DJI Spark Review - Review 2022

DJI wants everyone to be able to fly a drone. At to the lowest degree, that's the message information technology seems to be sending with the Spark ($499), the company's smallest shipping yet. It'due south a selfie drone you tin can interact with just past waving your paw. It's likewise a curt-range quadcopter that can exist controlled with your smartphone, complete with forward obstacle abstention and subject field tracking capabilities. Add an accompaniment remote and you've got a very capable bird, with a 31mph top speed and a robust operating range.

Tin can it be all things to all people? Not really. It works well for selfies and quick shots, but battery life is short, the video editing process isn't as like shooting fish in a barrel as promised, and flying with your smartphone is kludgy. If you desire a drone, simply don't want to accept to worry about learning to fly one similar a pro, the Spark is worth a look. But if you want a more versatile quadcopter in a small form factor, and are interested in learning to wing it manually, the DJI Mavic Pro is a stronger, albeit more expensive, pick.

Design

The Spark ($545.00 at Amazon) is tiny. It measures 2.two by 5.6 by 5.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 10.six ounces—DJI points out information technology weighs less than a tin can of soda. It's not foldable, though the propellers do fold in for easy ship—you lot don't have to remove them for storage, so the Spark is always fix to fly. And there are colors. You tin go it in Alpine White, Lava Blood-red, Meadow Light-green, Sky Blue, and Sunrise Yellowish. As you can come across, our review model is Sunrise Yellow.

It uses microSD memory to shop images and video. A removable battery promises sixteen minutes of flying fourth dimension per charge, though in our field tests, the best we managed was 12 minutes. It'south even so amend than the six minutes you get with tiny selfie drones like the Dobby. There'south a micro USB port, so you tin can plug the Spark into a portable battery pack or your laptop to recharge its battery. Extra batteries are priced at a reasonable $49.

The camera sports a 1/two.3-inch CMOS image sensor, the aforementioned type yous find in a typical pocket superzoom and slightly larger than the sensor in an iPhone. The lens is a fixed 25mm f/2.vi equivalent, capable of capturing 12MP all the same images and 1080p video at 30fps and 24Mbps. You don't get the pick to shoot at 24fps for a more than cinematic look, and at that place'due south no 60fps or 120fps capability to record smoother footage for slow-motion playback. This isn't as serious a video tool as other DJI drones, like the Mavic Pro ($999.00 at DJI) , which supports 4K capture and additional frame charge per unit options. A two-axis mechanical gimbal keeps footage stable during flight.

The normal array of safety features are baked into the design. You get GPS/GLONASS satellite positioning to keep information technology steady when flight outdoors and to bring it abode automatically if communication is interrupted, or on demand. Forward-facing sensors detect obstacles at distances of up to 16 feet, and the Spark is smart enough to change its flight path and fly around them. And you've got the Vision Positioning System (VPS), a downward-facing sensor array that keeps the aircraft hovering in place when flying indoors without the help of GPS.

The Spark is actually stable. It hovers in place with ease, even indoors without the assist of GPS stabilization. I flew it on a breezy late May twenty-four hours and it stayed in place under mild gusts of wind, albeit at a fairly depression altitude. We wait DJI drones to be rock solid in the air and the Spark doesn't disappoint in any way.

Registration

The Spark arrives with news from DJI that it will severely limit the functionality of its current product line if yous fail to register via a DJI Get business relationship. This comes on the heels of a courtroom ruling that states that the FAA doesn't have the authority to charge you $5 to register a drone.

DJI Spark

The Spark is heavier than 8 ounces, so information technology would have fallen under the FAA's registration requirements if they were all the same in place. When y'all see and agree the Spark in your hand, it's easy to realize that the 8-ounce effigy the FAA cooked upwardly is a chip silly—the average adult pigeon weighs almost thirteen ounces and the FAA hasn't tried to regulate them, at least not yet.

With the FAA temporarily out of the registration business, DJI has stepped in. I'm all for responsible drone ownership, and I'm pretty confident that DJI's implementation will be a nominal business organisation for near neophyte pilots. It'southward non impossible to make it trouble flying the Spark—don't fly it on a crowded metropolis street or in a packed sports arena—simply the small size and weight, along with the express range when using the smartphone as a command, means less cause for business organisation.

If you lot are vehemently opposed to registration, don't buy a Spark, or any DJI drone for that matter. There are alternatives—the Yuneec Breeze is similar in design to the Spark and, at press fourth dimension, Yuneec won't brand you lot gear up an account to obtain full functionality.

Flight Experience

You may be wary of putting a device with fast-spinning rotors in your paw. I've been cutting past a drone propeller before and it's not a pleasant experience. But as long every bit your fingers don't extend into the colored tiptop portion of the Spark, you're prophylactic. A DJI rep stated you may cutting yourself if a finger catches the border of i of the blades, simply due to their folding nature, you won't do much damage if your finger slips closer to the center of the prop. I haven't tested this personally, only be careful. If yous plan on doing a lot of hand takeoffs and landings, invest in a set of propeller guards—they add $19 to the cost.

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The Spark is pocket-sized plenty to fly indoors, and its VPS keeps it hovering in identify even without the aid of GPS. I wouldn't recommend flying it in small confines, but if you've got a large sitting room or infinite, you can certainly interruption it out for some interior aerials. Realtors should pay attention to this one.

Gesture controls are the whiz-bang, attending-grabbing features that are new to the Spark, so let'due south talk virtually them beginning. You hold the Spark in the palm of your hand, camera facing you lot, at arm's length, and tap its power push twice in quick succession. The camera pans up and down, until information technology locks on your face. Its forepart lights blink green, and its motors spin up. You need to let it go to take flight. I had a hard time letting it continue my frist endeavor, but one time I allow become information technology shot into the air. On my second try, I permit go too soon and it fell to the ground. Past the third endeavor I had information technology figured out—you'll become a feel for when the Spark is gear up to exit your hand.

Accept a step back and place your palm toward the camera. The front lights volition get dark-green when it recognizes you. Motion your hand left and the drone flies to your left. It's really cool—this is tech that's meant to plow heads. The initial shot is quite tight, however, so you'll want to go the drone further abroad from you for better footage.

Waving back and forth makes the drone pull back and upwardly, nearly 15 feet in each direction, it volition keep that distance and proceed to track your movements. Information technology'due south a fun way to shoot a selfie that reveals your surround. If y'all want to snap a shot but put your hands together, mimicking a moving-picture show frame. Throw your hands upwards straight into the air when you want the Spark to land. It will fly toward you and hover in place. Identify your hand out underneath information technology, palm upward, and the drone gently lands. It'southward pretty neat.

What if something goes wrong? If you can't become control of it and are flying past gesture alone, you lot can just await until it runs out of battery and lands automatically. Or you can grab it from the air and twist it and so the rotors are perpendicular to the ground—they'll turn off immediately.

Earlier you even use gestures to fly, you have to perform an initial setup in the app. And as of now there's no way to trigger the Spark to get-go recording video footage using gestures, so you'll need the app for that also.

If y'all're just interested in having the Spark runway your movemetns on the ground, the gesture controls get the chore done. Only if you want to accept advantage of some of the baked-in video shots, or if you want to fly manually using on-screen controls, the DJI Go 4 app (bachelor for Android and iOS) is a necessity.

There are four basic types of automated shots—Circumvolve, Dronie, Helix, and Rocket. Circumvolve and Helix are similar, with the old simply orbiting effectually an identified subject in space and the camera staying locked onto target the entire time. Helix is similar, but the radius and altitude increase equally information technology progresses. Using Circle is pretty easy; I was able to gauge how much clear infinite was around me and perform consistently safe orbits.

DJI Go 4 : App

I had a harder time with Helix. The shot took the drone out further away than I expected, quickly. It'southward very piece of cake to arrest the shot using the app, but y'all need to pay attending to the movement of the drone, and go on your phone at the set up, to do so. My recommendation is to avert using Helix if there are trees anywhere nearby. The Spark has obstacle abstention, merely but in the front, and so it's still possible to run into something when flight sideways.

Dronie is similar to shots you become with gesture controls, starting shut and pulling upwards and back to reveal your surroundings, merely it goes further back and away. Rocket is as well a reveal—it starts over your head, with the camera pointing straight down, and pulls straight up to show your surround.

There are a couple of special however photography modes. It's easy to snap a 12MP image using the shutter button in the DJI Go app. You can alter the shooting way to access Shallow Depth of Field and Panorama shots. The onetime locks onto a subject and flies about two feet straight upwards. It combines several images into a one.6MP JPG, which is supposed to blur the background like a wide aperture SLR lens. My attempts to employ it ended up being very subtle, barely noticeable really, and not at all like what you get with a full-frame camera or even the portrait mode on the iPhone 7 Plus. The prototype below on the left is a standard photo, and on the correct is the same shot with the Shallow effect enabled.

DJI Spark : Shallow Depth of Field

Panorama mode is a bit more than useful to photographers—the drone flies sideways or vertically and stitches together a wide panoramic shot. These special shots are only saved to the Spark'due south retention card; they don't automatically testify upward in the DJI Get app like other images, which is a curious oversight.

Flying manually with the app is accomplished via on-screen control sticks. They deed simply like the physical controls on a dedicated remote, with the left stick adjusting altitude and yaw, and the right moving the drone through infinite. The experience is rather clumsy compared with using a real remote. There's no physical feedback to your deportment, and y'all'll find yourself looking at the screen more than the drone in flight, with your fingers obscuring the camera view.

Top speed is besides pretty paltry with the smarpthone. I saw a maximum 12mph in my flight logs, with average move at almost 7mph. You're limited to close range flight, with a geofence of virtually 327 feet (100 meters) around you and a maximum 164-foot (50-meter) ceiling.

I haven't flown the Spark with the dedicated remote command—DJI didn't take ane available to test at printing time. It improves operating range to a theoretical 1.2 miles (although the short battery life means that you'll want to proceed the Spark a lot closer to home than that), ups the standard cruising speed, and adds a Sport mode that moves the Spark through the air at 31mph—but disables obstacle avoidance, and so exist careful.

The remote is set to sell for $149 on its own, and it comes with the Fly More Combo, a $699 bundle that too includes propeller guards, actress propellers, a spare battery, a charger that replenishes 3 batteries simultaneously, and a carrying case. But if you're thinking about spending $699 on the Spark, you lot should really, really think most stretching your upkeep to become the $999 Mavic Pro.

Ease of Use

The Spark is supposed to be like shooting fish in a barrel to utilise. And it is...sort of. Don't get me wrong, getting the drone upwardly in the air using gesture controls is uncomplicated, and the fact that it will automatically identify y'all and track your movements after it takes off from your hand is a big plus.

The DJI Get 4 app supports all of the company's current line, from the popular Phantom series right up through the industrial Matrice family, using a atypical interface. And it's not 1 that screams "easy." If yous desire to take hold of a quick Rocket shot from the top of a mountain you've got to tap an icon, alter the shooting style, elevate a box effectually yourself, and then striking Go to become the shot started. There should be an easier style to practice this—and a quicker way, because 12 minutes in the air goes past really fast. In contrast, the similar Yuneec Breeze has an app with large, easy to understand icons for each of the automated flight modes on its home screen.

I don't think DJI should impaired downward the DJI Go 4. Veteran pilots are used to its design, and the app does a lot. Simply I'd love to see a more unproblematic, streamlined interface as an option for Spark owners who want to get the drone up in the air for a quick shot so dorsum down, without having to drill down through a couple of menu screens to go there.

The app does a better job mitigating the chore of video editing, but it'southward not perfect. For the almost command you'll yet desire to copy files from the memory card to your figurer and work to edit footage yourself. Desktop editing is the way to go if you care about quality—the DJI Go app outputs video at a paltry 5.3Mbps, while the Spark records 1080p30 video at a much crisper 24Mbps chip rate.

DJI Go 4 : Editing Merely for casual use, the automated editor in the Get app gets the chore done. You tin can let information technology work on full autopilot, cutting together a short, xxx-2nd video out of viii clips, and adding music and transitions. The app is supposed to recognize the most interesting parts of your video and include them, merely I found that it was hit and miss—some very weird shots concluded up in the first cut. It's piece of cake enough to change things effectually. If you see a shot yous don't like y'all can simply delete it and shorten your video, or tap on information technology to manually select the video yous want to go in its identify. If you desire to requite the app some guidance, you can choose which clips are eligible for the first, automated cutting.

You accept to exist careful to call up to copy video from the Spark's microSD card earlier yous beginning editing. When y'all look at the app at first, yous'll meet all of your clips. These are low-quality videos buffered from the live stream from the Spark to app. Don't utilize them, as they're blurry and pixelated. To download the total-resolution version, go into a clip and click the Download Original button when the Spark is connected via Wi-Fi.

Sometimes this will work fine. Sometimes y'all'll get an error message telling you that the clip isn't on the carte du jour, even if it is. At that place'south some other download option, in the elevation left corner of the editor, that lets yous browse the Spark's memory and download video on a clip-by-clip basis. That worked a lot better for me. Simply it was a little slow, copying video at a meager iv.3Mbps, and it puts a strain on the Spark's bombardment—I had a 15 percentage drib in life after transferring about 10 minutes of video. Bombardment life is a big business, and this doesn't assist. If you have a phone with a microSD slot, you can sidestep this process by but putting the menu into your phone.

The long and brusk of it: There's room for DJI to improve its Go app. Yes, you can wave your mitt and move the Spark through the air. But setting up shots and editing video isn't as magical an feel.

Conclusions

The DJI Spark delivers i of the best technological parlor tricks I've ever seen. Launching out of your hand and controlling a drone with a moving ridge of your hand is a lot of fun. But when you lot dive deeper, some issues become apparent. The Spark is meant to be the drone for everyone, just I remember that virtually users will be frustrated with the battery life, making at to the lowest degree 1 spare an essential acccessory. When y'all couple it with the rather disappointing experience of transmission flight via smartphone, it makes the $699 package, which includes an extra battery as well every bit a remote command, a more appealing—but significantly more expensive—buy.

The DJI Become app is another potential pain betoken for outset-time pilots. It's a great for experienced users, merely I think it leaves a lot to exist desired for new flyers who don't want to take to delve deep into its interface to become a shot. There should exist a simplified interface for the Spark that makes its diverse automatic shots more than accessible. Likewise, the in-app video editing experience is underwhelming. It's simply not as transparent an experience as DJI promises.

Even with my complaints nearly the battery, at 12 minutes the Spark flies longer than competing small-scale drones, and actress batteries aren't overly expensive. And, while it takes some tapping and drilling downwardly to set upwardly the automated video shots, the shots themselves look actually good. The Spark itself is a solid option for if you desire a drone for brusk aeriform shots, simply don't want to actually delve into the ins and outs of flight i manually.

The Yuneec Breeze is the Spark'south closest competitor, sells for $fifty less, and records in 4K. Nosotros're still testing it, so we'll meet if the actual video quality lives up to the 4K promise. Also available in this toll range is the Parrot Bebop 2 FPV—its photographic camera isn't as good equally y'all become with the Spark, and information technology doesn't accept nearly every bit many automated shot options, but information technology includes a remote control and can wing for most twenty minutes. And of grade there's our favorite meaty drone, the $999 DJI Mavic Pro. It's the 1 to get if you're more than serious almost a modest quadcopter. It flies farther, and while there'due south no gesture control, you do get forrad obstruction advoidance, much longer flying fourth dimension, and stabilized 4K footage, too as a good number of automated flying modes.

DJI Spark Specs

Dimensions	ii.2 past 5.6 by five.6 inches
Weight	10.vi oz
Rotors	four
Obstacle Detection	Yes
Integrated Photographic camera	Integrated with Gimbal
Video Resolution	1080p
Megapixels	12 MP
Media Format	microSD, microSDHC, microSDXC
Remote	Dedicated with App, Smartphone/Tablet App
Live Video Feed	1