DJI’s Air 3S drone is a low-light all-rounder

New features include improved low-light image quality that was already great and nighttime obstacle avoidance to bring it safely home.

The Air 3S is DJI’s new mid-range drone that builds upon the Air 3 in a few notable ways. These include better image quality, especially in low light, with nighttime obstacle avoidance to help ensure the drone returns home safely. That’s promising since the versatile (if boring) Air 3 already had great low-light performance when we reviewed it last year.

“The DJI Air 3S takes our Air Series to new heights by offering professional features like dual primary cameras and omnidirectional obstacle sensing while retaining its light weight of just 724g for boundless freedom and flexibility,” said DJI Product Experience Director Ferdinand Wolf in a press release. “The Air 3S is the perfect all-rounder for travel photography — capturing all your special moments during vacation while also providing safety and security if operating at night.”

DJI fitted the Air 3S with broad suite of sensors to enable nightscape obstacle sensing, including front-facing LiDAR, downward infrared time-of-flight sensors, and a total of six vision sensors; two each on the front, rear, and bottom.

The Air 3S features an improved 50 megapixel, 1-inch sensor and 24mm lens on the primary camera, alongside a 48 megapixel, 1/1.3-inch sensor with a 70mm (3x zoom) lens, each offering up to 14 stops of dynamic range when shooting in auto (not slow-motion or vertical). 10-bit video can be encoded in H.265 with improved ISO as well.