okay so ive been going back and forth on this for a while and i feel like i get a different answer every time i ask. im flying mostly in suburban neighborhoods, lots of houses, lots of wifi routers, probably a decent amount of bluetooth garbage floating around too. using a mavic 3 classic with the RC-N1 controller.

the conventional wisdom ive heard is that 2.4ghz travels farther and penetrates better but its more congested, and 5.8 is less crowded but shorter range and worse through obstacles. but like, in practice does that actually hold up? because i was flying last weekend and had some pretty bad signal stuttering and i was only maybe 800 feet out with clear line of sight. switched to auto and it seemed to help but i want to understand what its actually doing when it picks the frequency. does it just constantly scan and hop or does it lock in at the start of the flight?

genuinely curious what people are seeing in the real world, not just the spec sheet answer.

in my experience in dense residential areas 5.8 actually wins more often than people expect, at least for that medium range stuff under a mile. yeah 2.4 is better in theory for range and penetration but everyones router, microwave, and baby monitor is hammering that band constantly. 5.8 in a suburban neighborhood is actually comparatively clean because most consumer wifi gear is still 2.4 dominant for sheer device count even if routers are dual band.

auto mode on the newer DJI stuff is pretty decent, its doing a real time SNR evaluation and will switch if one band degrades significantly. it doesnt constantly hop back and forth, it makes a decision and tends to stick with it unless things get bad. the stuttering you saw at 800ft LOS is almost certainly interference not range, thats way too close for the hardware to struggle on its own.

honestly i just leave mine on auto and haven't really thought about it much. the only time i ever manually force a frequency is if im flying somewhere near an event or stadium where there's just a ton of devices everywhere, then i'll go 5.8 just to get off the crowded band. for normal suburban flying auto has never done me wrong. though i will say i did have one sketchy flight near a high school right when school let out, probably a thousand kids all pulling out their phones at once, signal went a bit wobbly for a minute. probably coincidence but i dunno