Welcome DJI Spark Pilot!
Jump in and join our free Spark community today!
Sign up

Spark deal or Parrot Anafi?

If he is really new into drones, Spark is a no brainer. Anafi for sure is for advanced pilots.
I don't believe there is any difference between Spark, Anafi, Mavic of any kind and Phantom. There is none for advanced user or retarded.
Problem, I belive is the weight and so how dangerous it could be if it goes into a person, because of weight and because of weight+spin of the blades to support the drone.
Spark, Mavic Air and Parrot Anafi are about the same weight around 400 grams. Mavic Pro is twice. Phantom is another twice.
I've never used a drone before using a Spark and for now I only used it manually. I even used my second time against 80km/h gusts of wind with no problem.
The rules and the no fly zone can be accessed by any body with a bit of education...
An 8 year old can use one of these provided he's under the watch of an adult.
 
Last edited:
I don't believe there is any difference between Spark, Anafi, Mavic of any kind and Phantom. There is none for advanced user or retarded.
Problem, I belive is the weight and so how dangerous it could be if it goes into a person, because of weight and because of weight+spin of the blades to support the drone.
Spark, Mavic Air and Parrot Anafi are about the same weight around 400 grams. Mavic Pro is twice. Phantom is another twice.
I've never used a drone before using a Spark and for now I only used it manually. I even used my second time against 80km/h gusts of wind with no problem.
The rules and the no fly zone can be accessed by any body with a bit of education...
An 8 year old can use one of these provided he's under the watch of an adult.
Well there is a difference and its rather significant.
I'll pass argument about OA because we know it's a gimmick even on DJI.
Another thing there are no NFZ zones programmed into the drone so if you are trying to tell me that there is no difference and all off them could be flown by any noob because drones are idiot proof - I will call it a BS. You can start Anafi even on the Airport runaway.a
Anafi's weight is an exactly Spark's weight. Anafi properells are significantly better designed and they are not producing high pitch sound which annoys everyone around and sometimes grabs unecessery attention.
4k camera is a real deal. Same quality as Air and sometimes more.
EIS might be a problem because gimball has 2x mechanical and YAW eis stabilization. On footage sometimes it's visible.
Stabilization overall is great even on sport mode when you are flying sideways drone holds horizon straight - impossible to get on the DJI.

The biggest problem with anafi is lacknof support from community and coders who could do something extra add things, remove Pay per Flight option which is a shame from Parrot. (If you want additional fly options you have to buy them on App store)

Range is a problem currently we can read from reviews and generally range limitations.

150 vertically and 200/300 on VLOS.

I hope our talented group of people from this group that helped us to unlock the "real abbilities" of our Sparks in the past will lean towards Anafi some day. That would be amazing and certainly would increse the value of the drone.
For now its a great drone on paper but sadly half-arsed to me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tiller
Well there is a difference and its rather significant.
I'll pass argument about OA because we know it's a gimmick even on DJI.
Another thing there are no NFZ zones programmed into the drone so if you are trying to tell me that there is no difference and all off them could be flown by any noob because drones are idiot proof - I will call it a BS. You can start Anafi even on the Airport runaway.a
Anafi's weight is an exactly Spark's weight. Anafi properells are significantly better designed and they are not producing high pitch sound which annoys everyone around and sometimes grabs unecessery attention.
4k camera is a real deal. Same quality as Air and sometimes more.
EIS might be a problem because gimball has 2x mechanical and YAW eis stabilization. On footage sometimes it's visible.
Stabilization overall is great even on sport mode when you are flying sideways drone holds horizon straight - impossible to get on the DJI.

The biggest problem with anafi is lacknof support from community and coders who could do something extra add things, remove Pay per Flight option which is a shame from Parrot. (If you want additional fly options you have to buy them on App store)

Range is a problem currently we can read from reviews and generally range limitations.

150 vertically and 200/300 on VLOS.

I hope our talented group of people from this group that helped us to unlock the "real abbilities" of our Sparks in the past will lean towards Anafi some day. That would be amazing and certainly would increse the value of the drone.
For now its a great drone on paper but sadly half-arsed to me.
The apps options on the Parrot are quite a stupid thing. I've read it's + 20 euros (dollars) to get them. Probably this price is noticeable on one of their 100 euros drone.
However I consider the NFZ in the Spark as an annoyance. First everybody with standard IQ who can buy and fly the Spark, CAN KNOW if he has the right to fly a drone from his position. In obvious situations, someone flying his Spark on a dangerous area, because crowded with people or because he can see planes landing in that area is beyond idiot. The Spark doesn't forbid more than that potential at best, but monitors you.

An evil guy trying to fly a Spark on those areas will get rid of the limitation if need in plenty of possible ways. DJI only covers itself against evil use without avoiding it. The real problem is with areas targeted by terrorists who use the Phantom, the only one able to carry grenades. The Spark and the Mavic Air (and the Parrot Anafi) are completely inoperable in that way, shouldn't have any implemented limitation.
Would be better to have the information and OPTIONALLY to apply the NFZ in a detailed manner, not the very basic way DJI does. Also I frankly dislike to be monitored by a company as they do it "for security reasons" on a material I have fully purchased. Not interested in their global responsibility, I'm taking mine !
Actually there is no law obliging DJI to do so. Why limiting and monitoring ? To provide China with global information ??? In my case I find the latter to be of more concern.
Actually, in my case, I had to check on DJI on a small private area that had 0 limitation under the french law and was not near any nofly zone areas, because the DJI zones do no treat particular areas, but big circles around spots. So DJI was limiting without reason my flights and had to give all my credentials to DJI to fly, which is obviously very wrong.

For your information on France, here is the best map of nofly zones you may get.
Take care that on a private land some limitations on this official map do not apply (those regarding public areas not those regarding airports, military or nuclear plants who still apply).

Géoportail

Compare that to the DJI Spark flysafe map :
DJI - The World Leader in Camera Drones/Quadcopters for Aerial Photography

You can zoom in/out on both to compare.
 
Now that my cousins are finally in the US, B&H stopped the offer of the spark + controller + 50$ free gift card (you can get an additional battery).
I hope Dji will bring it back next week too fight Anafi sales.
I was very enthusiast about the Anafi but there are some points I didn't like:
-No obstacles sensors
-You have to pay for every single feature like follow me or dolly zoom, so in the end you end up paying as much as a Mavic Air
 
One of the reasons why I decided to cancel my pre order plus some reservations regarding night shots and fixed altitude and rth levels. Terrible range is one of them as well...barely making 250-300m.
 
Not sure about the Parrot Anafi, since most of the tests are on beta products. It seems the lossless zoom in not working on these beta products as they only have a less than 300m range. Parrot mentioned to those (who posted it) that these are features that will work on the final version, and you can count on some bugs and updates in the future for probably the next 6 months to come as one poster here mentioned. New product is never at its best when it comes out.
Release is in July and we're still in June and probably the betas are from may or something before. Betas for media may be very conservative to avoid some accident and misjudgement.
Consider that with that hardware it's not a big deal for the Parrot to make all these specs happen on the final release. The lossless zoom is to compare to the Pureview specs of the Nokia smartphones. This is hardware implemented in most of the ARM GPU. needs an APi provided by the ARM products for the feature to work.. If there are enough pixels and that the movie (or photo inside is smaller enough), you can get lossless zoom. The other thing to keep quality against noise, is to be in a rather sunny environment.
Hasn't tried yet too much filming with the Spark (I'm a photo guy) but 12MP hardware should provide such lossless zoom at 2.4x in Full HD mode. The Anafi provides 2.8x for 20MP when it should have 3.1x, but it also uses some border pixels for the anti-shake system. That's the maths.
Nokia used it's lossless zoom years ago (in 2012) on a huge (for a Smartphone) 1/1.2 inch 40MP sensor with Zeiss optics. It was using a separate chip for the Pureview feature, but now it's all inside most of the ARM GPU. A friend of mine has this smartphone and he gets impressive real 40MP pics. He still uses it despite being not Android (Symbian) and only 3G.
Would be great if a small drone could be using such a camera today.

Frankly, I hope the reaction of DJI vs Parrot Anafi, will be to officially release all the Mavic features for the Spark in DJI 4 Go and reduce the no fly zone to a very limited dangerous situations (planes, military and officially forbidden areas to shoot photos like nuclear plants), since the Spark cannot do any harm. You cannot even slice your skin with the blades (tested by youtubers) and the Spark combo is delivered with blade protections. The Spark isn't heavy enough for all this and cannot carry obvious lethal objects. Also would be great to make an XL battery with 50% or even 30% more flight time. Not a big deal regarding the specs, and the Spark may have a little bit lower performance but all okay to fly. People have hacked the spark to use bigger and heavier batteries and it works well.
Not sure if DJI reads this.
 
Last edited:
There is someone selling his Spark in my country with Fly more combo, though he broke 6 out of 8 propellers, he is claiming it never felt and sent me photos of his spark which looks pretty good, but it's just ''home'' accidents. He's selling it for 400$, so I should count about 20$ more for new propellers. So is it a good deal or it's too expensive specially that he broke something?
BTW Dji drones are much more expensive here than in the US, fly more combo for example is 750$!!
 
@spartavel
First review debunked this whole thing abouy LossLess Zoom. There is no fancy technology standing behind that mode nor processing power dedicated to that. It's nothing else but a picture crop which is extremely cheap move from Parrot. And yes, you do loose the quality and the pictures from zoom mode are significantly smaller in resolution plus pictutes have plenty of noise. HDR mode in anafi is a dissaster. Unwatchable and EIS makes whole footage stutter.

Big let down, had high hopes with this product.
 
I'd go for the spark

Yep, specially that it will be my first drone, no need to throw 700$ on the Anafi, anyway we can't use drones in Beirut, too much wifi signals and random cables from building to buildings. So it will be mostly for hiking and ski days, with the follow me mode it will be perfect.
A bit off topic, but do you think the Spark can take good enough photos in sunny days to sell on shutterstock and co?
 
Yep, specially that it will be my first drone, no need to throw 700$ on the Anafi, anyway we can't use drones in Beirut, too much wifi signals and random cables from building to buildings. So it will be mostly for hiking and ski days, with the follow me mode it will be perfect.
A bit off topic, but do you think the Spark can take good enough photos in sunny days to sell on shutterstock and co?
No, it wont be any good. You need big sensor and dng raw compatible drone. Ideally with interchangable lens and nd filters capable.

Spark is a amateur-consumer drone. It's for those who start they journey with the drones take a picture that can be published on social media and so on... If you want to commercialize your activity with the drones you have to invest at least on Mavic Pro Air or Anafi but there are still lots of questions related to the latter.
 
Still waiting for b&h to bring back the offer of spark + rc +50$ gift card. I thought they will for the 4th of July, but no
 
i just purchased the anafi and it is so easy, really was so easy and fast to set up compared to DJI which is truly a long process for the novice, also a great quiet machine which is giving me lots of fun and is more than comparable to the spark.
 
I don't believe there is any difference between Spark, Anafi, Mavic of any kind and Phantom. There is none for advanced user or retarded.
Problem, I belive is the weight and so how dangerous it could be if it goes into a person, because of weight and because of weight+spin of the blades to support the drone.
Spark, Mavic Air and Parrot Anafi are about the same weight around 400 grams. Mavic Pro is twice. Phantom is another twice.
I've never used a drone before using a Spark and for now I only used it manually. I even used my second time against 80km/h gusts of wind with no problem.
The rules and the no fly zone can be accessed by any body with a bit of education...
An 8 year old can use one of these provided he's under the watch of an adult.
i just purchased the anafi and it is so easy, really was so easy and fast to set up compared to DJI which is truly a long process for the novice, also a great quiet machine which is giving me lots of fun and is more than comparable to the spark.
 

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
14,593
Messages
118,799
Members
17,987
Latest member
csdisme