DJI’s Air 3S drone is a low light all-rounder


The Air 3S is DJI’s new mid-range drone that builds upon the Air 3 in a few notable ways. These include better image quality, especially in low light, with nighttime obstacle avoidance to help ensure the drone returns home safely. That’s promising since the versatile (if boring) Air 3 already had great low-light performance when we reviewed it last year.
“The DJI Air 3S takes our Air Series to new heights by offering professional features like dual primary cameras and omnidirectional obstacle sensing while retaining its light weight of just 724g for boundless freedom and flexibility,” said DJI Product Experience Director Ferdinand Wolf in a press release. “The Air 3S is the perfect all-rounder for travel photography — capturing all your special moments during vacation while also providing safety and security if operating at night.”
DJI fitted the Air 3S with broad suite of sensors to enable nightscape obstacle sensing, including front-facing LiDAR, downward infrared time-of-flight sensors, and a total of six vision sensors; two each on the front, rear, and bottom.
The Air 3S features an improved 50 megapixel, 1-inch sensor and 24mm lens on the primary camera, alongside a 48 megapixel, 1/1.3-inch sensor with a 70mm (3x zoom) lens, each offering up to 14 stops of dynamic range when shooting in auto (not slow-motion or vertical). 10-bit video can be encoded in H.265 with improved ISO as well.
The primary camera can shoot 4K/60fps HDR and 4K/120fps video. And according to DJI, the resulting file sizes are over 30 percent smaller compared to the Air 3. The Air 3S comes with 42GB of built-in storage in addition to microSD expansion to be sure you can capture all the footage collected over a 45 minute maximum flight time. Files can then be transferred wirelessly to your phone without even turning the drone on, or via a USB-C cable to your laptop.
Naturally, the newest DJI drone comes with plenty of intelligent shooting options including ActiveTrack 360 to automatically track subjects. The Air 3S keeps the subject focused during manual flight or when it moves to the edge of the frame — that way the pilot can worry more about the composition and camera movement. Both cameras also support DJI’s Free panorama mode that can stitch together multiple images with a manually selected subject or area.
DJI’s Air 3S is available starting today on store.dji.com in a variety of kits. Prices start at $1099 / £959 / €1099 for the combo that includes a DJI RC-N3 controller to pilot things from your phone.
The Air 3S is DJI’s new mid-range drone that builds upon the Air 3 in a few notable ways. These include better image quality, especially in low light, with nighttime obstacle avoidance to help ensure the drone returns home safely. That’s promising since the versatile (if boring) Air 3 already had great low-light…
Recent Posts
- The GSA is shutting down its EV chargers, calling them ‘not mission critical’
- Lenovo is going all out with yet another funky laptop design: this time, it’s a business notebook with a foldable OLED screen
- Elon Musk’s first month of destroying America will cost us decades
- Fortnite’s new season leans heavily on heist mechanics
- I installed iOS 18.4 dev beta and the big Siri intelligence update is nowhere to be found
Archives
- February 2025
- January 2025
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- September 2018
- October 2017
- December 2011
- August 2010