better than the size suggests, though stabilisation leans on Electronic image stabilization (EIS) and crops into the frame to deliver it. Framing a little wider than feels right leaves room for that crop.
What to watch out for
Preset patterns repeat exactly. Three launches produce three almost identical orbits, and Near-duplicate clip filtering will keep one of them, which is the right outcome but wastes the other two flights.
Audio is propellers and nothing else. At the distance it flies, speech is unusable and Wind noise fills the rest, so the track is a sync reference rather than sound.
Flight time is very short and the aircraft is light enough that a breeze ends the shot. Treating it as a reliable primary camera leads to a session with no aerial material at all.
How RawClip handles it
Short orbit clips are useful as openers and as breathing space between action shots, so analysis tends to place them at the edges of a sequence. Repeated launches of the same preset are collapsed to one, and the propeller track is replaced with music.