DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ALL FOUR DJI PHANTOM 3 MODELS

The DJI Phantom 3 is currently the best drone on the market, however with the increasing number of Phantom models to choose from, it’s gotten quite hard to figure out which one to buy. That’s why today I’ll be talking about each Phantom 3 model and pointing out all of the most important differences between them. That way, you can make the best buying decision based on what you’re needs are. DJI PHANTOM 3 STANDARD The Phantom 3 Standard is the lowest cost model and with a price like $499 it’s great for people on a tight budget. It was originally released a few months after the Phantom 3 Professional and Advanced as a more affordable Phantom that didn’t have all the expensive features of the Phantom 3 Advanced and Professional. The first thing you will notice is that it doesn’t shoot 4K video, however it does shoot 2.7K video which is good enough for most people and the FPV (first-person-view) video feed is 720p. It also uses a less expensive Panasonic image sensor instead of the popular Sony Exmor R sensor found in the GoPro Hero 4, but most people wouldn’t notice the difference in image quality. Another feature that the Phantom Standard lacks is the optical flow vision positioning system. This might not seem like a needed feature (and it isn’t), but it’s one of the only things that makes the Phantom 3 so much better than it’s competitors at holding it’s position and landing. A much less obvious fact about the Phantom 3 standard is that it uses a much more simple controller design than the other three models. Its actually a borrowed design from the old and iconic Phantom 2. This means that you won’t be getting any dedicated controls for things like changing exposure, video recording, video playback and there’s no custom buttons on the back either. Oh, and if you want to use your iPad there’s no way of easily mounting it to the controller because the older mounting clamp design is too small. ​It might seem like there’s a lot missing from the Phantom 3 Standard, but you have to remember that it costs less than half the price of the fully featured Phantom 3 Professional. To be clear, the Phantom 3 4K is not the best Phantom 3 money can buy. Its actually not even the second best Phantom 3 (in my opinion). It has all of the features of the Phantom 3 Standard, but it also does 4K video recording, comes with the much more advanced (iPad friendly) controller and has vision positioning. It was released at the beginning of 2016 as the cheapest Phantom capable of shooting 4k. It’s priced at $799 right now which is amazing, but even at the retail price of $999, it’s still the most affordable 4K drone you can buy. With all of the most popular features of the other two more expensive Phantom 3 models at a better price. The Phantom 3 4K seems like the perfect drone, however there are three things it lacks that I’ll talk about in the next section.