New DJI Phantom 3 Standard

The DJI Phantom 3 Standard has been unveiled as a new addition to the extremely popular Phantom 3 range. The DJI Phantom 3 Standard is a slightly simplified and lighter version of its brothers - the Phantom 3 Advanced and the Phantom 3 Professional. It's also cheaper at £649.00 compared to £899.00 for the Advanced and £1159.00 for the Professional and is expected to ship from mid August onwards. The new DJI Phantom 3 Standard The onboard camera is still capable of 12 mega-pixel stills and, surprisingly, it can shoot 2.7K video at 30p (2704 X 1520), which better than the 1080 HD produced by the Advanced but not as sharp as the 4K video on the Professional.

Follow Me, Point of Interest and Waypoints

But the interesting news for the entire range of Phantom 3's is that all of them will now have long awaited Follow Me, Point of Interest and Way-point features. The Standard will get that out of the box but firmware upgrades announced today also mean that the Advanced and the Professional will get the features pilots have been waiting a long time for. The Inspire 1 and Matrice 100 won't be far behind with their upgrades. The DJI Phantom 3 Standard camera These options also feature in the upgrade of the DJI Pilot app to the DJI GO app which was also announced today. GO is effectively V2.0 of Pilot. There'll be a separate blog soon on the DJI GO app.

Weight Loss Programme

DJI have managed to save weight - it's 1216 grams as opposed to 1280 grams for the Advanced and the Professional. The Visual Positioning system has been sacrificed as part of the weight reduction plan so that means the Phantom 3 Standard won't get a visual lock on the floor when flying indoors or in poor GPS signal areas. The satellite system has also been pared down to make it lighter. There is a GPS system on board but the GLONASS receiver, which pulls in the Russian constellation of satellites, has been left out. DJI Lightbridge has also been dropped from the Standard and the radio frequencies are different. The controller frequency is 5.8 GHz while the video transmission is over the 2.4 GHz band. The Advanced and Professional, which both have DJI Lightbridge, share control and video over the same 2.4 GHz range. The 5.8 GHz band means that the theoretical maximum  control range of the Standard is much less than the other two but in the UK it is enough to keep you flying up to 500 metres away, which is the CAA limit. The controller of the DJI Phantom 3 Standard In fact the Standard's controller is  an updated version of DJI’s previous Phantom 2 Vision+ controller, with an integrated WiFi range extender and wheel to angle the camera. There is an upside to all this weight loss - the DJI Phantom 3 Standard has a claimed maximum flight time of 25 minutes. That's a whole 2 minutes more than the Advanced and Professional.

DJI Phantom 3 Standard Specs