XIAOMI MI Drone vs DJI Phantom 4 Pro - KEN HERON

Hey everybody, it's Santa! Can I sit on your lap and tell you what I want? Sure. Alright. Oh man. How you doing? Alright. You been a good boy? Eh, most of the time. Most of the time. Yeah. Have any little kids peed on your lap yet? Uh, yeah. No. Okay. Here's what I want for Christmas. I want a DJI Phantom 5 drone. Uh, yeah. Can you get that for me? I'll try my best. Okay. You know they're not out yet. So you must have some connections at DJI. Okay. Thanks Santa. Thank you. Alright. Merry Christmas. Hello, I'm here at the Carroll County Thousand Acre Recreational Lake Campgrounds to demonstrate the Xiaomi Mi Drone. With it's 4K camera and very similar looking body style, this is supposed to be the DJI killer. Well, we'll just see about that. Let's go put it through some of it's paces. The Xiaomi Mi Drone. The Phantom 4 Pro. Slightly different size. This one, being larger, should be a little bit more stable. Propellers a little bit larger too. App dependent, non-app dependent, which means you can fly the Phantom series of drones without the app running. Controllers both use a cable that will attach to a tablet or phone. The Xiaomi has an available B on the power button. Get out of here buddy. What are you doing? The Xiaomi has a dongle that you can attach that will wirelessly connect your controller to the phone, but that will give you more lag. A little bit more delay. The Phantom uses light bridge technology, which is a lot less lag and you have an option of these two frequencies when you fly. I have seen footage from the 4K and it does look a little like you're shooting in RAW. It's a little washed out, but you can fix that in post. The Phantom's image overall is a lot better, I think, just because of the rectilinear lens on this. On here, you've got a rounding thing that happens with a lot of GoPro cameras. It's a beautiful day here at the lake, so I'm going to take these two on the same exact route first. First, I'm going to fly out over the lake and around a new house that they're building over there, back across the lake, around the American flag, and back to home. We'll see who has the better picture and which is easier to fly. You guys ready for this? This is going to be fun. Hey, hey, easy, easy big guy. Hey now. Okay, first we'll do the Phantom and just to be fair, I won't use the goggles. It is a very bright, sunny day and I would normally use goggles with this shoot and that's something that's not an option right now with the Xiaomi. Just to be clear, this isn't a race. This is just a demonstration of convenience and how it flies. So let's go. First heading over to the house. I can hear hammering going on right now, so I know there's people over there. Make sure I get up high enough. I don't want to scare the builders. Of course, I've flown the DJI Phantom many, many, many times. So I'm familiar with how it works and my confidence level is pretty high. Around the house, around the tree, and then we'll high tail it over to the spillway. It's difficult to see in the bright sunlight. Oh, okay. I need to go over this way. I do hope that Xiaomi will offer the ability to use goggles and not just come out with their own proprietary goggles. I hope you can use Fat Sharks or whatever you already have. So around the flag and then back over to home base. Again, this is not a race. Just testing the range, the quality of the picture, and the ability of the camera to do what you want it to do. All right. There we go. Back home again. All right. Now for the Xiaomi. One thing that you're going to want to do before you even leave the house and get away from Wi-Fi is update this thing because it's going to take you about 20, 25 minutes to do that. The top of the controller pops up like that with a little spring and you can slide in your phone. Just be careful not to have this clamp down on your power button or your phone will restart. Setup time, not as fast for the Xiaomi drone. The antennas, they don't go like this. They're meant to go down like that. You do want to keep the flat surface towards the drone, but this will give you more room for your phone and it also tilts up. All right. So finding the Mi Drone app, you've got to go in and allow tethering. You got to click the USB tethering. And this is something you must do every time, which is an extra step. So back to the Mi Drone, checking the connection, it's got to do all this stuff. And now I believe we're in. Click on the camera. There we go. All right. Okay. I'm recording. Camera up, camera down, using this dial right here. Another thing I'm not really happy with is the display. It's not full screen. It's rounded off by the app itself. And that, if you're a professional photographer, is very limiting. So not happy with that. Maybe that'll get better with a future firmware update. But let's go ahead and take off. All right. I don't know if you can hear it, but there's a squeaking. It's like, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga. And the drone itself is shaking. It sounds like some of the props are off balance. You can see how it's shaking a little bit. Those huge props are a little bit off balance. Do I dare continue? Sure, why not? So doing the same route that we did, off we go. All right. I've got a much smaller screen on my phone. And the Show Me Drone isn't as fast. And I'm not sure what the range is. But being that it's bigger, I can certainly see it better. So line of sight is a lot easier. You can see that the picture is a little more sports cam looking. Orbits are a little more difficult. It's reached the maximum distance. OK. Maybe that's a default setting that I can change. So right now, I'm going to go ahead and head over to the flag and the spillway. Wow, it just is slower, a lot slower. The Phantom 4 Pro does have a more sporty feel. It's like going from a Ferrari to a school bus. Going to go around the flag if I can. Nope, it's not letting me go around the flag. I can't go any further. I've reached the maximum distance. OK, well, let's return back. I do like the feeling of the controller. It's a bit smaller than the Phantom 4 controller. The image does look a little washed out, but you can fix that in post. However, if you're not someone who edits video regularly, you're going to have to just live with what it gives you. All right, and here we are back home again. Well, that was not a bad maiden flight. It does have a version of visioning positioning system underneath if I put my hand underneath. Will it avoid? No. And now for a landing. Nice. So in conclusion, the Mi Drone, is it a DJI killer? Certainly not, no. But it is a good, high-quality 4K camera platform. And for around $700, it's a great deal this Christmas. Maybe not a perfect drone for a first-timer. You're going to want to crash a few times with cheaper drones before you buy something like this. Oh, and the legs, they do fold up. And they will fly with the legs up, although it's pointless because the legs also double as the compass. That's where your compass is. So really, only fold these up for storage. If you do buy the Mi Drone from ShowMe, you're going to want to get a couple more batteries because it is fun. It's a drone, and it's got a camera on it. And you don't want the fun to end after 20 minutes. And so in conclusion, I will have to close out this video by saying this is a very good effort. By a very reputable company. ShowMe makes great electronics. They're big in the cell phone game in China and other European areas. DJI Phantom 4 Pro, well, that's the king of the hill right now until the Phantom 5 comes out. Fingers crossed, Santa. This is going to be on top of the heap. But it is a little bit more expensive than this guy here. They both shoot 4K. The setup time and app is a little less complicated with the DJI product, but this one does have an option with a dongle to use Wi-Fi. So you don't have all this cord business here, but it will give you a little bit more lag. I think that ShowMe, if they're watching, they can improve things a bit by giving it a little bit more range and allowing the app to be a lot less complicated. Thanks for watching. Thanks very much for subscribing. No matter what you choose this holiday season as a gift, if you give a drone, you'll make a big splash with whoever receives it. Buh and bye. ♪♪♪