so ive been using litchi for probably 3 years now and its fine, does what i need, but ive been hearing more people talk about dronelink lately and im genuinely curious if its worth the hassle of switching. my main use case is mapping runs over farmland, usually 200-400 acre areas, so i need solid waypoint support and reliable terrain following.

litchi has been a bit sketchy since the last couple DJI firmware pushes broke things temporarily and i had to roll back twice which was a whole thing. wondering if dronelink handles those transitions better or if its the same headache with a different UI.

not really looking to spend a ton more per year either, i think im on litchi pro or whatever the one-time purchase was. dronelink seems subscription based which i mildly hate on principle but whatever if it actually works better ill deal with it.

switched from litchi to dronelink about 8 months ago and honestly havent looked back. the terrain following in dronelink is noticeably better for uneven ground, it actually pulls from multiple elevation sources and you can kind of tune which one it trusts. litchi always felt a bit coarse to me on hilly stuff.

the firmware thing is real though ? dronelink seems to update faster when DJI breaks something but you still get that window of a few days where everything is janky. i just have a rule now where i dont update firmware within like 2 weeks of a job, just let other people find the problems first. the subscription stung but its not insane, i think i pay like 12 a month or something in that range.

cant speak to dronelink specifically but the firmware rollback thing with litchi drove me absolutely crazy last fall. i think it was the mini 3 update that broke virtual joystick functionality for like 3 weeks and litchi just kind of shrugged on their forums. made me start keeping a dedicated tablet that i just dont let auto update anything on, phone or drone firmware. kind of annoying but its saved me twice now.