Best Drones with a Camera 2021

There are many potential uses for drones, but one of the most popular is as a camera mounting platform. Mounting a camera on a drone offers opportunities for unique camera angles and moving shots. Drones effectively eliminate the space constraints of a helicopter or the movement limitations of a raised platform. They’ve even offered a new version of the selfie, called a “dronie” where the drone flies up to its prescribed distance and takes pictures or videos of you.

It’s super important to be aware of the leal requirements for drone pilots where you intend to fly. Legislation varies from country to country, and can have varying local restrictions as well. In the US you need to register with the FAA before flying a drone over 250 grams. You also need to acquire a licence to fly a drone for commercial purposes. Breaching these laws can come with a heavy fine and even a prison sentence, so make sure to do your research before taking to the skies.

Unfortunately, not all drones have a suitable camera for everyone’s use cases. To help you pick a drone with a great camera, we’ve drawn up our list of the best drones with a camera in 2021.

As you’d expect for a budget tier option, the Ryze Tello isn’t the best drone in this list. It does, however, come with a pretty decent camera for an entry-level drone. It costs $100 and comes with a solid feature set that has very little competition at the price point. You can program the drone with routes and stunts, you can stream 720p video to your phone, and you can switch between a more and a less responsive flight mode depending on your experience level and preferences.

While 720p won’t offer the same visual fidelity of a 4K camera, it’s enough for a clear image. The 87g drone is extremely light, making it easily portable, but vulnerable to even light wind. The positioning system is maintained with an infrared sensor that is extremely effective at its task, when within its altitude range of 10m.

The DJI Mini 2 is a great mid-market drone, that was specifically designed to squeak under the FAA registration weight limit requirement by a single gram. To keep to this weight restriction, some features, such as obstacle detection sensors haven’t been fitted. DJI lists the lack of obstacle avoidance as the reason it can’t track moving subjects, however, other manufacturers do offer the feature with this limitation. Unfortunately, this means you can’t set it to follow you while you mountain bike down a scenic trail. It does, however, include a number of preprogrammed flight paths, though you’ll need to be careful to plan to avoid obstacles manually.

The Mini 2 has almost all other bases covered. It folds down to easily fit in a bag or even a modestly sized pocket. It can stream 1080p video at a range of up to 10km and record video at 4K30. The find my drone feature is a great feature if you can’t land your drone nearby, it tells you the drone’s last known position. You can even make it flash its lights and make sounds, assuming it has enough battery left to do so.

The mid-range DJI Mavic Air 2 is very similar to the Mini 2 but ditches the 250g weight limit. In fact, by more than doubling the weight, it requires FAA registration. It also means it can offer more features and a slightly improved flight time. The included camera has been upgraded to record 4K60 video. It’s even possible to record Hyperlapse videos in 8K.

The live video resolution and maximum range remain the same, however, flight time is increased to 34 minutes, despite the weight gain. The Mavic 2 also features front, rear, and downward collision avoidance sensors, which allows the drone to automatically steer around obstacles such as trees without any extra input. You should be careful relying on it too much though, as there are no side- or upward-facing sensors. In some camera modes, objects or people can be tracked, enabling some great hands-free action shots.

The DJI FPV drone is a fairly unique offering. It comes at quite a high price but includes a host of reliable high-quality features you won’t see on other racing drones. For example, it includes a 4K60 camera, it can stream in 810p120 to the FPV goggles, and it has obstacle avoidance sensors. All of these are great options for general drone flying but add cost, weight, and complexity. Unfortunately, if and when you do crash it, you may have to return it to DJI for repairs. While you can replace things like the propellers easily, the rest is more difficult.

Despite the extra weight, it’s able to achieve a very respectable top speed of 86mph and can fly for a total of 20 minutes at a range of up to 10km. The use of a digital camera rather than the analogue camera that is common in racing drones improves both range and image quality. One helpful feature is the emergency brake in which the drone will use all of its flight awareness to right itself, stop, and hover in place as soon as it can. This is a one-button feature intended to be used if you’ve lost control but have not yet crashed.

The SwellPro Spry+ looks like a normal enough drone in the air but has the almost unique feature of being able to land in and then take off from water. It is naturally buoyant and waterproof meaning you don’t need to worry about it sinking. That’s not the end of its party piece though, it can use its propellers to dive underwater entirely. This means that you can get drone shots smoothly from both above and below water.

Helpfully, the remote control is also designed to be buoyant and waterproof, so you don’t need to worry about dropping that in the water either. In normal flight, you can get up to 17 minutes out of the batteries, though this will be reduced significantly if you take it underwater, as will the max range of 800m. The controller includes a screen to play a live feed from the drone’s camera.

That was our round-up of the best camera drones in 2021. While there are drones available with better cameras, these often cost a lot more or are missing other useful features. Have you got any other recommendations for great camera drones? Let us know down below.