so ive been using Litchi for probably 3 years now and its fine, does what it does, but i keep hearing people talk about Dronelink like its some kind of revelation. my main use case is pre-planned waypoint missions over farmland, usually about 15-20 minutes of flight, nothing crazy. i do use the terrain follow stuff in Litchi occasionally but honestly its been hit or miss depending on the area.

whats actually better about Dronelink in practice? not looking for a feature list i can find that on their website, more like what do you actually notice when youre out in the field. does the mission planning interface actually make things faster or is it one of those things that takes forever to learn before it clicks. also does it handle the Mini 3 Pro well because ive seen some complaints about SDK limitations on that one.

switched about 8 months ago and honestly took me a solid few weeks to stop being annoyed by the learning curve. the interface is completely different from Litchi so your muscle memory is basically useless at first. that said once it clicks the conditional actions stuff is genuinely useful, like i can set altitude changes based on distance from home which Litchi just cant do in the same way.

terrain follow in Dronelink is more configurable in my experience but you do need good elevation data loaded in advance which isnt always convenient. for the Mini 3 Pro specifically yeah theres SDK weirdness, certain camera functions dont expose properly through third party apps, thats a DJI thing not a Dronelink thing though. if youre doing straight grid missions over flat-ish farmland honestly either app will serve you fine and Litchi might actually be less headache.

i tried dronelink for like two weeks and went back to litchi, maybe im just too used to it. the cloud sync in dronelink is nice though ill give it that, i could pull up a mission on my tablet that i planned on my laptop the night before without doing anything extra. that part was genuinely seamless.