so my brother in law picked one up a few weeks ago and he let me mess around with it at a family thing last weekend. my background is i've been flying a mavic 3 for about two years and before that had an fpv setup i built myself so im not exactly the target audience here. but i was genuinely curious.

and honestly? it was kind of impressive in a weird way. the subject tracking worked better than i expected and for what it is - basically a flying camera you hand to someone who has never touched a drone - it did its job. but the image quality compared to anything in a similar price range feels like a real tradeoff and the wind handling was noticeably worse than anything ive flown, even a light gust had it fighting.

i guess my question is whether anyone here has actually bought one for themselves rather than just as a gift or loaner and whether its found a place in a real workflow. like is there a usecase where this is genuinely the right tool and not just the convenient one

I actually bought one specifically for solo travel - like situations where I want footage of myself doing something and there's literally nobody around to help. The tracking is good enough for hiking or slow moving stuff and it fits in a jacket pocket which no other drone I own can claim. Is the footage as good as my Air 3? Obviously not. But the Air 3 doesn't follow me through a trail on its own while I'm scrambling over rocks. So for that specific thing it earns its spot. I'd never recommend it as someone's only drone though, the wind performance alone would drive most people crazy.

the gimmick criticism is fair but i think dji kinda intentionally made it that way? like they know the mavic line exists for people who care about image quality. the neo is fishing for a completely different person and i think thats fine. what bugs me more is the price because for not that much more you can get into something with a proper gimbal and actual obstacle avoidance and it starts to make the neo look like a weird value proposition unless the form factor is genuinely the dealbreaker for you. my cousing bought one and she loves it but she also has never flown anything else so thats probably not a useful data point