so this has been sitting in the back of my head for a while. ive been flying DJI since the phantom days basically, have an mavic 3 right now and its a great drone dont get me wrong. but ive been looking at the Autel EVO Lite+ and the EVO Nano+ a fair bit lately mostly because im getting annoyed with all the DJI geofencing stuff and some of the account requirement changes they keep rolling out.

i know Autel doesnt have nearly the same ecosystem or the same community around it, which is honestly a big part of why i havent pulled the trigger. spare parts, accessories, repair turnaround if something goes wrong ? all of that feels more uncertain with Autel. but the EVO Lite+ specs look genuinely solid and the no-subscription thing for their app is nice.

has anyone here actually made the switch and kept flying Autel long term, not just bought one and gone back to DJI after a month? curious what the day to day is actually like vs the spec sheet

i had the evo 2 pro for about eight months a couple years back. image quality was genuinely excellent, no complaints there. but i ran into some firmware update issues that bricked the drone temporarily and getting support was... not great. took almost three weeks to get a useful response and the community forums for troubleshooting are just way thinner than what you get with DJI. ended up selling it and going back to mavic 3. the geofencing annoyance is real but for me having a bigger support network when things go wrong matters more at this point

ive got the EVO Nano+ as a secondary and i actually really like it for what it is. its not replacing my main DJI setup but as a lightweight option its been solid for me, no major issues in about 14 months. the app is fine, nothing fancy but it works. i think if youre going all-in and making it your only drone the ecosystem thing would bug me more but as a second bird its pretty underrated honestly. the geofencing on Autel is definitely more relaxed which was part of why i picked it up