DJI’s new Inspire 3 is a flying 8K

DJI makes a whole lot of drones, and many of them are feature-packed, easy to use, and generally are priced for casual or enthusiast buyers. But the company’s newly announced drone, the DJI Inspire 3, is not for the general populace — rather — it’s a commercial-level 8K-movie-making mega drone that’s packaged with a slew of accessories for a whopping $16,499.

The Inspire 3 is the successor to DJI’s longstanding big and professional Inspire 2 drone that was released way back in 2016. The new Inspire 3 is 20 percent more aerodynamic, and can operate for 28 minutes, according to DJI. That’s compared to 25 minutes runtime on the Inspire 2. Both drones have an arachnid-like design when on the ground — but upon liftoff the landing gear, along with its four propellers, swing upward and let hang its gimbal and camera combo.

DJI’s latest remote control hardware, the RC Plus, comes with the Inspire 3 with support for its dual-control mode where one person can control just the cinema camera, while another pilots the drone using a front first-person view (FPV) camera, for example. The FPV lens is a 161-degree ultrawide that sits in front of a 1/1.8-inch night vision sensor — and it can transmit to the RC Plus’ 7-inch 1,200 nits screen with only a 90ms delay.

The technology transmitting the video stream is DJI’s latest proprietary “Occusync” tech, the O3 Pro. It enables streaming 1080p at 60fps at up to 15km away, which could be great for live streamers, who can capture footage out of the RC Plus’ HDMI port. Unique to the Inspire 3 is also the ability to stream 4K at 30fps at a 5km range.

The main cinema camera for the Inspire 3 is one of the drone’s biggest upgrades. DJI says the camera, known as the Zenmuse X9-8K Air, is its lightest ever full-frame system. It uses CineCore 3.0 — DJI’s new image processing system — and supports 8K CinemaDNG video recording at 25fps.