Is DJI dead...? | Skyrover X1 Review

If you fly drones, you probably know that DJI is kind of dead in the US. So what are we as drone pilots supposed to do now? Well, it's not entirely dead, but it is incredibly challenging to get ahold of anything that's DJI DJI is the king of the drone world. And to be honest, there hasn't really been a single good alternative, but about a year ago, I saw a company called Sky Rover pop out onto the scene and it caused quite a stir because for one, it's not from DJI. So it's not banned. And apparently it's actually pretty solid. The drone that they released was the Sky Rover X one, which is pretty similar to the mini lineup, but somehow way cheaper for similar, fly more combos. The Sky Rover is 799 and the mini five pro is 1,159, which is a huge gap. And just recently they started offering a screen controller option, which means you don't need your phone to fly. So I'm super stoked about that because I love screen controllers. It's just way more simple. I had my suspicions about Sky Rover, but after seeing this controller, the controller is literally identical to the DJI controller, but in black, which I'm actually super excited about because the DJI controller is so good throughout this video in a few sections, I'm going to be comparing it to the DJI mini five pro, because this is the best sub 250 gram drone on the market. So I'm really curious how it stacks up. All right. I'm excited to make this video without further ado. Let's do it. All right, guys, before we get into things, if you could do me a massive favor and hit the like button down below, it does a ton for the channel. And as a reward, I will put a photo of an adorable polar bear at the end of this video. I really appreciate you all. Also, I just have to give a warning because I'm sure some of you guys are wondering. I actually broke my wrist last weekend riding motorcycles. So unfortunately my videos for the next six weeks or so are going to have this beautiful cast in it. It is very frustrating not having two working hands, but we'll get through it. Like I mentioned before, the DJI mini series, the mini four and the mini five are absolutely incredible drones. So if this thing can even be close in terms of overall specs, that's going to be a huge win before I go out and actually test this thing and fly it. Let's talk about the physical drone itself. Like I said, this is a sub 250 gram drone, which is amazing because it's the least restrictive category of drones in the US. You are technically supposed to register any drone that's above 250 grams. And you're also subject to more rules and regulations. And then in Europe you're supposed to actually take a test to fly anything above 250 grams. And again, are subject to more rules and regulations. One of the big problems with the mini five pro right now is that it's actually not sub 250 grams. So let's make sure this is yes. Good to go. Sub two 50 overall, the build quality on this thing is pretty nice and very similar to the mini lineup. As you can see right here, it has cameras for 360 degree obstacle avoidance. These work pretty well and are very similar to the sensors on the mini four pro. However, the mini five does have a LIDAR sensor, so it's going to be better in low light and dark situations. And then when you look at the camera up front, you have that same kind of rotating style of his heart with a broken wrist, but you can shoot in vertical and you could also flip it around and shoot horizontal. So if you're someone who shoots for both YouTube and like Tik TOK or Instagram reels, you can shoot full res quality for both horizontal and vertical. All right, let's move on to the controller. Like I said before, one of the biggest complaints that people had with this drone in the past is that it didn't have a screen controller. These things just make the flight process so much easier because you don't have to deal with like hooking up cords or anything. You just grab this and the drone out of your bag and you're good to go. Like I said, this thing is shockingly similar to the DJI controller. I'm not going to come to any assumptions, but if I took a DJI controller and just made everything black on it, it would look exactly like this. This thing has a beautiful 5.5 inch full HD touchscreen. The live view is crystal clear, which just makes controlling it and the flight itself super immersive. The screen goes up to 700 nits of brightness. So even if you're outside like in direct sunlight, you're still going to be able to see the screen. It has a smooth 60 Hertz display. So when you're navigating the menus and everything, it just feels really smooth. And if you've flown DJI before, it's literally the same menu. So you'll know how to use it inside. There is 32 gigabytes of internal storage plus SD card support. So you can store videos, screen recordings, firmware updates, stuff like that. No problem for connection. They're using a quad antenna system, which gives you a super strong stable flight up to 15 kilometers, which is about 9.3 miles. The connection is really reliable and super low latency. The battery on this thing is three hours. So you can do a ton of flights with it over the course of multiple days. And then when you actually are ready to charge it, you just use the USB-C port at the bottom. Speaking of battery life, let's talk about the battery life of the drone itself. The on paper battery life of this drone is 32 minutes in the real world. These on paper flight times rarely live up to the expectations, but I've been getting about 28 minutes on this battery, which is actually better than what I've gotten on the mini four and the mini five. This is slightly less than the mini four pro at 34 minutes and the mini five pro at 36 minutes. So while it is a little bit lower, it's not a huge jump. Keep in mind, that's all like on paper times. What you get in the real world really depends on how you're flying. The good thing about the mini lineup is you can actually buy a high capacity battery that puts you over the 250 gram limit, but does extend your battery time. We unfortunately do not have that with the sky Rover, but if you are buying a drone, I always recommend getting the fly more combo with these things because they come with multiple batteries. If you just get the standard bundle, you're going to go out, get one flight in and just be wishing that you had more batteries. So if you get the fly more combo, you have roughly 90 minutes of flight time, which is more than enough. Like I said, the range for this drone is listed at 15 kilometers. Realistically, you're never actually going to be going out that far because by the time you go out that far and back, you actually run out of battery. You have to remember that in addition to getting out to the range, you have to come back. I mean, you don't have to, but most people want to. And from all my testing, this range is incredibly similar to the mini five, which I was super shocked about. Really the more important metric in this category is sort of connection through obstacles. So for example, if you're flying through a forest and you're not that far away from yourself, but there's stuff in between you and the drone, you want that connection to stay stable. And again, this drone performed super well, very similar to the mini five. I also wanted to do a tracking test with this drone because that's another way that a lot of people use these mini drones. So here's how it tracked me in my car. And honestly, I got no complaints. It was really solid. Okay, so now let's get into the next category, which for me as a filmmaker is the most important thing. And that is the camera quality. To be honest for me, even if all the other stats match up perfectly, if the camera quality isn't that great, I'm just not going to use this drone. This sensor is a one by 1.32 inch CMOS 48 megapixel sensor, similarly sized to the mini four pro, slightly smaller than the mini five. The max video resolution is 4k at a hundred frames per second, which is the same as the mini four pro, but not quite as good as the mini five pro. Cause it shoots 4k 120 on here. You can shoot in normal mode, HDR mode, SR log, and HLG all these modes give you a ton of flexibility when it comes to color grading, honestly, specs here only means so much. So I'm just going to show you some side-by-side shots between the sky Rover in the mini five pro, and just kind of see if you can tell the difference. As you can see, you might have been able to tell, but honestly it's pretty difficult. In short, the image quality on this thing is surprisingly good. And for me, I have really no problem using footage shot in this drone for professional shoots. This is going to be slightly worse in low light than the mini five because it does have that smaller sensor. As far as photos go, you can shoot 48 megapixel photos and they market that as 8k photos. And the photos look really solid. If you zoom in and really pixel peep, you can find a little bit of difference between this and the mini five, but not much. Okay. Another category that I want to talk about is the existence of a care plan. If you do crash the drone, whenever I've had DJI drones in the past, I've always bought DJI care because you could crash the drone, absolutely destroy it, send it back to DJI. And for not that much money, they'd send you a new one. No matter how good you are at flying, you're just bound to crash sometimes. But when the DJI ban happened, they also stopped doing DJI care. So I'm incredibly pumped that Skyrover actually does have a care plan. So if you crash, get water damage, just break the drone in any way. You can send it to them, get a replacement and you're good to go. I cannot stress enough how important this is. It really just makes flying so much less stressful. All right, let's quickly talk about price again, because I know I mentioned it at the beginning, but the difference is huge. You can pick up a Skyrover X1 fly more combo right now for 799 with three batteries and the controller. If you don't want the controller, you can pick one up for $619. Meanwhile, the mini five pro is priced at $1,159 for a fly more combo. So there is a massive, massive gap there. Okay. So let's get into my final thoughts. So who is this drone for and who is this drone not for? If you're someone who needs the absolute best quality possible and you're willing to pay for it, the mini five pro is probably the better move. It has a bigger sensor is better in low light and shoots at higher frame rates. DJI has the best picture quality in the world. And in this category, you got to give it to them. However, in almost every single other category, these drones are super close. Another huge advantage that Skyrover has over DJI right now, at least in the States is that it offers a care plan that just gives you way more peace of mind while you're flying. And really what Skyrover is going for here is really just a simple drone that you can grab, go outside and get great shots with. There is a link down the description for this drone. And if you are already going to buy it, it would mean a ton. If you use that link, just because I get a small kickback and it just helps me make more videos like this. But that's it for this video, guys. Thank you so much for watching. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments down below. And if you did hit the like button earlier, here's a photo of an adorable polar bear. All right. Peace.