The overall appearance of Xiaomi drones is consistent with that of common consumer-grade aerial photography drones on the market, and it looks good during live broadcasts. It is worth noting that this drone adopts a modular design, the tripod can be folded, and the gimbal can be disassembled and stored in the bag, making it highly portable. The three-axis gimbal of Xiaomi drone adopts a spherical design very similar to that of Yuneec, which has relatively small wind resistance during flight. Xiaomi also sells a handheld gimbal that can be used with this gimbal. The assembly method is similar to the DJI OSMO controller and Zenmuse X3 camera.
On the issue of "whether to keep the remote control?" Xiaomi made a choice that favors professionals. It is equipped with a remote control that is similar in style to the drone body and game console handle, and is very small in size. The design of the mobile phone card holder is very similar to Shenzhen Zero Degree’s Xplorer series of drones. We also found some existing drone remote controls in the button layout of the remote control. On the front are the remote control switch, automatic take-off and landing, automatic return-to-home buttons and two joysticks. On the back of the remote control are the photo and video buttons, and on the side is a knob for adjusting the lens angle.
Xiaomi drone does not have any particularly eye-catching parameters, but it has all the functions of consumer drones of the same level. Pressing the automatic take-off and landing button on the remote control allows the aircraft to take off and hover 4 meters in the air. Judging from the demonstration video, the take-off is quite stable. Xiaomi drones also have ultrasonic height-fixing and optical flow positioning, making them suitable for indoor flying. Xiaomi claims that the 4K version’s remote control and image transmission distance can reach 2 kilometers, and the 1080P image transmission and flight control distance is reduced to 1 kilometer, both of which use Wi-Fi image transmission.
Xiaomi drones also have standard functions of consumer-grade aerial photography drones such as pointing flight, route planning, automatic orbiting flight, and automatic return to home. Xiaomi drones have spherical cameras in both 4K and 1080P versions. The 4K version is equipped with a 12.4-megapixel Sony sensor and can shoot 4K 30fps videos; the 1080P version is equipped with a 16-megapixel camera and can shoot 1080P 60fps videos. Both are wide-angle and low-distortion lenses.