WIRED loved 2023’s DJI Air 3 (9/10, WIRED Recommends). The midrange consumer drone was easy and safe to fly and compact enough to carry almost anywhere, but I found the most appealing feature to be its innovative dual-camera setup. By packing both wide-angle and medium telephoto cameras (each with its own 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor), it expanded my creative options for aerial photos and video. I could shoot wide vistas one moment, then switch to the telephoto lens to get closer to a particular feature of the landscape or compress it against the background for more dramatic framing.
The new DJI Air 3S takes the concept a step further by increasing the sensor size of the wide-angle camera to a full inch, which improves dynamic range and low-light image quality. It also adds built-in SSD storage for photos and videos and boosts its spatial awareness courtesy of front-facing lidar sensors (while retaining the Air 3’s vision-based sensors for other directions), enabling it to spot and avoid obstacles more easily.
The DJI Air 3S maintains the compact dimensions of the Air 3, and when not in use and folded down, it’s about the size of a 16-ounce (500-mililiter) water bottle. This isn’t one of the smallest or lightest DJI drones around. The company’s new Neo model is tiny, while its Mini line offers decent camera performance in an 8.7-ounce (249-gram) drone that can be legally flown almost anywhere.
Weighing the Options
At 25.5 ounces (724 grams), roughly the same as the Air 3, the Air 3S falls into a trickier category of aircraft that, depending on where you live in the world, requires a bit more effort to get in the air. I don’t mean in the sense of flying—in fact it couldn’t be any easier to take off, pilot around, and land—but in the level of paperwork required. Pilots in the US using it for recreational purposes will need to register it with the Federal Aviation Administration and obtain its Trust certificate by passing an online test. In the EU and UK, things are, sadly, a little more involved, with pilots having to undertake a paid (around £100) online course and pass a rather more stringent exam. Pass it and they’ll be permitted to fly it closer than 4,902 feet (150 meters) to built-up areas or public parks; even after passing that, they will need to keep the Air 3S 164 feet (50 meters) or more horizontally away from people.