Drone Camera in India: To Buy or Not to Buy

Over the last few days, I have been searching the Internet on what people think about buying and using an entry-level drone camera in India. I would want to use it mostly for personal/recreational purposes but sometimes I may want to take it to a few events to get short photo/video snippets from a different angle.

Looks like this question is more complex than it sounds.

In fact, one major online publisher even wrote that it’s legal to buy a drone in India, but illegal to use it! Drone pilots are facing problems at multiple places across India – the Internet is filled with such stories.

It seems any drone weighing more than 250 grams needs to be registered with Govt. authorities along with region of use and purpose, and a drone pilot license needs to be obtained. Not sure how easy or difficult that is as there is not much info online, but the very concept is discouraging. It seems most commercial users are buying it online and using it illegally, but I don’t want to do that.

So I went on to evaluate drones weighing less than 250 grams which are categorised as “Toy Drones” that don’t need any license.

I found only one entry-level drone camera that was good enough – The DJI Tello. Although this one has good navigation and controls, it supports only 720p video resolution (not 1080p) and streams video data to the phone over WiFi (where it is saved) due to which there is data loss and visible pixellation – sometimes. I wish they had included the memory card and GPS features in it.

Here is the Promo Video for DJI Tello (Actually Ryze Tello that incorporates DJI tech) –

I hope some company will make slightly better quality “Toy drones” in India within that 250 grams limit. Until then, all my drone scene-puttifying dreams will have to remain as dreams only