3DR IRIS+ Drone Review
Video makers live in a golden era since drones were invented. With the first appearance of drones, the movie and video making game was changed. Nowadays video makers can’t live without drones. All the vlogs on YouTube or wedding videos have at least one aerial footage made with drones. The good news is that with all the drones out all the manufacturers lowered their price to make sure you buy the one from them.
The bad news is that most drone makers save their money on the quality of the camera and you get a low-quality one. But some of the manufacturers released their drones without a camera, but they still made space to attach your own, and today’s drone is one of them. They ensured that you will have good flight options, a good motor, you just have to bring the camera. Let’s take a deeper look into the 3DR IRIS+ Drone Review.
Specs
- Manual or Autonomous Flying
- Integrated LEDs on under each arm
- Wi-Fi for Control Using Android Device
- Draw Autopilot Flight Plans with App
- Follow Me: Tracks Your Mobile Device
- Compatible with Tarot Gimbal
- 16 to 22 Minutes Flying Time
- 915 MHz Radio for the U.S.
- Remote controller with a screen including on-screen telemetry
What’s in the box?
- 1x RTF IRIS+ drone
- 1x 5100maH battery
- 1 x charger
- 1x Controller
- 1x ground station radio
- Set of 4 tall landing legs
- Toolkit
- Operation Manual
Design and build
In my opinion, this quadcopter, the 3DR IRIS+ resembles a space-insect looking robot. The drone’s body has some curves on it, and just like every other drone, it has 4 hands as well. For design purposes two of them are black and two are green, allowing not just a better look but also helps the orientation. The drone has a great build regarding the fact nor the arms or the landing gears appear in the shots.
This is not that usual small drone, I’m not saying either that it’s big but the length of the drone is 21.7 inches diagonally from the motor to motor. The body of the drone has 4 inches of height, if you add the landing gears too it will add 4 additional inches to the drone.
Both the legs and arms are made of Zytel nylon, which gives the drone durability and resistance even in high temperatures, and also it’s lightweight so you will have a better performance.
Camera
The drone itself doesn’t have a camera built-in. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing, because you won’t be stuck with a low-quality camera. This way you can attack your own sports camera which you are used to. Most drone owners love all kinds of gadgets, and usually, they own a lot as well, so it won’t be a problem. The drone will even support a GoPro camera with a gimbal.
Battery
The drone comes with a 5,100 mAh battery which gives the drone considering the weight and the power an average flight time of 20 minutes. That flight time can be reduced by 3 or 4 minutes if you attach a camera under the drone because that way the drone uses more power. This is a correct flight time considering the average flight time of other drones. But if somehow this time isn’t enough for you, you can get a spare set of batteries to multiply this time.
Controller
This drone comes with a FLYSKY remote controller. The controller looks huge with a lot of dials and switches. It also has an LCD menu display, and a place where you can attack either a phone holder or another screen to follow the live feed, this pretty much depends on the camera you will use for the drone.
Besides all the buttons and switches you can find Standard Flight switch (STD), Hover switch (LTR-Loiter), and Autopilot (AUTO), Return to Home switch (RTL), which you might need if you want to send it back to the point where it took off. Most of the buttons are enabled with words to identify the purpose of them. But if you feel it’s too much for you then you can take a quick look in the users manual.
Flight experience
Overall the IRIS+ is a stable quadcopter that is quite easy to control and it responds to commands quite nicely and quickly, which makes the maneuvering simple for every kind of user. Also, the hover switch allows you to take your hands of the control sticks and focus on the camera and the footage you are making is the life you have a tripod in the air. Talking about flight specs the maximum control distance of the drone is 3,280 feet and the drone can achieve a max speed of 40 miles per hour in the air. Therefore you have to be really careful, this speed can cause serious injuries to the drone and even to people or other objects.
The great thing about this drone is that it comes with a built-in GPS system, and that means that you can use the free software on your smartphone to fly the drone, also it improves the return to home feature. The software is free and you can download it on the 3DR’s official website.
Now it’s time for the most exciting and useful features. This aircraft comes with a Follow Me mode, which makes it able to be focused on whoever is holding the phone and to follow him. This will allow you to capture aerial photos or footage of you doing any activity outside.
Pros
- Speed
- Geofencing feature
- Autonomous flight option
- Fast GPS lock
- Follow Me mode
Cons
- No video downlink on DroidPlanner
- No camera
- Price
- No gimbal
Conclusion
The 3DR IRIS+ Drone from our review works pretty great, and also it has a nice and pretty unique design. If you want a drone for a sports camera you should definitely go with this drone. The manufacturers made the smart choice not to give this drone a camera so they let you do that. This way all of your videos will have the same quality and resolution. Also, you don’t have to worry about running out of range and your videos will be glitchy. You can get it from Amazon.
