Great camera with variable aperture. Impressive 40-minute flight time. Night mode for capturing better low-light images. Intuitive app and controller. Extra weight makes it more stable in wind.
Controller lacks joystick storage slot. Expensive in comparison to the DJI Air 2S.
FOR YEARS NOW, DJI has dominated the consumer drone space. A quick glance at our drone buying guide reveals that half of our picks, including the top three, are all DJI drones. DJI makes excellent products, but there has been a lack of competitors. Until this year, there just haven't been a lot of compelling drones available.
That is finally changing. Late in 2021, Autel released four drones designed to compete with the entire DJI line. The most compelling (at least on paper) is the Evo Lite+, which offers roughly feature parity with our top pick for most people, the DJI Air 2S , but then adds some extras that make it well worth the extra money, especially for those using their drones primarily as flying cameras.
As you might have noticed from the images in this article, Autel has adopted a very DJI-inspired design for the Evo Lite+. Unlike the Skydio 2+ (our review is forthcoming), which reinterprets DJI's folding wing design in its own way, Autel has stuck with the tried and true. In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking the Evo Lite+ was a DJI Air 2S.
The dimensions are close enough that you wouldn't be able to see a size difference unless you have the two side by side. Autel has some more-playful color options than DJI's standard gray. I thought this might make the Autel easier to see, but I did not find this to be the case in my testing—at any real distance, they're both black dots. One small difference is the camera shape and cover. The Evo Lite+ has a more rounded camera and what I would call an awkward protective cover. It's not a deal breaker, but it's a little tricky to get on and off.
You will notice a big difference, however, between the Air 2S and the Evo Lite+ if you pick them up. At 1.8 pounds to the Air 2S's 1.3 pounds, the Evo Lite+ is significantly heavier. From what I can tell, the majority of this extra weight is in the larger battery and contributes to one of best things about the Evo Lite+: the over-40-minute flight time.
I am so used to DJI drones' 30-minute flight time that at around 25 minutes of flying I automatically start feeling like it's time to wrap it up. But with the Evo Lite+, at 25 minutes you've still got another 10 minutes before you need to start thinking about bringing it home. That's 30 percent more flying time than what you get from the Air 2S.
I am not a drone racer, so I can't speak to that very well, but in terms of casual flying and filming, I did not notice the extra weight. The Evo Lite+ is plenty nimble in the air and stood up well to the high winds of North Carolina's Outer Banks, where I did the majority of my testing.
The Evo Lite+ packs a 1-inch, 20-megapixel CMOS sensor. This is identical to what you'll find in the Air 2S, with one exception: the Evo Lite+ has a variable aperture, which can be adjusted from f/2.8 to f11. The Air 2S has a fixed f/2.8 aperture. The ability to stop down the aperture in the Evo Lite+ is a huge advantage, both to film brightly lit scenes and to control depth of field. In many cases, you can shoot scenes with the Evo Lite+ and achieve a look that would require an additional neutral density filter to get the same look from the Air 2S.
The other thing the Evo Lite+ offers is better low-light performance. The Air 2S has a maximum ISO of 6,400 in manual video capture, or 1,600 if you're shooting D-log. The Evo Lite+ can shoot ISO 48,000, thanks to a dedicated Night Mode. Now, that number might sound like a recipe for noisy, mostly useless video, but surprisingly, it's not. Autel's Dark Mode algorithm manages relatively crisp video without scene-ruining levels of noise, even in moonlight. That said, I have never actually flown a drone at night (other than to test this feature), so how useful this is will depend a little on how you shoot.
For more general video, the Evo Lite+ is capable of shooting 5472x3076 pixel video, which is what gets labeled “6K”. For stills you can shoot 20 megapixel JPEG and RAW images. There's also the slightly cheaper Evo Lite, which is otherwise the same, but with a smaller sensor camera that can shoot 4K, but does offer 50 megapixel stills. I haven't tested it, but if larger-resolution still images is your primary use case, that Lite might save you some money. For most people, I'd recommend the Lite+.
The camera you shoot with isn't the only camera that matters on a drone. The EVO Lite+ also has obstacle-avoidance sensors on the front, rear, and bottom of the drone. That mostly matches the Air 2, though DJI does have an upward-looking sensor as well, which can be important in some situations (like flying under tree branches). That said, the Evo Lite+ did a good job of avoiding everything I tried to run it into. Overall, its collision avoidance is on part with the Air 2S and should keep you out of trouble in most situations.
One thing that surprised me is that the Evo Lite+ will warn you if you're flying somewhere you're not supposed to—next to an airport, for example—but it doesn't completely shut off the aircraft the way DJI does. On one hand, I applaud letting the user make their own choices, but on the other hand I've noticed that new drone flyers are displaying an increasing lack of awareness and common sense that is provoking a growing hostility toward drones. If people are able to fly where they shouldn't, they will, and it won't be long before the situation gets worse. For testing purposes I relied on the FAA's to make sure I was legal to fly.
Autel also doesn't have the AirSense alerts that DJI offers. AirSense, which first showed up in DJI drones in 2020, tracks the location of nearby manned and unmanned aircraft and alerts you if you're near anything. I've never had Airsense trigger an alert about anything, but it would be nice to see something similar in Autel's drones.
Autel's Sky app for iOS and Android is very similar to DJI's apps and is intuitive and easy to use. The controller, I was less thrilled with. It looks like an Xbox controller, which is fine, but it lacks any storage space for the removable joysticks, like you get with DJI drones. Worse, Autel doesn't provide an extra joystick like DJI does.
That said, the controller is easy to use and I had no trouble flying. When you take off for the first time, the Sky app will put you in a beginner mode that limits speed and altitude. I suggest staying in this mode until you get comfortable. The Evo Lite+ is maybe slightly less responsive than the DJI Air 2S, due to the extra weight, but the weight is an advantage in the wind, which I dealt with a lot when testing.
The Sky app offers a variety of flight modes, including Smooth, Standard, and Ludicrous. The latter enables a top speed of 42 miles an hour and more or less negates the obstacle-avoidance features, since you're not going to have time to react to any warning. But it's fun to fly in Ludicrous mode.
Overall, the Autel Evo Lite+ is the first drone I've tested that holds its own against DJI's very impressive offerings. If you want the control of a variable aperture camera, along with the increased flight time, and don't mind the slightly higher price, the Autel Evo Lite+ trumps the DJI Air 2S.
