Drones are an excellent preparedness tool, and I’ve done many videos on them before, but I think I’ve found the ultimate drone for survivalists and preppers. So I’ve done plenty of videos on drones in the past, but the technology keeps evolving at a breakneck pace, and we got to keep talking about it, because these things have so many uses for preppers and survivalists. We’re talking about operational security utility, threat detection, surveillance, reconnaissance. You can identify their capabilities, the size of the enemy force, their direction of travel, use them to survey dense urban environments, identify choke points, landmarks, passive least resistance, escape routes.

You can use them for search and rescues. You can use them for route finding, navigation. Let’s face it, calories are going to be in short supply in an shtf situation, and if you have to travel a long distance, if you can survey that ahead of time by using just a few little lots of electricity, that’s going to save a lot of time and energy. You can use them as a beacon. You can use them to deliver messages over large distances. You can use them as repeaters for communication devices, as an antenna.

You can use them for hunting, for fishing. As we’ve seen in the wars currently being fought around the world, you can weaponize them, and last but not least, you can use them to survey potentially contaminated areas, whether we’re talking about chemical, biological, nuclear, or radiological disasters. So the use cases are virtually endless. Now why I’m doing this video today is because I think we have found the ideal drone for preppers and survivalists. It just came on the market, and it is called the DJI Neo. It’s cheap, it’s incredibly durable, it’s incredibly lightweight.

Time is of the essence, unfortunately, because DJI is a Chinese blacklisted company, and these will likely be banned in Canada and North America very soon. Now over the years, I’ve pretty much owned every drone. I’ve owned a Phantom, I’ve owned a Mavic, I’ve owned the Avada, I’ve owned the Mini 2, the Mini 3, the Mini 4, and now the Neo, I even have a thermal imaging drone that we’re gonna do a separate review on in the future. But this by far is just one of the most impressive, and it is really ideal.

You can throw this in your backpack, it’s 128 grams, it’s virtually weightless. The camera resolution isn’t the greatest, but in terms of if you’re out backpacking, it’s not gonna add much weight. It is such a force multiplier. Being able to have an awareness of your surroundings outside your immediate purview, it’s just a no-brainer, and at a price point of 200 bucks just for the drone, and all you need to fly it is a phone. So if you’re all about ultralight, there really is no better substitution. So why is this DJI Neo drone the best-prepper drone? Let’s talk about some of the pros.

It is the lightest weight, most capable drone on the market. You can get smaller ones, you don’t want to go much smaller than this because the wind resistance is not going to be that great. You can add several extra batteries that are themselves incredibly lightweight, so you easily add three or four extra batteries. Of course, that’s going to cost you a little bit more money. This is the cheapest DJI drone at only $200 USD. If that seems like a lot of money, it really isn’t considering the amount of technology in here, and something like this 10 years ago would have been unthinkable, and probably five to ten times the price.

It has 4K resolution, which is fairly standard for these drones nowadays. It does have not the greatest range, but 7 kilometer range, which is probably more than sufficient for most survival and preparedness applications, especially if you’re just using this strictly as a backpacking navigation root finding drone. Now let’s say you’re using this in an emergency situation, and you got to be quick. One of the benefits of this design, because it has the prop guards, is you can grab it out of the air. Now you can do that with other drones, but it’s a little bit dangerous, and the process isn’t as streamlined.

With this, you can deploy it very fast, and you can stow it away very fast as well. If you’re on the fly, and you need to use this for reconnaissance or surveillance, the ability to deploy it and stow it away very quickly is a huge selling point. In terms of the drone is going to fail, is the props. I’ve done that on numerous occasions. If it hits something, the thing flies all over the place. This drone I’ve crashed into several trees already, and basically nothing happens. It just drops to the ground.

Because it’s lightweight, it also minimizes the amount of damage it sustains when it falls to the ground. You’re probably never going to have to change the props, I mean, unless some twig or stick gets caught in there. Even the camera is recessed in such a way that there’s no part of it that really protrudes out. So even if you were to run the camera right into a tree, it’s likely not going to get damaged. In fact, this drone comes with a camera cover, and because it’s transparent, and because the gimbal can still function inside that cover, you can still use it with the cover on if you wanted that added protection.

So pretty much it’s all inclusive. You don’t need anything else. All you need is a phone to fly this drone. So you can go and buy the lowest tier offering, and you’ll have a perfectly flyable drone. And if we’re talking about something that you just want to throw in your pack, with most drones, if I want to fly it, what I have to do is I got to take it out of the pack. I got to do this. I got to do this. I got to find some nice stable ground, and then I got to put it down, and then I got to fly it.

All you have to do with this drone in a pinch is literally take it out of your pack, put it on your hand, and launch it from your phone or controller. So that’s a huge selling point for me if we’re talking about something that needs to be deployed in a pinch. Okay, now this next feature is not something that a prepper is probably going to use, but if you’re into action sports, and you like taking pictures of yourself, this is pretty cool. So even if you don’t have a controller or a phone, you can still use this drone.

There are several modes that you can cycle through on this interface on the drone itself, so if I want this drone to say follow me around, I just select follow mode, I hold down a button, and eventually it’s going to launch. So now it’s looking at me. It’s recording. You guys are going to see how dirty the studio is, and I think it should just come back like that. So probably not something a prepper is ever going to use, but just another example of how quickly this technology is progressing. Now, at a price point of 200 bucks, obviously there’s going to be a lot of limitations, so the question is what’s the catch? The catch is, is that the runtime is quite low.

It’s somewhere around 15 minutes, realistically speaking. There is no optical zoom, which is going to be a problem if you’re using this for surveillance. If you want the ability to fly high enough that the drone can’t be heard by people on the ground, but you can still see what’s going on in the ground, unfortunately for that you’re going to have to get the DJI Mini Pro, which is going to come at a substantially higher price point. The other thing is, is that this drone has much better wind resistance. It’s about twice as heavy as this, so that means in turbulent conditions this is going to function a lot better.

It also has much better night vision. With this, in lower light conditions, it’s going to be grainy AF. You’re not going to be able to see a lot of detail. You’re going to be able to detect things, but you’re not necessarily going to be able to identify what those things are. In terms of the loudness, surprisingly they’re both about equally as loud. In fact, I would say this one is a little bit louder. Even at the peak altitude, at least in the conditions I used it in, I could still hear it.

It really depends on atmospheric conditions as to how far the sound travels, and that will be an issue if you’re trying to surveil a space in a covert manner. Now, in terms of DJI being banned soon, there’s a very good chance that the window of opportunity to get something like this is closing. Even to get the app, you can’t get them at the Google Play Store. You actually have to download them from the DJI website, so it’s only a matter of time before you can’t get these anymore, which is unfortunate because it is the best technology.

Now, there’s three ways to control this drone. You can just use your phone. That’s going to be the cheapest way, so we open the DJI Fly app, connect to mobile device, so there we go. So, we go to manual control, take off. You can see here, if I want to go up or close, so this is what the joystick looks like. Like I say, it’s not the most responsive, but it works. I suppose once you get the hang of it, it’s probably not that bad. That’s all you need. Now, an even better option is just to get the controller that has a dedicated screen.

As you can see, it’s about the same size of a smartphone. It’s very high resolution. I’ll turn it on for you. So, this is probably the best option. If you want like fast, the fastest plug-and-play, it’s going to be this, but it comes at the expense of the weight, and this is going to be, I think, an extra three, four hundred bucks. In the very least, you’ll want to get one of these, but of course, this adds a lot of extra heft. Same thing, same principle. So, if I want to take off, I’m going to take off.

All I’ve done is plugged it in, and now I can control it with this. That’s the other thing I’m not worried about. It’s right as rain, isn’t it? Yeah. There you go. There are other brands on the market like Autel, which we’ll be talking about in the future, that have a variety of different offerings. This one in fact has a thermal imaging camera, which is very high resolution, and it has a bunch of different accessories. There’s a speaker on here, so you can actually talk to people, and I’ve used this feature before on my property.

There was somebody hunting on the property who wasn’t supposed to be there, and I scared the s*** out of them. You can also have a spotlight, and you can have another beacon, and there’s even an attachment for these Autel drones that allows you to drop payloads. So, I mean, the sky’s the limit for a drone like that. If you’re wanting something a bit beefier, but something that can move very fast, and just for the purpose of surveillance, you can also get the Avada, which is a much bigger drone, but these things are fast.

You can use them with a VR headset, and of course, if you’re into filmmaking, then there’s the Mavic lineup. If you want to get one of these, I’ll post a link in the description below. You won’t regret it. Thanks for watching. Don’t forget to like, comment, subscribe. Canadian Prep Row. The best way to support this channel is to support yourself by gearing up at CanadianPreparedness.com, where you’ll find high-quality survival gear at the best prices, no junk, and no gimmicks. Use discount code PreppingGear for 10% off. Don’t forget the strong survive, but the prepared thrive.

Stay safe. [tr:trw].

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