so this has been rattling around in my head for a while. i fly a mavic air 2 right now and its fine, genuinely fine, but ive been thinking about upgrading and i keep finding myself looking at the autel evo lite+ instead of just going to the obvious dji option which would probably be the air 3 or something.

i think part of it is honestly just wanting something different. ive always been a bit annoyed by how dji locks you into their ecosystem and the geo fencing stuff has bitten me before in situations where i really should have been able to fly. autel being more open about that stuff is appealing.

but then i look at the actual reviews and its kind of a mixed bag? like the 1-inch sensor sounds amazing on paper and the variable aperture is cool but people seem to have complaints about the app and some tracking issues and the footage looking a bit over-processed out of camera. has anyone here spent real time with one and can tell me if its worth the switch or am i just romanticizing the non-dji angle and should i just get the air 3 and be done with it

had one for about six months. the sensor is genuinely good, low light performance was better than i expected and the variable aperture is nice once you get used to thinking about it. but the app is... yeah. its gotten better with updates but it still feels a bit rough around the edges compared to dji fly which is annoyingly polished. lost connection once in a way that felt weird and not like normal signal dropoff, never fully figured out what happened. i still liked flying it but i wont pretend the software experience is comparable to dji. if the open airspace thing is a genuine priority for you it might be worth it but if youre mainly chasing image quality you can get there with dji too

the geo fencing frustration is real and i totally get why that pushes people toward autel. i fly mostly rural areas so it hasnt been a huge issue for me personally but i have friends whove had dji just refuse to arm in spots that were completely legal to fly and thats genuinely maddening. the evo lite+ images ive seen from people who know how to expose it properly look really good. think the over processed thing comes from people shooting in the auto picture profiles - if you shoot in autel log and grade it yourself it looks much more natural from what ive seen