been running an EVO II Pro 6K for about a year and a half doing real estate and some landscape stuff and its been mostly great, had one gimbal issue early on that autel support actually handled pretty well which surprised me. but ive been getting asked more about roof inspections and theres obviously money in that so i started looking at the Dual (the one with the thermal sensor).

the thing is i dont really want to buy a whole second drone if i can avoid it, i know the EVO II has that hot-swappable payload thing but i honestly dont know anyone whos actually used it in the field day to day. like does switching the camera module thing hold up over time or does it get loose and janky after a hundred swaps? and is the thermal resolution on that sensor even good enough for spotting problem areas on a roof or is it more of a gimmick at that price point

any real world takes appreciated, tired of reading specs

i swapped between payloads on the EVO II for a few months and the mechanism held up fine honestly, never felt like it was getting sloppy. that said i stopped doing it as often because recalibrating after each swap got tedious and i made a few mistakes early on where i thought it was locked and it wasnt quite. nothing crashed but it made me nervous enough to just buy a second body eventually which yeah i know thats not the answer you wanted.

on the thermal side ? the dual sensor is a 320x240 resolution which is fine for roofing if you know what your looking for but dont expect the kind of detail you get from a FLIR mounted on something more serious. for basic residential inspections it does the job and clients are usually impressed even if us pilots know its not the highest end thermal out there

yeah the swappable payload thing sounds better in marketing than in actual practice from what ive seen. my buddy does insurance work and he just keeps two EVO IIs, one rigged for thermal and one for regular imaging. said the time saved not swapping was worth the investment after a few months of jobs. but he also does this full time so the calculus is different if your just dipping into roof work occasionally