DJI T600-Single-Controllers Inspire 1 Quadcopter with 4k Video Camera with Controller

I wanted one of these the day it was announced. I've read every review on Amazon, and every other site, and I finally pulled the trigger In late April. In summary - it works, and it's impressive. I've been burned by DJI in the past with a gimbal that showed up defective, so I was a little gun shy with my $3k here. The package arrived on schedule; about 5 business days. It comes in a black travel case of mediocre quality. I would not trust the case in the luggage compartment of a plane, but it's nice to have and it holds the quad, the controller, and a lot of batteries. (I think 7) The update process requires a micro sd reader/writer. If you don't have one of those, get one. The controller would not recognize the reader/writer I had (saicoo) so I had to update by plugging the controller into the gimbal while the gimbal was powered on. I really did not want to do that, because I know how delicate those gimbals can be, but I wanted to get this thing airborne. Plugging the controller into the gimbal to update the controller worked. So after updating I put the props on and fired everything up. The controller didn't recognize the quad (or vice versa) so I screwed around trying to get the two linked. In the end, I have no idea what I did, but the two linked after powering everything up and down a couple times and pushing some buttons. Once linked, I calibrated the compass which was very easy. Then, against my better judgment, I went outside barefoot and put this thing down on my front lawn. I should mention that my yard does not have a flat spot on it, and I live in an old part of town with lots of very big trees. So this is a terrible area for a maiden flight. But I wanted to get this thing airborne. OK, so I should tell you that I came into this hobby from the RC side. I have flown everything from planes, to helicopters, to quads, so I am very confident with the sticks. Also, I have several quads, and I even built my own FPV rig that had a DJI Naza controller, so when the system asked me to enable beginner mode, I laughed at it. Alright, so back to me, barefoot under the tree canopy with my 3k "professional" flying camera platform in front of me on a sloping surface. My other DJI can fly off an uneven surface so the Inspire can too - right? Yes. It lifted off and made a slight correction for the slope - very smooth - and proceeded to climb. It pulled up its legs and then I just let it sit there. This thing is the most stable quad I have ever seen. I literally put the controller down, took out my phone and took a video of it just holding its position. It was beautiful. Then I decide to put it through its paces. I flew above the tree canopy, rotated to point the nose down my street and gave it full forward stick. Wow. It's fast. Let go of the sticks and bam, it holds its position. It's so stable that the pilot part of me wishes that there was more to do. You don't have to manage throttle to hold altitude - you don't have to use opposite roll to level it out - the thing just goes stable when the sticks are dead. Very impressive. Oh and the video and pictures are good. Very smooth video. And it transmits back to the operator in HD. It really is the all-in-one package I've been wanting for years. I recommend the Nvidia Shield tablet. It's a great tablet in its own right, and it's perfect for this application. The live streaming HD video was very clear and smooth and I didn't really notice lag. Also, you can use the Nvidia controller to rotate the gimbal. And have it delivered to the office because someone has to sign for it. So as far as this thing showing up and working out of the box - 5 stars.

I had a great experience flying this, updated all the firmware with no problem, did pre-flight checks, took off for a 3 minute flight up to the ceiling to learn the controls, and was promptly floored by an array of social attacks on the NextDoor app about a drone in the neighborhood watching their kids (I'll get to that part later). The controls are unbelievably easy, and yes like everyone has said, the camera was very stable. The software is very well designed I think, but it has a significant bug burning up my Nexus 9 tablet requiring a reboot of the remote and the tablet to be usable after 10 minutes (-1 star for that). I was very nervous about purchasing this drone, because it was clear that DJI paid someone to put fake 5 star reviews on these and the Phantom drones early on during sales. I didn't have such a great time explaining to the neighbors why a drone was in the sky (dead in the middle of my 2 acre lot albeit) and had such an ignorant backlash that I decided it isn't time to own one of these just yet, don't need morons shooting their guns in the air putting people's lives in danger because they're frankly...well I'll just leave the word of choice open for your own choosing. Was accused of watching the neighbors kids during my 30 seconds at the top of my 3 minute test, looked back at the video and couldn't even find people on the screen because it was so small, but accused nonetheless. After all that, I did some research. Do yourself a favor. Look into the local and state laws as well as FAA rules. You may find out that you can barely find a place to legally fly one of these currently, and the ignorance of your neighbors may astound you (I live in a rural area, thought it wouldn't be a problem in wide open area with tons of trees around). In fact, I was looking forward to taking shots of the flowing landscape. Many around you will think you're taping them through their windows or watching their kids, and explaining that a 90 degree FOV at 400 ft in the air and 1500 ft from their home doesn't appease them. In 10 years, drones will be abuzz above us delivering packages, kids playing with theirs, and the gun slingers will be in jail. It's important to note that drones are like guns. It's not the tool that causes damage. It's the user. So if you buy one, handle it with care, and keep it away from people. There will be diseased sickos and people that use them for surveillance, but you can't hold an entire line of new tech hostage because of a few bad apples. To prevent misinterpretation, I use the term "ignorant", because people in general don't understand drones or their uses, have not been shown the operation or camera view from one, and are relying on their knowledge of military drones from media. When one of their kids goes missing, and a drone finds the kid, maybe they'll be less likely to "shoot it down when it flies over [their] house". Drones are going to be with us soon, and people need to be educated. I am excited for one! I would seriously fly this every day, but I have to live with the neighbors, so for now I wait.

Amazon had this shipped to me overnight, and threw in an extra 32 gb micro sd card! Thanks Amazon! This thing is an entirely different world from the Phantom it feels solid, over built, well engineered. Its a far stretch from the plastic 'toy' quality a phantom exudes. Upon turning it on the servos, chimes, even the pulsation of the ultrasonic emitters makes it sound, refined and sophisticated. In short everything about it tells you it is of a premium quality, and price. Extremely stable, flew today in 20 mph gusting winds and could hear and watch from the ground as the inspire pitched into the wind but the gimbal remained rock solid, sometimes its hard to tell if the screen is giving you live video because its that stable. The light bridge technology giving you a complete state of the craft, its elevation, heading, location on the map, battery level, flight mode and warns you both visually and audibly of important information. This stream of information inspires confidence. A word of warning however to those upgrading from the phantom, there is a huge amount of secondary controls and commands that you can issue this craft from both a tablet and the controller itself. This complex cockpit can give a bit of sensory overload for the fist few flights as you familiarize yourself. I have spent a few battery cycles in a high altitude hover cycling through varying control options. I am impressed with the quality of photos from the camera, not dslr quality but the prime wide angle lens really helps maximize the sony sensor. The ability to control exposure and mode on the camera is a huge plus few other crafts presently have. Lastly This technology is fairly young, and anything that goes into the air carries within a risk of failure that could cause damage/destruction to the craft its heavier than a phantom and an impact with objects or persons on the ground could have higher consequences than a phantom, I can not stress enough the importance of recognizing that this is NOT A TOY. This is a delicate and highly sophisticated airborne device, treat it as such do your preflights, double check everything from props, gps signal, controller interference compass calibration, know your flight restrictions, plan a safe flight route clear of manned aircraft, obstructions and privacy violations, and most importantly HAVE FUN. Ill update in a few weeks with further thoughts on the device but so far so good!

The Inspire 1 is an engineering marvel, but the software is unreliable and customer service is incompetent. In my case, linking between the aircraft and the RC unit via iPad mini was sporadic. Sometimes the units linked; most of the time, they did not. The software was the most recent urelease. Customer service responded rapidly from China, but its response was to redirect my. inquires to an office California and this office appears to be overwhelmed and incompetent. After much exasperating trial and error, I was able to get the aircraft and the RC unit to link through my iPhone. However, on a flight in a meadow with trees, the signal was lost, and, despite the fact that I could see the aircraft and had my hands off the joysticks, the aircraft flew away on its own. I have yet to find it. Update 8/1/2015: the flight record proves that the Inspire flew off on its own. DJI acknowledged this, but only offered to replace the aircraft with a used model and only if I purchased it for $1500. So, the proposal was that I buy a used Inspire at half-price to replace the new Inspire I had purchased for nearly $3000 and which was lost due to DJI's defective software, not to pilot error. I replied to DJI that I was willing to split the cost of a new Inspire, but to pay half-price for a used aircraft struck me as foolish and unfair. Update 10/8/2015: DJI relented and offered to furnish a new Inspire in replacement for half-cost. I accepted the offer and paid August 21st. To date, I have not received the new Inspire. Five e-mail inquiries and two separate phone follow-ups have all failed to produce any result from DJI, except a maddening robo e-mail stating that the "issue has been resolved." The level of customer service is the worst.

Arrived quickly (great seller) however it is now on its way back because, while the drive motor for the landing gear makes a nice whirring noise, the drive-screw that controls the landing gear position doesn't turn, i.e., I could not convert it from transport to landing position (or any other position). I thought about attaching the camera anyway so I could update the firmware but ultimately thought better of that and decided to return it. I have ordered another one just for grins and will update this review if I have any better luck. Quality control remains a consistent issue for DJI - I have returned a couple of Phantoms (both 1 & 2) with out-of-the-box issues as well. The guess the good news is that, based on my experience, if you get a DJI quad that works initially, they are very reliable. Hopefully I will get to that point with the Inspire 1. UPDATE +++++ I am happy to report that the replacement arrived quickly (sold and shipped by Amazon) and in good order. After charging the batteries (flight and controller) I turned everything on, cycled the landing gear position switch 4x and lo and behold, the landing gear immediately moved to the landing position (whew). Next step was to update the firmware for the Inspire 1, camera, controller & battery, which went without a hitch; then to check the IMU (which did not need calibration) and finally calibrate the compass. Now it's time to see if it will fly! First, turn on the controller and connect to the pilot app on your tablet or phone, then turn on the DJI flight battery. Turning on the flight battery is exactly like turning on the battery for the Phantom 2 so I really can't understand why there are so many posts from folks who seem to have trouble turning the thing on - simply press and release the flight-battery button, wait for the charge-level indicators to light up, and then immediately press and hold the button until it turns on. Don't overthink it! At this point you have two options: 1) start the motors by moving the control levers as indicated (down and right or left) and then apply power to take off manually, or 2) press the "takeoff" icon on the app. What? A takeoff button? Whoever heard of such a thing! Since no self-respecting quadcopter pilot would resort to "assisted" takeoff, notwithstanding the fact that these things pretty much fly themselves anyway, I opted for the manual option. That said, I have to admit that my curiosity got the better of me a few days later and I decided to press the takeoff icon just to see what would happen. Remarkably, it dutifully started its motors, rose to about four feet, raised its landing gear to the flight position and just sat there, waiting for instructions - cool. Getting back to the ground is just as simple as takeoff and, if you have any concerns, just press the "landing" icon on the app and let the controller do the work for you (I finally tried that too). As for how the entire package works - exactly as advertised! The Inspire 1 is very fast and very stable in all directions, even in winds up to 20mph, and I have had no problem with signal reception out to a little more than 1500 yards, which is as far as I have let it go to date. The camera takes beautiful 4K video (with some compression artifacts), albeit only at 24 & 30fps; and somewhat soft but entirely usable 12MP stills - the raw stills dress up nicely in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. One thing to consider if you are interested in extended flight time is that you will definitely need to purchase additional batteries. I have been getting only 10-13 min on the standard (TB47) battery and 15 to 18 minutes on the TB48 - and that is with letting it run to about 15% of remaining battery capacity (not recommended). Obviously the less you move it around once you are in the air, the longer the battery will last. However, I have noticed that even when stationary, it works pretty hard to hold its position if there is any wind to speak of. Bottom line: once you get over the price, this is a great quad for work and/or fun!

I upgraded from a DJI Phantom Vision, the Inspire is a great piece of technology and exceeded my expectations. However the video card didn't work from day one, so went to buy one no big deal. One thing I have been hearing on you tube videos other purchasers have made, they are stating that the dealer should have shipped new locking propellers and not just the clips that were sent. I've had this since April and though they should have been shipped by now. Anyone else have this problem from this particular dealer? Or am I mistaken on my claims?

I can give it two stars due to the technology under the hood. Sadly I got mine out of travel mode and the battery area began to smoke. No telling what is damaged. It is likely a manufacturing defect but this is the second unit I have got my hands on and both have become failures in different ways. If I didn't know what I was doing I would think my drone usage is cursed! :) Anyway, back to Amazon it goes and I will have to see if I want to order #3 or not as I know I have just been unlucky. This unit is high in technology but you pay for it. Make sure you run it through all of the paces before you hit the point that you cannot return it. Be willing to risk it otherwise....

I ordered my third Inspire 1 from Classy Brands. They could not get it to me right away and I needed it for a job so I asked them to cancel. The communication was great and even though I had to order from someone else, I am recommending them due to the good experience. As far as the Inspire 1 goes, it is a great drone!!! I have two now and am getting a third one. For those who complain that it crashes, I can only say it must be serious pilot error issues. This thing flies itself. The most dangerous thing is me. If I see it getting into trouble, I just have to let go of the controls and it will stop and hover. I have been flying R/C planes, helicopters most of my life and I even built my own quadcopter. The Inspire 1 simply rocks! It is too fun!