Is The DJI O3 Air Unit Worth It? Dynamic Range? Quality? - FPV Questions

[buildingwithlogan]

Glad my question made the livestream clips!😊

[richardruckert]

This reminds me of when the original AU came out and many dismissed it. A year later, everybody’s got the system.
There are not many people returning their 03 equipment.
If money were no object, I would definitely upgrade even though I’m sure the 03 has challenges just as my piloting skills do.

[Galileocrafter]

5:17 NO, you are taking a “photo” of your screen and put it in PS. This is NOT a frame from the video. Open the video in a video editor and adjust the exposure there. Now you have (or haven’t) the dynamic range of the video to play with. What you’re doing is not representative of the dynamic range.

[masterpdj]

Going from analog to a CADDX Vista is more than enough for me. Out of my 40 FPV drones I'm keeping over half analog and loving it.

[kingbirdfpv]

Yes! Definitely! I have the V2 Goggles and no regrets at all!!

[Bucketheadzie]

Just switched to the O3 and goggles 2. Never flown digital before. I was concerned about latency. I was completely surprised to find the increased latency a non issue for me. I honestly don’t notice it at least for freestyle. The bigger issue is the fit of the goggles 2 on the bridge of my nose 😂. Screens and form factor make it worth it to me still.

[azphat]

Im new to digital, and got the V2 goggles. Made the mistake, and updated firmware so I did not root them. The 03 air unit for me was a game changer. The video on any digital was better, but the OSD working is what sold it for me. Now I have rooted goggles, and tried the Runcam Link and Vista again. The 03 air unit is still better imo. It just seems to work better for me. Combine that with USB power on so I don't have to put a battery on to test.... yea. Both are great, but Im selling my vista/runcam and will stick with the 03.

[cisnerosmike]

Coming from analog FPV and FPV from a 3yrs hiatus the 03 unit made FPV a whole new world flying FPV!!
So yes! the 03 unit is WORTH it to me and if your coming from like most people said don't worried about latecy you'll get use to it and the picture makes up for it.

[ChrisGearys]

To have a fair impression of the dynamic range of the camera you'd need to import a frame/still from the camera into photo. A screen grab is already been subjected to all sorts of compression and distortion and scaling having been processed by the graphics output. I'd be interested to see the same image from the camera downloaded and opened in photoshop side by side

[smithe]

For video to the eyes with the goggles 2, I’d say a big YES, it’s really amazing to me. For all the hassle of getting good stabilized video footage out of it, that’s a maybe. So much out there on how much work is going into getting non jittery footage, even on BNF from various manufacturers. For longish range I’m a bit disappointed and I would say NO. I think that could be resolved as soon as someone releases a much longer antenna but right now the short antenna is a problem. I tried going to 2 longer separate antennas but that introduced horrible vibrations in the stabilization of the O3 that wasn’t there with the short stock antenna. I’ve gone out 3 miles no problem but upon turning around immediately lost video and it struggles even under 2 miles as well. I’ve been out over 5 miles with the old air with unit the two short antennas pointed mostly backwards and kept video which actually makes me wonder if a longer O3 antenna would do any good at all 🤷🏽‍♂️ Overall I’m kind of meh beyond the wonderful view I get in my goggles 2.

[TavoFourSeven]

I missed this one but was literally thinking this morning of not buying anything until it can be an 03

[_burd]

I initially got started with an O3 unit and G2's with the thinking of potentially replacing the need for a Gopro entirely. Then, despite the G2's having the ability to audio out from the goggles, I realised the air unit itself doesn't have a microphone like the original did. Making the system unable to both transmit live audio nor record it to the onboard SD. Difficult to understand why they would scratch the onboard mic when they had that functionality before, but but I'm sticking with O3 just because of the image quality being brilliant.

[aerialphotons]

i think you can get more range and what not, but one thing ive learned ;). the latency is horrid for that extended range, almost unusable for me. vista never gave that bad latency that the o3 does. i also think o3 doesnt do as well behind walls. i fly around my house all the time, the o3 gives me worse signal. totally agree, dyn range is HORRID. i really wanted this to replace my gopro. no way could i make videos for a customer with this crap dyn range where shadows just suck. whats worse, even the live goggles feed, the shadows are SO dark.

[raynerfpv]

And for us non US folk paying $340 for a O3 air unit?

[gus]

4:28 isn’t the dynamic range much better in the goggles than on recorded footage? I saw Bob Roogi demonstrating this on his review video

[bludger]

I'm guessing the dark shadows are with the OLED screen's in mind, they will display them where lcd the detail would be lost so they would stretch it.

[dimitarnaydenov]

How about penetration and long range compared to v2?

[slinkyfpv]

IMHO, the video compression between H264 and H265 explains the difference of performance. MAYBE, DJI did something a bit clever things for extra performance boost here and there, but I think the majority of performance can simply be explained by the efficacy of the compression algorithm of H264 to H265.

[kkeil]

For now I gotta stick with the gopro, because at this point the O3 is not safe to fly in a lot of areas where i should not have bad dynamic range. I have to set in auto just to adjust the exposure just to see where I'm flying in areas where it should not be that dark compared to every other action camera or fpv camera.

[DriftaholiC]

So you need to turn the contrast down. I suspect the D Cinelike will solve most of it as it's essentially lowering the contrast.