so anyway ive been flying dji stuff since the phantom days basically and lately ive just been kind of frustrated with the whole situation. the geofencing stuff, having to go through their app, the whole locked down feeling of it. a friend mentioned the autel evo lite+ and ive been looking at it for a couple weeks now.

on paper it looks really competitive. the sensor is big, no geofencing which honestly is the main thing, and people seem to generally like the image quality. but autel just doesnt have the same community around it and thats kind of a concern for troubleshooting and firmware stuff. also the autofocus situation on it confused me when i was reading, some people say its great some people say its annoying.

anyone actually switched from dji to autel and stuck with it? not looking for someone to tell me autel is amazing because theyre not dji, i want to know if its actually a good drone day to day. the evo lite+ specifically if possible but general autel experience helps too.

ran the evo lite+ alongside a mavic 3 classic for a few months last year and the image quality from the lite+ is genuinely impressive especially for the price. the sensor performs well in low light, better than id expected. but you're right to think about the ecosystem thing - firmware updates from autel feel slower and less polished, and when something weird happens with the app or the connection you're kind of on your own because the community is so much smaller. i had a weird glitch with mine where it kept losing controller connection at range and it took me forever to find anyone who'd dealt with the same issue.

if the no geofencing thing is your main driver i totally get it, that alone makes autel appealing for certain use cases. just go in knowing the overall experience is a bit rougher around the edges than dji. not a dealbreaker but its real.

tbh i think a lot of people buy autel specifically because they're annoyed at dji and then end up missing the dji polish more than they expected. not saying its a bad drone at all but the frustration with dji kind of fades once you're actually flying and then you start noticing the smaller autel software quirks. might be worth figuring out if your dji frustrations are actually about the hardware/software or more about the company policies, because those are kind of different problems with different solutions