The Best Drones Under 1500 are just what you need when you’re in the market for a high-quality drone that won’t break your bank. The Best Drones under 1000 to 1500 are designed to make every moment of your flight time count. Whether it’s getting fantastic aerial shots or exploring new places from above. The range is one feature of these top-rated drones and makes these devices stand out from the rest.
In this article, we’ll be talking about the best drones for under 1000 to 1500 dollars. In other words, drones with a max range of 1.5 kilometers or 3,280 feet. If you’re wondering why that specific distance is important, then think about how far certain models can fly before they lose connection with their controllers and come back home on their own.
Even though these drones might not have a flight time of up to 30 minutes like some of the higher end Best Drone options out there today. You will still enjoy an average flight time of 15-20 minutes from each Best Drone you buy from our list below.
We’ll also be talking about the specs and features you’ll want to look for in a drone under 1500 dollars. In addition, we’ll discuss what you need to do before you buy one of these devices. Because no matter whether it’s just a weekend getaway or an extended vacation that has your name on it.
The last thing you want is to buy the Best Drones Under 1500 Dollars only to find out it’s not compatible with the GoPro camera in your closet. And without further ado, let’s get into it. Here are the best drones for under 1500 with a max range of 1.5 kilometers, each with its unique pros and cons.
Best Drones Under 1500 With Long Flight Range
| Product Image | Title | Brand | Buy |
|---|---|---|---|
  | Autel Robotics EVO Nano | Autel | Check Price |
  | Yuneec Mantis Q | Yuneec | Check Price |
  | Hubsan ZINO 2 Plus | Hubsan | Check Price |
  | DJI Phantom 3 | DJI | Check Price |
Autel Robotics EVO
Specifications
- Weight: 1.9 pounds
- Battery life: 40 min
- Range: 4.3 miles
Built and Design
The Autel Robotics EVO is designed to fly indoors and outdoors. It has a special camera system that allows you to take HD photos and videos. The controller is made of aluminum alloy for better grip and comfort.
It has a nice sleek design that makes it look fast and mean. The drone is easy to use for both adults and children because of its small compact size. The design allows people to use their smartphones or tablet. The drone comes ready to fly out of the box. Caps protect the drone’s rotors. This is good for people who forget to take them off while flying.
Autel Robotics EVO comes with propeller guards, meaning it can withstand impact more than your average drone. It has 6-axis flight control systems that provide smoother flights and higher stability resulting in fewer accidents like dropping or crashing into objects like trees or walls. Making the Autel Robotics EVO safe for all ages, even children!
Features
When you take a photo or video with the Autel Robotics EVO, it captures 13 megapixels at 30 Frames per second (FPS). The camera is made specifically for aerial photography and can capture photos and videos in 16:9 ratio HD 1080p. It has a flight time of about 40 minutes and uses a USB cable for charging.
GPS technology gives precision and control and ranges the room from 0.5 miles to 400 meters. The maximum speed is 50km/h (31mph) with an angle up 45 degrees vertically down 35 degrees horizontally. This allows for great filming and flying maneuvers like flips and rolls, as well as a return home button it records the drone’s location.
The Autel Robotics EVO has a headless mode that helps beginner pilots learn to fly drones. It works like this, the forward direction of the plane is always concerning where the pilot is standing, no matter how the camera is facing! The Return home feature takes away any fear of losing your drone while flying far off into some unknown place.
This function sends your drone back to you at full throttle. With altitude hold on, it is very simple for users to fly up and down by simply moving the stick up or down, and it will hold that altitude. The feature makes flying much more stable and enjoyable for beginners, pros, and even kids by stabilizing better than most drones.
Lastly, it also has a follow-me mode that tracks any object in front of it. You can pick between three speeds, low, medium, and high. The higher the speed, the closer your drone stays to your target, allowing for great shots when filming skateboarding or skiing!
Performance
The drone was very easy to fly. You will not need to spend a lot of hours for learning how to operate the machine. It could be flown easily by beginner pilots. The images were clear with vibrant patterns that were pleasant to the eye. The video was smooth. Moreover, it will not jerk or shake even during sharp turns.
Overall this product is excellent value for money, especially considering its price range. It is a quality product from start to finish from the sleek black design of the motors and propellers that add great style to your flight patterns.
Yuneec Mantis G
Specifications
- Weight: 1.1 pounds
- Battery life: 33 min
- Range: 1.2 miles
Built and Design
The drone is built out of plastic and looks like a normal bug. Its eye lenses are not glass. They are created with plastics and feel like plastic. Its body is colorful, and it weighs about 1KG (without a battery). On the back, you’ll see two huge wings that do most of the lifting for this drone. There is also a tail wing near the tail end, which helps stabilize the turning direction.
The base has 2 LED lights, one at each end with an on/off button attached to it (to turn off when transporting), but these only flash red every second or two during flying. So you can either imagine they’re on or just completely forget about them entirely. Furthermore, the left side has a screw facing up for adjusting the camera pitch angle without removing the exterior shell.
This makes life so much easier. On the top of the drone, you can remove four screws to detach the body shell to replace broken parts or just inspect what’s inside. The only thing not so great about its build is, it has a super small landing gear hard mounted on it, which is very small and does not give any protection to your lens if you crash onto anything ground height.
The overall built quality feels average or slightly better than average. It can last a few bumps and some crashes but don’t expect it to be able to take too many direct hits from the ground or rocks or whatever that can damage your lens.
Features
The Yuneec Mantis G comes with a 2GB memory card to store your videos and photos. It records in 720p 60fps. It also features a 0.3MP (640×480) front-facing camera for selfies and video calling. This one doesn’t have LED lights on it but instead has a blinking red light just underneath the lens, which you can feel out without seeing it.
It provides a maximum flight range of 1.2 miles. You can also connect to it via WiFi or a direct cable connection. Other than that, the Yuneec Mantis G does not feature any other sensors or transmitters, or receivers besides a one-button 3D flip function that allows you to do slow flips in the air.
It’s not like other drones with GPS and such, but instead, it comes with a headless mode function that does the same thing. The yaw can be adjusted at either fast or slow speeds, but this is also easily accessible through the Yuneec app.
It takes about 33 minutes to get everything ready for flight before taking off and another 5 minutes of charging time for its battery (which provides 15 minutes of fly time). Moreover, it features a flight time of 15 minutes which is above average but not memorable. It also has an auto-landing and auto-take-off feature to be landed or take off automatically with one click of a button.
Performance
As for the performance, it is average and not too bad. It’s small and fast, but that doesn’t mean it can dodge trees or rocks well. The body shell is not protected well, so take your time to avoid any hard objects. Its performance in windy weather is average because of its large power consumption.
It tends to drift away easily when there’s a wind speed over 5-10km/h. It’s not built outdoors, but it can fly decently. Just keep in mind that the wind is its worst enemy. The remote controller is great and has a holder to strap your mobile device on it, making life easier when using the corresponding app.
The video recording quality is slightly better than average because it provides 1080p 30fps recording mode, making it look smoother than 720p 60fps, but that doesn’t mean the latter is bad because it still provides fine quality. But overall, it is a pretty decent drone that will not disappoint you.
Hubsan Zino 2
Specifications
- Weight: 2.0 pounds
- Battery life: 33 min
- Range: 4.9 miles
Built and Design
The Hubsan Zino 2 looks like the average drone quadcopter. It consists of a mainframe surrounded by four propellers. The corrugated shape makes the body resistant to crashes; we do not need to worry about absorbing impacts and can. Thus focus more on flying and capturing videos and photos.
It weighs around 370 grams, so don’t recommend it to take off in windy conditions. The Hubsan Zino 2 has a nice look, contrasting colors, and some cables exposed on the bottom of the frame, giving it a more real-life design touch. The mainframe is mainly made of carbon fiber to withstand high impacts and resist temperature changes such as cold or heat waves.
The battery bay door uses magnets to hold itself closed and can be opened quite easily. The top surface contains two buttons for taking off, landing and turning it on/off. Moreover, you will also find a camera lens, rotation knob for controlling horizontal direction, reset button, battery level indicator LED indicators, and charging slots for different types of batteries.
It is much easier to use than other drones in its price range, such as DJI Spark Fly More combo or Mavic Pro due to its simple operating system. You can start drone flying without learning too many technical things.
To sum up, it looks much better, both in design and build quality, compared to its previous version (Hubsan Zino). It is much more compact after all the components are hidden inside the frame. The propellers are also shorter this time which makes it much safer when flying indoors or near people.
Features
The Hubsan Zino 2 offers many features, including GPS positioning to hold the height, follow you or fly back home. Additionally, it takes 1080P videos with its 12-megapixel camera, and the image quality is much better than other drones in this price range.
You can also switch between different flight modes to have full control over the drone’s speed. You can use your smartphone alone as a radio controller by connecting it via USB cable or Wi-Fi to the Cuban app available on Google Play Store/iOS AppStore. The Zino 2 uses digital transmission, so there are no problems related to signal interference common in analog radio controllers.
Just be careful not to lose your phone since it will fall at around 9 meters high if it disconnects from the drone. The only lack of this device may be found in its flimsy build quality which makes it feel cheaply made. It does not matter much, though, as long as you do not lose it during the flight since you will always have your smartphone anyway.
It features a battery life of around 33 minutes which can be extended to around 20 minutes with the help of propeller guards. A maximum flight range of around 4.9 miles brings us a more fun and enjoyable drone flying experience. The third-person view (FPV) is crisp and clear in light and dark conditions with live streaming at around 100ms, making it easier to control the device.
If you like FPVs, there’s also a Virtual Reality (VR) version available which you can use with your phone to see your drone’s view in real-time. The best part of this is that the VR headset uses mobile phones, not any other equipment or software!
Performance
Hubsan Zino 2 offers amazing features such as an automatic positioning system, GPS, and altitude hold despite its affordable price. It also comes with a remote controller or you can control it via a smartphone app with virtual joystick controls. The live stream performance is top-notch, showing up to 1080P HD quality videos on your phone, even long distances.
It also lets you record videos and take photos with its 12-megapixel camera. The best part about this drone is that the propeller guards are already installed. So no need to worry if some object or human body parts will be damaged by spinning propellers during flight.
Hubsan Zino 2 uses a GPS tracking system and accelerometers and gyroscopes to position itself in 3D space while flying through the GPS coordinates that you enter through the app. With all these amazing features and performance, you can count it as one of the best drones under 1500.
DJI Phantom 3
Specifications
- Weight: 2.6 pounds
- Battery life: 23 min
- Range: 3.1 miles
Built and Design
The DJI Phantom 3 is designed to fulfill all your expectations. It has a sleek, shiny finish that gives you the feeling of owning something extremely premium. A closer look reveals some very nice touches of quality, including soft rubber bumpers placed on all the edges and corners of the body.
Although it’s made entirely of plastic, they’ve done everything possible to make it feel like metal without adding unnecessary weight. This serves as another great reason why this drone serves as one of my best drones under 1500. It weighs 1.2 pounds and has a standard battery weight of 12.5 ounces.
So it’s pretty lightweight as well as compact. This allows you to take the drone with you almost anywhere without feeling any burden or inconvenience. Once you get used to this little guy, you’ll undoubtedly realize how much more convenient it is than carrying around a full-sized quadcopter like the DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus.
The camera comes equipped with its own set of retractable landing gear that works flawlessly even when fully loaded with the camera attached to it. The camera is placed at the center, with both LED lights for orientation and a microphone underneath it. It’s fixed on a vibration-dampened gimbal that stabilizes the image as much as possible.
When you look out for the best drone gimbal, you will find that this feature alone justifies buying this device. The gimbal uses brushless motors to prevent any stutters in video recording.
Features
The DJI Phantom 3 has certain features, which automatically set it apart from any other similar product out there. For starters, the battery life is simply amazing. Best drones under 1500 always have at least 20 minutes of battery life. But this takes it further with 25 minutes or more (typically 27).
The remote controller also has an upgraded design over the previous ones, which boasts of a new ergonomic grip that gives you more precise control over this device. It also includes various sensors which allow it to return to its original position when within range, perfect for beginners who don’t want to crash their newly bought best drone under 1500.
Another feature is the so-called “Sport Mode,” where you can go at full throttle without any risk of losing your drone because it automatically brings it back. You will also be pleased with its high-speed transmission ability. Allowing you to work on images at 30fps with an HD resolution of 1080p.
We all know how to use drones, so I’m not going to discuss that here. The DJI Phantom 3 is about as close as you can get to having a real-life flying robot. Although this device does have its share of problems which are more or less common in most drones.
It’s still the best value-for-money one out there right now. If you want something that will give you excellent quality videos and take some breathtaking photos, go for the DJI Phantom 3 without any hesitation whatsoever! It has plenty of positive reviews online from satisfied customers, which shows how amazing this model is.
Performance
The drone has an outstanding hovering performance, and you will be pleased to know that it takes off in only five minutes! This is much easier than before when you had to spend half an hour just trying to take it up. The best drones under 1500 usually have about 14-megapixel cameras.
But the DJI Phantom 3 comes with a 2.7k video recorder and 12 megapixels of camera resolution. No wonder why this is considered the best drone for GoPro! A camera can’t shoot high-quality photos and videos if it’s not held in a stable position. This is where the DJI Phantom 3 comes into play because its electric compass has been installed, which keeps it from tilting over to one side or another.
Despite being so easy to fly around with, this model still involves some effort on your part because you have to balance it out. Otherwise, your drone will get destroyed pretty fast. You get what you pay for, and since we’re talking about the best drones under 1500 bucks, everything has its price!
Conclusion
Above, we have mentioned some of the best drones under 1500 to provide you with stable flight, HD recording ability, and plenty of accessories. Best drones under 1500 are growing rapidly because you can get them for affordable prices that won’t leave your wallet empty! There are hundreds of drones on the market. But only a few meet all of your demands, so it’s important to pick the best one among these.
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