so ive been going back and forth on this for a few weeks now and i cant decide. running a mini 3 pro mostly for mapping and some cinematic stuff on the side. litchi has been around forever and i trust it but the interface feels kinda dated at this point, dronelink looks cleaner and has better mission hub integration as far as i can tell but ive seen some people complaining about it dropping connection mid-mission which is not something i want to deal with when im doing a grid survey over farmland.

anyone actually use both and have a preference? like not just tried one for a day but actually used it regularly. also curious if either handles terrain following well because that's been a pain point for me on hilly areas, litchi kind of works but it feels like you have to plan around it rather than it just working

been using litchi for probably 3 years on my mavic 2 pro and now on the air 2s. its not pretty but it works, and that matters more to me than a nice ui. the terrain follow on litchi is honestly fine once you understand its pulling from google elevation data which isnt always perfectly accurate ? had one instance where it thought a ridge was about 8 meters lower than it actually was, so i always add some buffer altitude now just in case. never tried dronelink seriously so cant compare directly but the people i know doing commercial survey work mostly stick with litchi or just use dji flight planner depending on their workflow.

for the mini 3 specifically make sure you check the litchi compatibility notes because some of the newer sdk stuff has been a bit spotty

dronelink user here, switched from litchi about a year ago. the connection drop thing you mentioned ? i had that once early on and it turned out to be my phone, not the app. switched to a tablet with a better antenna setup and havent had an issue since. terrain following is genuinely better in dronelink imo, at least for the use cases i run, but its not perfect either so you still gotta sanity check your missions before you send the bird up obviously