The year 2025 promises to be a veritable festival of new products for drone pilots, from beginners to the most demanding remote pilots. The consumer market is overflowing with models, each more promising than the last, and navigating the technical specifications and marketing promises can quickly turn into a headache. So, which drone should you choose?
After hours spent taking off, hovering, and filming these machines in real-world conditions, spanning windswept fields, urban rooftops, and mountain vistas, we're taking you on our immersive test journey. There's no simple spec list here: each drone is experienced, explored, and felt in flight.
From entry-level models that will appeal to beginners with their simplicity and robustness, to premium drones capable of capturing cinematic footage with precision, to tracking beasts designed for vlogging and extreme sports, our guide shows you what each device really has to offer.
Dive into the air with us and let yourself be guided: in 2025, choosing your drone is, above all, choosing an experience.
Table of Contents
Which entry-level drone to choose: Under €500
The market for drones under €500 in 2025 is a veritable crossroads of options, where each model offers a different flight experience. We move from simple machines, ideal for admiring a landscape, to autonomous drones capable of following their pilot and filming every movement seamlessly. This is where the difference between a drone that "does the job" and one that transforms the experience becomes tangible. Classic drones, designed to capture landscapes and moments of contemplation, remain safe bets. The DJI Mini 4K, at €300, takes just a few seconds to handle and rises gently into the air, its propellers emitting a reassuring hum. With its 30-minute battery life, it can be used to follow a hike or film the beach at sunrise, capturing stable shots despite small gusts of wind. Its 1/2.3-inch sensor produces decent images, but as soon as the light drops, details fade and contrasts blend.
The DJI Mini 3, on the other hand, is a game changer. From the moment you take off, the flight is silent, almost imperceptible, and the machine stabilizes with astonishing precision. The 1/1.3-inch sensor captures every nuance of color, every shadow and reflection, making the images incredibly immersive. The 38-minute battery life is felt on the ground: you can explore a winding path or skirt a windswept beach without ever rushing, admiring the drone's fluid behavior. The addition of vertical mode is a real asset for content creators, allowing you to alternate naturally between wide panoramas and portrait videos intended for social media. For just €80 more, the Mini 3 offers this rare combination of stability, image quality, and versatility, transforming each flight session into a complete and controlled experience, where you truly feel in control of a drone capable of telling a story through every shot.
But 2025 is no longer just the era of contemplative drones. Versatile models, designed for vlogging and auto-follow, transform every outing into a veritable mini-home cinema. The Potensic Atom 2, at €330, stands out on paper for its human and auto-follow capabilities, but as soon as you put it in the air, you feel its limitations: the drone reacts slowly, movements are less fluid, and the lack of sensors becomes noticeable as soon as you approach an obstacle or a wall. The images remain decent, but the experience lacks naturalness and spontaneity.
The DJI Flip , at €440, is immediately more convincing. From the moment you take off by hand, the drone rises gently, its propellers turning with a muffled sound. Active Track follows the pilot's silhouette with impressive precision: even in rapid skids or on uneven terrain, the drone keeps the subject perfectly centered in the frame. You can almost feel its ability to anticipate movements, avoiding collisions and obstacles like an invisible filming partner. The image quality, equivalent to that of the Mini 3, makes the shots dynamic and clean, whether for a vlog in the forest, a run on the beach, or an outdoor sports session. Each flight becomes a small film, where the camera seems to read your gestures before you even make them.
The DJI Neo , ultra-affordable at €200 without a remote control, is presented as a playmate for indoor use or for beginners in FPV. Lightweight and compact, it allows you to slowly follow a subject or have fun filming simple movements, but its 15-minute battery life and basic camera severely limit the scope of the experience. It's a companion drone, ideal for very tight budgets or for those who want to try FPV without breaking the bank.
In practice, on the ground, the Flip clearly stands out as the drone to follow if you want to combine autonomy, image quality and safety. The Potensic Atom 2 can help out for a few shots, and the Neo entertains and initiates, but only the Flip truly transforms the outing into an immersive experience, where each shot tells a story and the drone becomes an extension of your gestures.
Ultimately, under €500, everything comes down to image quality, flight stability and the drone's ability to automatically follow a subject. In the field, every detail counts: the way the propellers adjust to the wind, the responsiveness to the pilot's movements and the fluidity of the captured shots. For those looking for versatility and comfort, the DJI Mini 3 and the DJI Flip stand out as the true benchmarks in the segment: the Mini 3 for its precise images and silent flight, the Flip for its ability to follow your silhouette with almost anticipatory precision, transforming each outing into a mini-personal cinema. The Mini 4K and the Neo remain honest choices, perfect for starting out or completing an FPV pack, but in the field, the difference is immediately felt. This is where we measure the real return on investment: the autonomy that keeps its promises, the stability in the face of gusts and above all the feeling of flying with total confidence. With these models, a simple gadget becomes much more: a companion capable of helping you explore the skies and capture your adventures like never before.
Mid-Range: More than €500 to €1100
The mid-range segment is aimed at enthusiasts who want a drone that can do it all, combining safety, performance, and versatility. Every gram counts, every pixel captured is crucial, and the line between portability, power, and creativity is measured directly in the field. After several outdoor outings, on windswept trails and cliff edges to test wind resistance and camera stability, three main models stand out.
The DJI Mini 4 Pro , at €800, is the champion of portability. Weighing less than 250 grams, it combines lightness with advanced features. Its 1/1.3-inch sensor delivers precise and detailed images, while its automatic tracking and 360° anti-collision sensors offer near-total safety in flight. You can trigger Hyperlapses, plan Waypoint flights, or activate Active Track without fear of collisions, all while remaining within the most relaxed regulations for lightweight drones. In the field, it proves incredibly practical: it slips into a bag, deploys in seconds, and despite its small size, it remains stable in gusts of wind. Each shot is fluid and precise, the camera transitions are smooth, and you almost feel like you're piloting a drone that's much heavier and more sophisticated than it appears.
At the other end of the spectrum, the R3 (formerly Air 3) and R3S (formerly Air 3S) embody power and creative flexibility. Heavier and exceeding 250 grams, they offer a 45-minute battery life and superior wind resistance, noticeable as soon as you attempt flights in windy conditions or near obstacles. Their dual camera, combining a main sensor and a 70 mm zoom, allows for varied shooting angles and the production of images worthy of a professional production. The R3S stands out for its 1-inch main sensor, offering remarkable image quality, especially in low light, while the R3 is limited to its 1/1.3-inch sensor. In the field, the difference is seen in the details and finesse of the textures captured: shadows are more precise, colors more accurate and contrast better managed, resulting in a more professional and immersive rendering.
The choice between the Mini 4 Pro and the R3 (formerly Air 3) and R3S (formerly Air 3S) comes down to priority. The Mini 4 Pro appeals to those who value simplicity, portability, and flexible use within regulations, perfect for traveling light while keeping advanced features close at hand. The R3 and R3S are aimed at AV enthusiasts and frequent pilots facing demanding flight conditions, looking to fully exploit the creativity offered by the dual camera and longer battery life.
In this segment, there's also an outsider: the Over Air X1 Pro/Max , at €750. This drone is a pure tracking tool, designed to film high-speed sports activities. It excels when it comes to following a runner, a bike, or a surfboard with fluidity and precision. In the field, you can feel its responsiveness and its ability to keep the subject perfectly centered in the frame, even at over 40 km/h. But this specialization comes at a price: its battery life is limited to around 15 minutes and its versatility remains limited. It's not designed for capturing landscapes in a traditional way, and its optimal use often requires an additional controller, which pushes the cost beyond €1,000.
In summary, the 2025 mid-range offers a balance between portability and creativity, simplicity and power. The Mini 4 Pro appeals with its lightness and accessible versatility, while the R3 and R3S appeal to demanding creatives and regular pilots facing complex flight conditions. The Over Air X1 Pro/Max remains the ultimate sport drone, intended for those whose primary objective is dynamic tracking at high speeds. In the field, each model tells a different story, and choosing a drone in this segment means deciding what flight sensation and image quality you really want to experience.
Top of the Range: Excellence (+€1,900)
In 2025, the DJI Mavic 4 Pro establishes itself as the ultimate consumer professional drone, pushing the boundaries of what can be expected from a compact flying device. From the moment you take off, you feel its stability and power: every movement is precise, every adjustment instantaneous, even in the face of moderate gusts. Its triple camera system offers unprecedented flexibility: the main 100 MP Hasselblad 4/3 CMOS sensor captures incredibly rich panoramas, while the 70 mm telephoto zoom and 168 mm super zoom allow you to follow distant subjects or capture compressed portraits with stunning clarity. Video reaches up to 6K at 60 fps and 4K at 120 fps, with a dynamic range of 14 stops, resulting in smooth, bright, and strikingly realistic images.
The drone has a 3-lens gimbal.
A great flight experience. Professional images.
In short, yes, all this comes at a price.
On the ground, the Mavic 4 Pro behaves like a filmmaking partner: hovering is surgically precise, automatic return to home is reassuring, and omnidirectional detection anticipates obstacles smoothly. The battery, capable of a maximum autonomy of 51 minutes, allows for stress-free filming of long journeys, offering extended sessions to capture the light of sunrise or sunset, or follow a sporting subject over several dozen meters.
The Combo Creator version takes the experience even further: a 512GB internal SSD and support for Apple ProRes codecs ensure full compatibility with professional workflows. The price, starting at €2,119 for the standard version and €3,579 for the Combo, reflects the excellence and sophistication of the device, but every penny is justified by the image quality, versatility, and flight safety.
In short, flying the Mavic 4 Pro means feeling the precision of a perfectly calibrated instrument, capable of translating your creative ideas into spectacular aerial images. It is the ultimate choice for those who demand excellence, where every shot becomes a total immersion, and where the drone ceases to be a simple gadget to become a true extension of your vision and your creativity.
Our best drone tests
DJI is hitting the mark. After months of waiting for the Mavic 3 Pro, the
Highly anticipated by light flight enthusiasts and DJI loyalists, the Mini
More compact, lighter, but still ambitious, the DJI Mini 3 intends to prove that a