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Autel EVO II V3 Released? Disappointing Specs

I have exactly the same question. I asked Dobo on YouTube to do a comparison with his V3 unit, he refused claiming its the same sensor. So either autel's marketing is messed up, or he doesn't know what he's talking about, either way is plausible.
Ken's a good dude, but he is too far into the color science thing, flight feel of DJI. I think he's a Canon shooter as well, and he does all his own edits. That in itself can force anyone to become more accustomed to one product type when it comes to grading. So brand B is crap in their mind, which is fine. Problem is they are out there stating unbiased reviews when clearly there is quite a bit of bias without saying as much. Flypath is another great channel, cool dude, but the bias is crazy exposed. Always a it's nice BUT it's not LIKE DJI. Too many others to name, and that is just for drones.
Just watch the channel history during and after the product releases. Biases are not always biases based on anything else than what that YT CP'er was accustomed to. From the Evo 1 to the latest. The Evo is always subpar, and camera quality though visually better even in their own CP videos they will find the things they like to discuss and rehash those. "Evo looks softer" "Evo looks cooler in color" "Evo flight modes are this and that, but not like DJI" and the latest and greatest lines "The color science is off" lol.

People doing camera reviews say the same stuff. "I like the layout of Canon's menu" I prefer the feel of Canon grip" "I like Canon color science"
I see the Autel vs DJI stuff the same as Sony vs Canon. Difference being Autel has never pushed the market towards their birds creating as much panic as did with Sony and Canon. Sony moved a lot of Canon and Nikon users almost overnight. Still doesn't stop the mostly biased Canon CP's on YT channels.

Kind of long winded, but the point being made is that not even the YT CP's are as unbiased as they may suggest they are. Those biases are from long term experience with one brand vs another. Our pilots here at our company are all from DJI land but have flown Autel now for about 5 years. For many going to test the Mav 3 as we did proved to be a bit different in just about every way. That is to be expected. It doesn't really matter the product either. I see it like hand tools, guitars, and so on. Get used to one, and others just never quite fit the bill. Muscle memory, workflows, all that changes from one brand to the next. All of those things should not be as inclusive in honest unbiased reviews, but they more than often are.
 
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Ken's a good dude, but he is too far into the color science thing, flight feel of DJI. I think he's a Canon shooter as well, and he does all his own edits. That in itself can force anyone to become more accustomed to one product type when it comes to grading. So brand B is crap in their mind, which is fine. Problem is they are out there stating unbiased reviews when clearly there is quite a bit of bias without saying as much. Flypath is another great channel, cool dude, but the bias is crazy exposed. Always a it's nice BUT it's not LIKE DJI. Too many others to name, and that is just for drones.
Just watch the channel history during and after the product releases. Biases are not always biases based on anything else than what that YT CP'er was accustomed to. From the Evo 1 to the latest. The Evo is always subpar, and camera quality though visually better even in their own CP videos they will find the things they like to discuss and rehash those. "Evo looks softer" "Evo looks cooler in color" "Evo flight modes are this and that, but not like DJI" and the latest and greatest lines "The color science is off" lol.

People doing camera reviews say the same stuff. "I like the layout of Canon's menu" I prefer the feel of Canon grip" "I like Canon color science"
I see the Autel vs DJI stuff the same as Sony vs Canon. Difference being Autel has never pushed the market towards their birds creating as much panic as did with Sony and Canon. Sony moved a lot of Canon and Nikon users almost overnight. Still doesn't stop the mostly biased Canon CP's on YT channels.

Kind of long winded, but the point being made is that not even the YT CP's are as unbiased as they may suggest they are. Those biases are from long term experience with one brand vs another. Our pilots here at our company are all from DJI land but have flown Autel now for about 5 years. For many going to test the Mav 3 as we did proved to be a bit different in just about every way. That is to be expected. It doesn't really matter the product either. I see it like hand tools, guitars, and so on. Get used to one, and others just never quite fit the bill. Muscle memory, workflows, all that changes from one brand to the next. All of those things should not be as inclusive in honest unbiased reviews, but they more than often are.
Totally agree with you, I follow all the "dronefluencer" channels and see the same patterns. As for color science, what I kept trying to tell Dobo was all he needs to do to "fix" the things he's annoyed about is to stop using AWB and shoot daylight. No magenta shift anymore or anything like that. The color is objectively more balanced than DJI's when doing that with LOG, as the greens aren't exaggerated like DJI defaults do (which is what he's used to, I'm sure). You can see the difference most easily at sunrise, where DJI's greens frequently make weird casts where Autel daylight WB doesn't.

Anyways, we do still need a good answer on the sensor part number. "New sensor" is ambiguous and Autel's marketing images have had mistakes on specs before. Given that some of the marketing images look like re-photoshops of the 2020 versions, it's possible something wasn't updated correctly...
 
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Ahh ok, I haven't kept up with Autel's nomenclature, post updated. I would have thought the + meant the premium version. But yes, to me the RYYB night performance is impressive as is the 50MP sensor, but I am on the fence regarding daylight and mixed lighting color accuracy. I would take the color accuracy and ease of post processing the RAW images over improved lowlight performance since most of my projects are in the daylight.
I just bought a Evo Lite. Not the Plus. These have not been listed on discount but i found one on a Ebay listing greatly discounted. I like the simple 4k RYYB camera that is on the Nano+. This camera has that.
 
Ken Booth stated a couple of weeks ago that the payloads are not interchangeable between Evo II V1/V2 and V3. I hope that's not so, but there is a different transmission protocol (now SkyLink). When the Nano launched and with it the Autel Sky software beta dropped, I tried it. I found it way too buggy to fly my Evo II Pro V1-- but the video seemed perfectly fine. The Evo2 was dropped from subsquent Sky versions til V3 but the 6K sensor doesn't seem to be the issue as it's the same Sony IMX 383 in the Evo Lite+ too
 
I'll just suffer though with my AE2 Pro until it no longer serves me. If Autel miraculously changes their stripes, I'll consider them again but, most likely, I'll be a DJI customer next year some time.
 
Ken's a good dude, but he is too far into the color science thing, flight feel of DJI. I think he's a Canon shooter as well, and he does all his own edits. That in itself can force anyone to become more accustomed to one product type when it comes to grading. So brand B is crap in their mind, which is fine. Problem is they are out there stating unbiased reviews when clearly there is quite a bit of bias without saying as much. Flypath is another great channel, cool dude, but the bias is crazy exposed. Always a it's nice BUT it's not LIKE DJI. Too many others to name, and that is just for drones.
Just watch the channel history during and after the product releases. Biases are not always biases based on anything else than what that YT CP'er was accustomed to. From the Evo 1 to the latest. The Evo is always subpar, and camera quality though visually better even in their own CP videos they will find the things they like to discuss and rehash those. "Evo looks softer" "Evo looks cooler in color" "Evo flight modes are this and that, but not like DJI" and the latest and greatest lines "The color science is off" lol.

People doing camera reviews say the same stuff. "I like the layout of Canon's menu" I prefer the feel of Canon grip" "I like Canon color science"
I see the Autel vs DJI stuff the same as Sony vs Canon. Difference being Autel has never pushed the market towards their birds creating as much panic as did with Sony and Canon. Sony moved a lot of Canon and Nikon users almost overnight. Still doesn't stop the mostly biased Canon CP's on YT channels.

Kind of long winded, but the point being made is that not even the YT CP's are as unbiased as they may suggest they are. Those biases are from long term experience with one brand vs another. Our pilots here at our company are all from DJI land but have flown Autel now for about 5 years. For many going to test the Mav 3 as we did proved to be a bit different in just about every way. That is to be expected. It doesn't really matter the product either. I see it like hand tools, guitars, and so on. Get used to one, and others just never quite fit the bill. Muscle memory, workflows, all that changes from one brand to the next. All of those things should not be as inclusive in honest unbiased reviews, but they more than often are.

Pretty much all YT gear review channels are biased in some way either deliberately (sponsored or personal opinions), or accidentally (they don't keep the product long enough or use the product long enough to learn how to properly use it), that is why when I am buying new camera gear I watch many different videos and never make my final purchasing decision based on a gear reviewer. There are a few notable exceptions; for audio equipment I will without hesitation buy a recommendation from @curtisjudd; then I will go back to his channel to learn how to use it; he is that good and truly that unbiased IMO.

When it comes to cameras and drone cameras I can't think of a single YT gear review channel that I would use to make a purchasing decision. For drones I typically just read the specs and try to find videos with sample footage. Even those have to be carefully evaluated based on the likelihood that they knew how to properly setup the camera. My favorite type of videos are produced by true photographers/videographers who do it for a living every day and either happen to produce a few review videos on the side, or post some of their past projects that they produced for paying clients. For Canon cameras one good example is @monkeypixels another good one is @whoismattjohnson for wedding videos/gear. Vendor videos are a decent start to seeing the art of the possible, but usually unrealistic for most people. It's easy to say a $3K camera body can produce the vendor's campaign video but then in the BTS you see a 10 person crew and $500K worth of supporting gear (lighting, lenses, stabilizers, etc).

Gear review videos are good for one thing though; when you need to be certain that some obscure feature works the way you need it to then sometimes a gear review video will show that feature in action and how to use it before buying the camera; of course, sometimes even that needs to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.

People doing camera reviews say the same stuff. "I like the layout of Canon's menu" I prefer the feel of Canon grip" "I like Canon color science"
I see the Autel vs DJI stuff the same as Sony vs Canon. Difference being Autel has never pushed the market towards their birds creating as much panic as did with Sony and Canon. Sony moved a lot of Canon and Nikon users almost overnight. Still doesn't stop the mostly biased Canon CP's on YT channels.

Sony moved a lot of users to their ecosystem within a 3yr period where Canon and Nikon did not have an answer to Sony's mirrorless offerings; in particular to their mirrorless video offerings. while Canon was too busy protecting their cinema line, Nikon couldn't afford to keep up with Sony, and Panasonic was focused on pushing their MFT products which immediately faced an uphill battle against the FF purists crowd not to mention their adherence to DFD for AF when they did release their FF line. In the last 2yrs Canon has rebalanced the scales but getting users back into your ecosystem is a lot harder than never losing them in the first place.

At the end of the day just shoot with whatever works for you; any modern camera and drone will suffice for social media and online content which is where most content ends up; the main difference is how it makes or complicates your workflow and if you feel you got a return on your investment either financially or mentally.
 
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Does anyone know if the V3 uses the same battery as V2? I'm also curious about the extended transmission range of nearly 9 miles.
 
So the SC for Autel came out, it was about as pricey, but the number of v1 users that bought into it was very low... SO much for that.
That's hard to reconcile with the fact that I had to wait months on waiting lists with multiple top-tier vendors when I bought the V1 SC. If the demand was low, it apparently was still more than AR anticipated. It certainly was more than they were able to timely fulfill.

With the benefit of hindsight, AR (and other manufacturers) could (and still can) avoid this problem completely by making the RF components a separate, easily-replaceable module with its own government approvals. FCC and their equivalents elsewhere only care about RF components, not screens, joysticks, and the like; so make the RF cards separate and replaceable.

With that kind of modular approach, all that would be necessary in the event of a chip change would be to replace the RF card (and possibly the antennas), and possibly install a new app. The rest of the hardware and the base OS remain the same.
 
Does anyone know if the V3 uses the same battery as V2? I'm also curious about the extended transmission range of nearly 9 miles.
I have no experience with the V3, but my 47 years of experience with RF electronics in general (including avionics) make me skeptical about anything even close to a 9-mile range being possible except maybe in textbook-perfect conditions.
 
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I have no experience with the V3, but my 47 years of experience with RF electronics in general (including avionics) make me skeptical about anything even close to a 9-mile range being possible except maybe in textbook-perfect conditions.

The fact is, they know few people will be able to dispute their claims because anything beyond 5 miles is guaranteed to be a one way trip since their 40min flight time claim is an outright lie. Not many people are brave enough to send their EVO on a one way trip without the proper conditions where they can land and retrieve the drone at the end of it.

The only real way to somewhat prove that their RX/TX abilities have improved is to fly in a congested area side-by-side with a V1 or V2 and see if the controllable range of the V3 has greatly improved; I get the feeling the answer will be no.
 
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The fact is, they know few people will be able to dispute their claims because anything beyond 5 miles is guaranteed to be a one way trip since their 40min flight time claim is an outright lie. Not many people are brave enough to send their EVO on a one way trip without the proper conditions where they can land and retrieve the drone at the end of it.

The only real way to somewhat prove that their RX/TX abilities have improved is to fly in a congested area side-by-side with a V1 or V2 and see if the controllable range of the V3 has greatly improved; I get the feeling the answer will be no.
You can't change the laws of physics.
 
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That's hard to reconcile with the fact that I had to wait months on waiting lists with multiple top-tier vendors when I bought the V1 SC. If the demand was low, it apparently was still more than AR anticipated. It certainly was more than they were able to timely fulfill.

With the benefit of hindsight, AR (and other manufacturers) could (and still can) avoid this problem completely by making the RF components a separate, easily-replaceable module with its own government approvals. FCC and their equivalents elsewhere only care about RF components, not screens, joysticks, and the like; so make the RF cards separate and replaceable.

With that kind of modular approach, all that would be necessary in the event of a chip change would be to replace the RF card (and possibly the antennas), and possibly install a new app. The rest of the hardware and the base OS remain the same.
iirc there were only 100 units officially made of the v1 sc, more or less.
 
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IMO the EVO II could be better than the Mavic 3 in low light at least for video because Autel's ALOG is light years ahead of DJI's DLOG or at least it was when I last used DJI's products. DJI's DLOG throws away way too much unrecoverable information vs ALOG which is pretty much perfect at maximizing the DR of the sensor.
ALOG in V1 and V2 on certain frame rates is 10bits, ALOG on the V3 is 8 bits, It's a step back
 
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ALOG in V1 and V2 on certain frame rates is 10bits, ALOG on the V3 is 8 bits, It's a step back

I did hear that the V3 is only 8bits, that defies logic to say the least, and Autel has remained completely silent about it?
 
Looks like the EVO II V3 was just released. I don't see anything that would make me interested in it over my current V1 EVO II which is both good and bad: good because the V1 already meets all of my current needs, bad because as long as Autel keeps fiddling with the EVO II the EVO III seems less likely to come out anytime soon. Another good thing though is that the batteries remain the same so this might mean we will still be able to purchase EVO II batteries for at least another year or two.

The moonlight algo looks interesting but if its the same camera then they could easily enable that in the V1 as well, unless it requires processing power that the V1 doesn't have. Also, at least on Adorama's website, I don't see a way to buy the EVO II V3 without the smart controller. I haven't kept up with their HW options, but if you can't buy it with a standard controller and bring your own display device that is an epic fail in my opinion.

Autel Robotics EVO II V3 Pro Features (as per Adorama's website)​

  • EVO II V3 Pro 6K Drone Features
  • Leader In Picture Quality and Flight Intelligence
  • Exceptional Image Quality
  • Moonlight Algorithm 2.0
  • 4K HDR Video
  • Post-Production Flexibility with 12-bit DNG
  • Hyper-Lapse Photography in 6K
  • Autel SkyLink 2.0
  • 360 Degree Obstacle Avoidance
  • 6.4" Smart Controller SE Features
  • 6.4" HD Touch Screen
  • 4-Hour Long Battery Life
  • 14 Degree F to 104 Degree F (-10 Degree C to 40 Degree C) Operating Temperature
  • 8-Core Processor
  • Customized Android System
Just an opinion here, but I think the autel evo 2 vs 3 is the new autel drone. Unless you want to call the Evo max that is $9000 dollars the new evo 3. Either way they just dropped the 9000 dollar bomb on autel fans and most like myself arent going for the all affordable $9000 dollar option. I feel like they know they are going to dissappoint all the Evo people waiting for the release of the new drone. So to keep them at bay if you will. I think they upgraded the camera on the evo 2 and called it a day. I honestly think they scrapped the new Evo 3 entirely. Because if they haven't they been stringing us along for way way way to long. I've waited long enough I went a head and got the mavic 3 pro. And I really like it. Dont get me wrong. I love my evo 2 pro Also but enough is enough
 
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Just an opinion here, but I think the autel evo 2 vs 3 is the new autel drone. Unless you want to call the Evo max that is $9000 dollars the new evo 3. Either way they just dropped the 9000 dollar bomb on autel fans and most like myself arent going for the all affordable $9000 dollar option. I feel like they know they are going to dissappoint all the Evo people waiting for the release of the new drone. So to keep them at bay if you will. I think they upgraded the camera on the evo 2 and called it a day. I honestly think they scrapped the new Evo 3 entirely. Because if they haven't they been stringing us along for way way way to long. I've waited long enough I went a head and got the mavic 3 pro. And I really like it. Dont get me wrong. I love my evo 2 pro Also but enough is enough
 
Just an opinion here, but I think the autel evo 2 vs 3 is the new autel drone. Unless you want to call the Evo max that is $9000 dollars the new evo 3. Either way they just dropped the 9000 dollar bomb on autel fans and most like myself arent going for the all affordable $9000 dollar option. I feel like they know they are going to dissappoint all the Evo people waiting for the release of the new drone. So to keep them at bay if you will. I think they upgraded the camera on the evo 2 and called it a day. I honestly think they scrapped the new Evo 3 entirely. Because if they haven't they been stringing us along for way way way to long. I've waited long enough I went a head and got the mavic 3 pro. And I really like it. Dont get me wrong. I love my evo 2 pro Also but enough is enough

You are probably right, but technically I don't think Autel ever confirmed an EVO 3 but I might be wrong. I know a lot of rumor sites said an EVO 3 was coming and some "spy" pics were "leaked", but I never saw an official Autel announcement. I think that's how they test the waters and keep interest in their brand without ever actually confirming, denying, or releasing anything except more overpriced mediocre products that no one in their right mind would buy.

I wish I could switch to the Mavic 3 Pro, the camera specs look great and I thought it would be closer to $3K as I was reading the specs so it is definitely very competitively priced for what you get. Geofencing is the only thing that has kept me with the Autel brand; that and my EVO 2 is rock solid in everything that I ask it to do. I do feel like the camera is falling behind, but it is still paying for itself many times over for going on 3yrs now so I can't really complain. My biggest concern is driving to a customer's site (possibly hours away or with the client watching) and DJI's geofencing keeps it from taking off. I just can't afford to risk a scenario like that.
 
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