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April 11, 2024

The Best Drones for Photos and Video

If you’re an aspiring aerial photographer or videographer, drones are your ticket to the sky.

They provide perspectives that you’d otherwise be able to re-create only with expensive equipment such as cranes or dollies, which is why these cheap, lightweight marvels have become a staple of many online creators’ gear lists.

But you can find dozens of different models—sometimes even from a single brand—with various costs and benefits to sift through. After test-flying 33 drones, we’ve concluded that the DJI Air 3 is the best because it combines a high-quality main camera, useful telephoto camera, and the latest autonomous technology in a light-enough and relatively affordable package.

DJI Air 3

The best drone for aerial photos and videos

This drone offers impressive value, combining the 360-degree obstacle avoidance from the more expensive Mavic 3 Pro with two fantastic cameras.

Buying Options

$1,549 from Amazon

Upgrade pick

DJI Mavic 3 Pro

A drone with all the bells and whistles

If you want the best cameras in a drone, get this one. Its main camera has a larger sensor than that on our top pick, and it adds 70mm and 166mm-equivalent lenses to capture more distant subjects.

Buying Options

$2,999 from Amazon

$3,000 from Best Buy

Budget pick

DJI Mini 3

An impressive entry-level drone

This drone offers DJI’s autonomous features (minus obstacle avoidance) and a 4K camera that can shoot in portrait or landscape, and it all comes in a tiny package weighing less than 250 grams.

Buying Options

$469 from Amazon

$470 from Best Buy

Also great

Autel Robotics Evo Lite+

An alternative to DJI

This easy-to-fly drone provides a 6K camera and 40 minutes of flight time, and unlike DJI drones, it has no known security concerns. But the video quality isn’t as crisp or colorful.

Sourced from Wirecutter

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