okay so i moved about six months ago to a pretty dense suburban area, like houses pretty close together, lots of wifi networks showing up on my phone at any given time, probably 30+ SSIDs visible from my backyard. before i was in a more rural area and never thought about any of this stuff. im running a mavic 3 classic with the RC controller, so i have the option to switch between 2.4 and 5.8 manually.

ive been reading about this and the more i read the more confused i get honestly. some people say 5.8 is always better in congested wifi environments because all the interference is on 2.4, but then other people say 5.8 has worse range and penetration so if theres any obstacle at all you lose signal faster. i mostly fly line of sight in a park about 10 minutes drive away but sometimes i want to fly from my backyard and there are definitely houses and trees in the way depending on direction.

like is there actually a definitive answer here or is it just try both and see. feels like it shouldnt be this complicated

it genuinely is just try both and see, thats not a cop out thats actually the right answer. the theory says 5.8 should be cleaner in wifi dense areas because consumer wifi on 2.4 and drone 2.4 do compete for the same spectrum, but in practice the ocusync and o3 stuff DJI uses is pretty good at hopping around interference and the real world difference varies a lot by location. i fly in a pretty busy area and i mostly just leave it on auto and let the controller decide, which on the RC controller i think it actually does switch dynamically anyway.

the penetration thing is real though, 5.8 does fall off faster through solid objects. for backyard flying with houses in the way id lean toward 2.4 personally just because losing signal is worse than slightly more interference risk. the mavic 3 handles a decent amount of interference gracefully anyway, youre not going to notice mild congestion the way you would on older systems. the scenario where 5.8 really shines is if youre flying in an open area thats just geographically near a lot of wifi, like a park surrounded by apartment buildings, clear line of sight but lots of RF noise around you. your backyard situation sounds more like the opposite of that