DJI Spark Review 2019 – January 10, 2019

DJI Spark!

How did I get it?

I have played around with several off the shelf $30 drones, where you have to really fight with the controller to keep the drone up and having suffered through that experience, I had always wondered how cool it would be to have a stabilized drone. But being financially conservative (read cheap) I never actually got around to buying one because of the price tag. My lovely wife, with whom I share a laptop, (among many other worldly possessions) noticed that I had googled for a DJI Spark several times and decided to surprise me with it for Christmas’17, and needless to say it has been my all time favorite Christmas gift ever! A special thanks to my wife.

It is a pure joy to fly this thing, take pictures and videos from high up in the air (160 ft) with absolutely stunning clarity and resolution.
Currently a DJI Spark with controller is priced at $399 and I believe the drone just by itself (w/o controller ) is $345, although the price might get updated in the future, and it would probably be best to check the latest price directly on the DJI website. (In 2017 the drone by itself was $399 and controller was an additional $100)

What do I like about the Spark and how is it different from other drones?

The DJI Spark is the cheapest drone offered by DJI with amazing 12MP camera mounted on a stabilized 2-axis gimbal which produces high resolution video and image quality. Although more recently DJI has collaborated with Ryze to launch another neat little drone called Tello which is also a stabilized drone available at $99, but it is more of a toy drone with basic video/pic capability of considerably lower quality than the Spark. I do have a Tello as well, which I will review in another post.

The main thing I like about the Spark is its hover “Stability”, once it is in the air it holds its position without the user having to touch the controls. It has on board sensors and GPS which allow it to just hover in place. This feature differentiates DJI drones from other drones in the market, even the more expensive drones made by other companies such as Hubsan or Parrot do not compare in stability to a DJI.

The next thing I like about the spark is the really amazing picture quality, ithe 2-axis gimbal along with 12MP camera really capture vivid pictures with little or no distortion – the shaking due to wind and propellers is cancelled out seamlessly.

Sample Images: #nofilter

Note the pictures below are radically scaled down versions of the originals, just to make sure this webpage loads at a reasonable speed. The DJI drone records full resolution pictures and videos on a small micro-sd card which is plugged into it and low resolution copies are also transmitted in real time to the DJI app on your phone over wifi, so that they can be posted to various social media literally “on the fly”.

User Experience and Controls?

The DJI Spark can be fully controlled using just your smart phone, or using a DJI controller , or – here is the more fun and my personal favorite method – using a Steel Series Nimbus gaming controller connected to your smart phone via bluetooth. I do not own a DJI controller and personally control my spark using the Nimbus controller connected through my iPhone or just using my iPhone. Connecting the Nimbus controller to your iPhone is very smooth over bluetooth and then DJI spark app on your phone just detects that controller is connected to your phone and allows you to control the drone using the Nimbus controller.

The DJI app by itself is very intuitive to use, although it can take a little while to get situated and familiarized with all the controls, features and calibration options. Once the app is connected to the drone, it will start displaying the live camera feed and will look a little overwhelming at first. My recommendation for anyone who is just starting out would be to first take time to familiarize themselves with the app by connecting it to the drone at home before launching the drone into the air. Also another very important reason to connect the drone at home to the app before going out into the field, especially if the drone is new, is that the app connects to the internet (DJI servers) to check for updates such as firmware or even coordinates of no-fly zone areas and downloads them to the phone first and eventually updates the drone itself, this process can take a while and drain 10-15% of drone battery and you don’t want to be surprised with this out in a park.

Pet Peeves?

I love this drone, don’t get me wrong, I highly recommend it to anyone who is even remotely contemplating getting it. But I would not be doing an honest review if I did not mention some of the things that annoy me about this drone.

1. Very frequent firmware updates – DJI makes a firmware update every few weeks, this is highly annoying as you need to be cognizant of this before stepping out into the field. I have had one or two occasions where the “updating firmware” bar got stuck for about 15-20mins and I was afraid that my drone is going to be a brick. ( I do have insurance protection for it).

2. Compass and IMU calibration – It is highly recommended that the drone compass be calibrated before every flight, this involves spinning the drone around 360 degrees once horizontally and once on its side, but beware of any metallic objects nearby – the calibration will error out if you are near a metallic object, I was doing this once on my deck and I set down the drone on a bench and it would refuse to calibrate, then i realized that the bench has metallic rods in it which were preventing proper calibration. So the compass calibration should be carried out just before the flight in an open field, make sure there are no strong magnetic fields in the vicinity or for that matter metallic objects. The IMU calibration is required less frequently and is recommended if you notice a drift in flight – I experienced a drift while taking a shot of a river and I was over water – this was pretty scary, the IMU calibration involves taking the propellers off the motors and then placing the drone in different positions, I recommend doing this at home.

Favorite features – Auto Follow

If you are a regular on this website you know that I am a total geek who dabbles in computer vision using python open-cv along with other AI and ML programming. So I really appreciate the on board AI/ML implemented on DJI spark which lets it detect and follow objects in real time, it does an amazing job of keeping a moving object in frame and following it. This is my single most favorite feature of the spark and I am really impressed with it. I will wrap this review up and leave you with a video shot from the spark of me running around with a soccer ball to demonstrate the coolness of this auto follow feature.