Why did I sell the nano plus drone?

[kursat]

-The fan noise is too loud -No Waypoint flights -Active trail sucks.. -No ability to review flight logs -No FCC and other software bugs.

 

[geekdaddy]

Fair enough. It's not perfect and has a lot of quirks. But I'm overall satisfied with mine. It's small, light, has an excellent camera, no app-level flight restrictions, comes with the benefits of flying a sub 250g drone in the US. Not the best flying drone I've ever used and cannot tolerate wind speeds over 15mph but it always starts-up, connects the the controller, and flies without drama. For a hobby consumer drone it seems adequate. Insufficient for a professional. I've never required Autel support but I anticipate I might have problems if I did...

WRT tracking, I've never found a drone that I trust to track me. Skydio is still the best tracking drone and I ended up selling it for the Nano because it couldn't track me in the woods for hiking/biking and it was very loud. The nano+ is smaller/lighter with a better camera. I think my all-time favorite drone was the EVO II. It was built like a tank, had sensors all around, took really good videos, and flew in every challenging windy, cloudy, misty situation I threw at it. But it's also very big and heavy and less suitable for my backpacking needs.

No disrepect to Skydio, DJI, Autel or any of the other drones out there but they all have their strengths/weaknesses. Hope you find the right drone for you!

 

[Eagle928]

I bought a second Nano+ because I'm so impressed with the camera image quality in video and photos. I don't know why for sure but I suspect it had a compromised fan bearing that caused a high pitch whine that I just didn't like and suspected would cause fan failure fairly soon so I returned it. I would have kept it otherwise.

One thing I've found that can be annoying is it's important to NOT format the SD card in a computer. Only format it in the drone. I use a Linux Mint OS primarily and didn't test this on a Windows machine but apparently it does something to the card boot file that prevents the drone from recording video or photos after being formatted in a PC. The only way I was able to recover the use of the SD cards I tried was to use one from a DJI drone that hadn't been formatted in my PC. It's okay to delete the files using the PC but not format it. The reason I formatted the card in the PC was that it showed storage space was being used even though I deleted the files on it. So learn from my experience and mistakes. Only format the SD card in the drone.

My little Nano+ is my favorite drone for these reasons. The camera quality is equal to the 4/3 camera in the Mavic 3 and even better in low light. it's small, so easy and light to carry, it won't be affected by RID laws, it's quiet compared to my larger drones but not as quiet as my Mini 3p which also has a good camera for a Mini but not as good as the Nano+. The flight characteristics with the Nano+ are similar to the Mini 2 which I also have but don't fly very often. I'm keeping it to see how things shake out with the RID BS. As much as I like my beast Evo 2P V1, it's a loud and big son of a gun so I don't like flying it around people. Great for outback flying though.

I am very concerned about one thing though. Autel doesn't seem to be staying in the prosumer drone market judging by their fire sales. Since Autel doesn't sell parts, this is very concerning for the future use of their existing prosumer drones in the years ahead. This is pure speculation on my part but the signs do point to this being true. I truly hope I'm wrong though.

 

[aryehb]

Nano+ is always on FCC, at least from my tests.
Hate the tracking and wind resistance, otherwise, it's ok

 

[kursat]

Nano+ is always on FCC, at least from my tests.
Hate the tracking and wind resistance, otherwise, it's ok

I did not know that

 

[Eagle928]

Nano+ is always on FCC, at least from my tests.
Hate the tracking and wind resistance, otherwise, it's ok

I've come to the conclusion it's best to just not use the tracking in any Autel drone. It's just not dialed in enough to confidently use it. The wind resistance is about the same as a Mini 2. The Mini 3 is much better than the Nano's. Just something to be aware of. Mini's do have more limitations.

What do you mean by the Nano+ always being on FCC? I have no idea what that means.

 

[Detritalgeo]

I honestly have never seen a tracking video anywhere except for an influencer reviewing a new product.. For me it's one of those things that just never get used for anything meaningful.. DJI or Autel.. For that reason the Nano+ is great.

 

[Eagle928]

I honestly have never seen a tracking video anywhere except for an influencer reviewing a new product.. For me it's one of those things that just never get used for anything meaningful.. DJI or Autel.. For that reason the Nano+ is great.

I think the point of interest feature is valuable.

I did a test with my E2P tracking my Jeep on a trail so it was going very slow. I didn't touch the sticks at all while it tracked me going up this hill. It didn't crash but it was very erratic so I decided to not use the tracking feature in Autel drones after that. It's not like I miss it or anything. Like you said, it's just not something I would use outside something like this and I no longer have a Jeep.

I could see myself using the POI feature then flying the drone manually while it kept a focus on a subject though.

 

[Midnight Express 77]

I bought a second Nano+ because I'm so impressed with the camera image quality in video and photos. I don't know why for sure but I suspect it had a compromised fan bearing that caused a high pitch whine that I just didn't like and suspected would cause fan failure fairly soon so I returned it. I would have kept it otherwise.

One thing I've found that can be annoying is it's important to NOT format the SD card in a computer. Only format it in the drone. I use a Linux Mint OS primarily and didn't test this on a Windows machine but apparently it does something to the card boot file that prevents the drone from recording video or photos after being formatted in a PC. The only way I was able to recover the use of the SD cards I tried was to use one from a DJI drone that hadn't been formatted in my PC. It's okay to delete the files using the PC but not format it. The reason I formatted the card in the PC was that it showed storage space was being used even though I deleted the files on it. So learn from my experience and mistakes. Only format the SD card in the drone.

My little Nano+ is my favorite drone for these reasons. The camera quality is equal to the 4/3 camera in the Mavic 3 and even better in low light. it's small, so easy and light to carry, it won't be affected by RID laws, it's quiet compared to my larger drones but not as quiet as my Mini 3p which also has a good camera for a Mini but not as good as the Nano+. The flight characteristics with the Nano+ are similar to the Mini 2 which I also have but don't fly very often. I'm keeping it to see how things shake out with the RID BS. As much as I like my beast Evo 2P V1, it's a loud and big son of a gun so I don't like flying it around people. Great for outback flying though.

I am very concerned about one thing though. Autel doesn't seem to be staying in the prosumer drone market judging by their fire sales. Since Autel doesn't sell parts, this is very concerning for the future use of their existing prosumer drones in the years ahead. This is pure speculation on my part but the signs do point to this being true. I truly hope I'm wrong though.

Mine always says Remote ID enabled when i first power up and im in the US at the time... Doesn't when in Canada or not that I noticed.

 

[Eagle928]

Mine always says Remote ID enabled when i first power up and im in the US at the time... Doesn't when in Canada or not that I noticed.

I think that has more to do with the app than the drone. If Nano's are used in the US for commercial work they are supposed to register them and use RID. I don't know how many people will follow that rule. Time will tell.