The Autel EVO Lite+ offers all-round great hardware, flight performance, and photo/video quality.
The Autel EVO Lite+ offers great hardware, flight performance, and photo/video quality. It's in a unique position to compete with both the DJI Air 2S and the DJI Mavic 3 as it shares similar features between the two, but is priced more closely to the Air 2S. For less than $1600 the EVO Lite+ takes excellent photos and videos (even in low light), has long battery life and is easy to operate.
The EVO Lite+ is one of four recently released drones from Autel, that looks to give DJI's prosumer drones, namely the very popular DJI Air 2S, some serious competition. In many ways, the Lite+ shares a very similar design and comparable specs to the Air 2S, the slightly older Mavic Pro 2, and even a few to the new Mavic 3.
While more expensive than the Air 2S, it is still cheaper than the Mavic 3, and depending on your needs, the EVO Lite+ has a few unique features that might make it the better choice. With DJI being in some hot water surrounding privacy and security concerns, Autel's new drones are coming out at a great time.
Over the past few weeks, the Lite+ has received some very important firmware updates which bring new advanced camera features and controls, allowing it to be a more professional tool for video and photos. There are still several features that are expected to arrive in the future which I'll comment on, however, they have yet to be released.
In this review, I'll share my thoughts using the Autel for the past month in a variety of conditions, testing its photo, video, and quick capture modes, and provide some insight into how it compares to my experience as a long time DJI pilot, starting with the Mavic Pro, and now operating the Mavic Pro 2.
As a quick teaser to what’s ahead, the EVO Lite+ gets the most important things right. Its setup and learning process is quick and simple. If you have any experience flying any of DJI’s Mavic drones, it's nearly identical and you'll be ready to fly in no time. The drone feels very smooth, stable and again its controls feel very familiar. Its 1" sensor provides excellent video and photo quality and it excels in low-light.
Manual settings were only recently introduced near the tail-end of this review and there are still several announced upcoming video features which I'm excited to come with future updates. Its App and intelligent video modes are overall very intuitive, and again similar to DJI's, but still with room to improve and might feel limited if not still in beta. The App lacks certain advanced settings, customizations, and tracking and quick shots are still very hit-or-miss.
The Evo Lite+ also comes in a standard (non +) version. The two models are nearly identical except for their cameras and price.
The EVO Lite standard is $100 cheaper, featuring a smaller 1/1.28-inch camera sensor. It's limited to 4K video, but it can take larger 50MP stills with optional 12.5MP binning for sharper results. It has up to 2x lossless zoom on 4K video, 4x lossless zoom in 1080p, 16x total zoom. Uniquely, it also introduces a fourth axis that lets you shoot vertically. I was excited to try this out on the Lite+ but sadly found it was exclusive to the standard model. In well-lit conditions, the EVO Lite standard should produce better stills and might also be the better choice if you heavily rely on lossless zoom while recording video.
The EVO Lite+ sports a larger 1-inch sensor that "only" takes 20MP stills, but it can shoot up to 6K video at 30fps. Because of its fewer MP, its zoom is more limited at 1.3x lossless zoom at 4K, 3x lossless at 1080p, and slightly less usable 16x digital zoom overall. Overall, if you prioritize video quality and low light performance, the EVO Lite+ is worth the extra $100.
When it first came out, the original DJI Mavic was outstanding due to the performance and features it packed into its compact design. Its introduction of the folding wings was a game-changer, instantly making its previous Phantom line look ridiculous bulky. We went from needing dedicated Pelican cases to transport our drones, to now being able to fit them in a pocket.
Six years later, that design has remained largely the same and is now adopted in competing models like the EVO Lite +. At first glance, we'd forgive you for confusing the Autel for one of DJI's Mavic drones because of how similar they look.
There are a few subtle but very important differences. Color choices aside, the main visual difference that stands out to me, is the more rounded camera and its gimbal cover. This is the first area that I didn’t like so much. I’m not much of a fan of this cover design. It’s a little trickier to pull off compared to with DJI, and if you’re like me, frequently trying to set this drone up with just one hand, it can be a struggle.
On the other hand, the Evo Lite+ feels more premium and durable. It is still made mostly primarily from plastic, but its more smooth finish gives it the edge. The carbon fiber arms also inspire more confidence and come off as more durable.
The Autel is overall larger and heavier compared to the Air 2S and even slightly larger than the Mavic 3. The Lite+ measures 210×123×95mm when folded and 427×384×95mm unfolded. The Autel has slightly taller feet, giving it additional ground clearance. This is helpful when taking off or landing on less even, rougher terrain, or even in wet areas. I frequently find myself landing in different areas than I originally took off from, and this added clearance makes finding a safe and suitable spot to touch down much easier.
The Air 2S weighs only 595g while the Lite+ is 835g. Most of this comes from its larger 6,174mAh battery vs just 3,500mAh on the Air 2S. This extra weight can also be beneficial with flight stability as it has better wind speed resistance and won't get tossed around as easily.
The Autel is rated for Level 7 wind resistance which is 32-38 mph, while the Air 2S is up to 23 mph and the Mavic 3 up to 27 mph. Flying in these conditions isn't recommended, as you'll get warnings to be extra-cautious and land when it's safe, however, if you've ever flown a drone and encountered short bursts of heavy wind, this is where that improved wind resistance will come in handy.
Autel offers the Evo Lite+ in two packages, Standard or Premium. The standard kit includes everything you need to get started and connect the controller to your phone and of course charge the drone. If you don't plan on flying more than 30-40 min in a single session, or want any of the additional accessories offered, the standard bundle is probably the way to go.
If you plan on flying this drone professionally or want additional flight time beyond the standard 30-40 min that a single battery offers, I recommend going with the Premium bundle. The two additional batteries with the Premium bundle (which retail for $159 separately) are worth the difference alone. With your three batteries, you could get very close to two hours of total flying time, which is very impressive and should be plenty for most users.
The shoulder bag is big enough to fit the drone and the additional premium accessories. It's well-made, with strong zippers, and has plenty of pockets and padded dividers. The multi-charger allows you to connect the three batteries at once, with each charging in order of most to the least percentage. I'll share a few more thoughts on the charging later on in this review. Extra props are always nice, in case the original set gets damaged, but in all my time owning and flying drones, I've never needed to swap them out. More importantly, however, ND filters are also included with the premium bundle. These are essential on really bright days when you want to try and keep your Shutter Speed double your frame rate.
Compared to the DJI Air 2S, the Autel EVO Lite+ costs about 30% more than both the standard kit for the Air 2S at $999 and the Fly More Combo at $1,299. Accessory-wise, both Autel, and DJI include a similar assortment in their bundles. So at first glance, this doesn't look good for Autel, but there are a few key considerations to note.
While on paper, both the EVO Lite+ and Air 2S have similar specs, the Lite+ is almost 2 years newer, which should suggest that it is supported and will continue to receive updates longer. Both use a 20MP 1-inch CMOS sensor with 2.4μm pixel size, but the Air 2S is limited by its fixed f/2.8 aperture whereas the EVO Lite+ has a variable aperture from f/2.8 to f11, just like with the Mavic Pro 2 and Mavic 3. This helps control depth of field, focus, and exposure better and can help you achieve a more "pro" look.
Another key difference is with low light performance. The Air 2S is already very capable with its maximum ISO of 6,400 in manual video capture or ISO 1,600 in D-log, but the Lite+ can reach a ridiculous ISO 48,000 in its dedicated Night Mode. According to Autel, their "intelligent moonlight algorithm, the EVO Lite+ can capture crisp, vibrant details at night with low noise — even when the ISO is cranked up high". There's a lot of background processing to help the Lite+ clean up the noise and add some sharpness and detail back in.
The Lite+'s beefier 6,175mAh battery was instantly noticeable. I try to always return the drone home before it falls below 15% charge. With a maximum flight time of 40 minutes, this results in a more realistic 35 minutes in the air. The Air 2S on the other hand has a maximum flight time of 30 minutes, which is closer to 25 minutes in the air. That 10-min difference can be huge and might be enough to save you from needing to land and swap out for a new battery to get that important shot.
Overall, just like with its design, your initial setup will be very similar to the recent DJI Mavic drones. After downloading the Autel Sky app, you'll be asked to create your account and log in. To get everything paired, turn on the drone by holding its power button located on the rear of the battery, then turn on the controller and connect your phone with one of the USB-C to C, Lighting, or Micro-USB cables that are included.
The phone slides into the mount located at the top of the controller. Pairing is quick, and I never encountered issues with either the controller or the app recognizing that the drone was connected.
The EVO Lite+ was always ready to fly within moments of the controller and phone connecting, unlike with my Mavic which typically requires a lengthy calibration process. When you just want to get up and fly quickly, this is crucial.
Unlike with DJI, Autel doesn't have geofencing built-in, meaning it is up to the user to ensure they are flying safely and obeying all local laws. For users unaware, there are numerous restricted areas that you are either prohibited from flying near, flying over, or even taking off from. DJI has these provisions regularly updated within the app which can help keep you fly safely. Autel places this responsibility on the user end, and you will need to consult official maps or apps like B4UFly during your flights.
Another missing feature is ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance) which provides pilots with the location of other nearby manned and unmanned aircraft. AirSense is a DJI technology incorporated on models released after 2020 except for the DJI Mini 2. It immediately notifies users through the app or controller, helping them fly more safely and avoid collisions. This system is beneficial for new and experienced users alike. Even when flying in safe and legal airspace, there is always the possibility of unexpected aircraft coming close without you being aware.
The EVO Lite+ includes obstacle avoidance sensors on the front, rear, and bottom of the drone.
The Air 2S meanwhile also has upward sensors which can help prevent you from accidentally ascending into something like a tree brand, awning, or overpass. The Mavic 3 wins out with full 360° sensors, which is especially useful for panning, orbiting, and tracking shots. Just as with DJI, your sensors will not work in low light, so exercise caution. When landing, though, the EVO Lite+ will also turn on its rear LED lights to assist.
Testing out its sensors, the EVO Lite+ did a good job at detecting streetlights, mailboxes, branches, bushes, cars, people, and more. Within the app, you can see the proximity of objects to the different sensor directions. When coming back to land, I was able to get the drone to fly within 10 feet of me before it began to dramatically slow down. The drone will allow you to approach at a crawling pace to within about six feet of the detected object before it will not continue further.
You have the option to turn off its sensors if you want full control, but keep in mind the drone will not offer any assistance, notifications, or safety measures if you do that. When coming back in to land in a tighter location with lots of obstacles, I tried this. You need to remember to turn the sensors back on, though, as the app will not do this for you or remind you that they were turned off.
In the future, Autel could add a semi-autonomous flight system, which will allow the EVO Lite+ to navigate around certain obstacles while it's tracking a subject. This feature isn't confirmed, but it would be a nice addition.
Before my first take-off, I took the time to briefly read the included manual just to make sure there wasn’t anything major I should be aware of or needed to do before taking off. Everything seemed very straightforward. I wanted to see if the controls for taking off were the same. I brought the two joysticks inwards, and sure enough, the EVO Lite's propellers started up. A slight push upwards on the left joystick and the drone began to slowly ascend and then held its position waiting for my next input. So far so good!
By default, the app starts you off in beginner mode which limits your speed, flight distance, and height. I took a few minutes flying around in this mode to make sure everything was going well and that I was comfortable with the controls and feel. Again, everything felt very intuitive and similar to the DJI Mavic Pro 2, which is to say, very good.
Some might say the controls are a little spongy, meaning the drone doesn't immediately accelerate or come to a quick stop when you push on or let off on the sticks. Rather, it is a more gradual increase or decrease in speed, which I prefer. When it comes to taking smooth video especially, this helps a lot. If you find yourself preferring more responsive controls, you can change these settings under the advanced parameters within the app.
The controller itself closely resembles that of an Xbox One. It feels well-made and good in the hand, but it's certainly nowhere near as compact compared to DJI. The EVO Lite+ controller has a much more traditional phone holder design, similar to the old Phantom days, versus the new fold-out that the original Mavic introduced, Likewise, although the joysticks are removable, there isn't anywhere to store them within the controller.
The Autel controller lacks a built-in screen to display your speed, altitude, distance, battery life, and overall status.
This is also the case with DJI's newer drones including the Mavic 3, but owning and using the Mavic Pro 2, I became spoiled and feel that it should be a standard feature. Not having this didn’t necessarily take away from the experience of flying the EVO Lite+, but I’ve had several times with my DJI in the past where the App or phone would stop working, and all I could rely on to get the drone back safely was that built-in screen. With the larger footprint of Autel's controller and their higher price point, I feel this is one area they could have stood out from DJI's competition and asserted the EVO Lite+ as the better choice for pros.
My first flight was in Syracuse, NY with brisk 20 °F weather. Snow had just fallen the night before, and we had moderate/strong wind that morning. The EVO Lite+ held its position very well as I messed around with the app to learn its different modes. Obstacle avoidance seemed accurate. I like how the app specifically tells you the distance away from its nose and its back in text format, so you are aware of your proximity without confusion. While taking off from this rather tight location, the sensors were going off until I made it about 15 feet away. I tried a few tests going up close to larger obstacles like a power line pole to see if it would recognize it, and it did.
Autel's Skylink is rated for 12km or 7.4 miles of range without interference. I flew this a good distance away, nowhere near its max claimed range, but within the limits of what I felt was practical and safe for most of my real-world flights. Further out, there were a few times when the signal got a little choppy, but it never completely dropped out. While within 0.6 miles (1km) Its image transmission can provide a 2.7K live video stream to your phone, which is much sharper than DJI's max 1080p stream.
Coming back to land for the first time was a breeze. Using its built-in map, I was very aware of the drone's position and its proximity to me. Once the drone got closer overhead, I brought it slowly down with direct visual without needing the phone. During the entire flight, I felt very in control and didn't encounter anything unexpected or strange. Before I could land, I had to disable its sensors for the drone to allow me to bring it close enough to where it was clear of snow. The DJI Mavic 2 would also alert me, but would still let me fly slowly bring it back in to land in that same spot.
Before moving on to the video and image quality, I want to share a few more thoughts about the app. Most importantly, it works well, and it is reliable. It gets you up and flying quickly and shows you all the important information you’d need and lets you quickly switch to your larger map view which supports zooming in and out when you need it.
At the time of review, the app is still receiving new updates and features. But in its current state, it does lack in a few key areas.
Tracking seems to be hit or miss right now. In standard video modes, it doesn’t seem to be available at all. In the quick shot modes where you can select the subject you want to focus on, it frequently struggles. Even when selecting one of the auto-suggested subjects that it provides on-screen, the drone will either fail to initialize the quick shot, and then repopulate the screen with a different selection of tracking points, or sometimes it will begin the movement, only to fail shortly after or randomly during it.
What's odd is these objects of interest are relatively easy, static, and have high contrast from their surroundings. I tried this with boats, cars, buildings, people, and other large landmarks. From my tests, I was able to get the best results with very large structures like water towers that had minimal other buildings near them. For the time being, I'll toss this up to early software development, but Autel needs to get this fixed soon if they want to make this a big selling feature.
Something interesting I found, is when switching to a quick shot mode, you're limited to 1x zoom, but compared to its standard video mode, the field of view has noticeably more fish-eye distortion. My thought is while shooting in the normal video mode, Autel is performing distortion removal and perhaps this is disabled or too resource-intensive when it attempts a more complicated quick shot mode.
The most recent update brought the much-needed manual controls to Photo and Video, which are now available under a dedicated Manual mode. When in manual mode, you can now adjust your ISO, Shutter Speed, and White Balance. Shooting in the separate Video or Photo will keep you in auto settings.
For photos, you can either shoot JPG, JPG+RAW, or just RAW. For video, you can change your format, your resolution, and your frame rate. The Autel Lite+ loves to tout its ‘6K’ camera, but in reality, its max resolution of 5472x3076 (for video) is nearly identical to the Air 2S at 5472×3078.
Whether it's "6K" according to Autel, or "5.4K" per DJI, both drones can shoot up to 30fps, in 4k up to 60fps, 1080p up to 120fps. The Air 2S has a slight edge with a higher 150Mbps bitrate vs 120Mbps with the Lite+. Both support H.264/MPEG-4 and H.265/HEVC, though I had issues with the H.265 file codec playing back on my MacBook Pro. I had to use Handbrake to convert the files to H.264 to view or edit them.
I found that this has been a prevalent issue for several users for at least the past few years with their earlier drones too. At this time, I only shoot in H.264 until I know this issue is resolved.
Autel claims that HDR modes will become available when shooting in 4K or below. 24fps was recently added in the last update and shows promise for other highly requested features. The DJI Air 2 offered this but dropped it with the Air 2S.
Photos support 10-bit color, while the video is currently limited to 8-bit. There are rumors that 10-bit might also be available in video with a future update. For professional videographers, this is a crucial feature. As of now, this is a limitation of the Autel EVO Lite+, unlike with the Mavic Air 2S.
Similarly, the Air 2S offers D-Log, providing a flat picture profile and more advanced color grading, Autel has announced that picture profiles are coming with a future update, but it is unclear if an equivalent D-Log will be included.
While the Autel can produce very pleasing videos that are well exposed, sharp and punchy out of the box, for those looking for advanced control over the final look, the Air 2S currently has it beat.
I was skeptical at first about its zoom options. 2x looks pretty good, without too much noticeable quality loss. 4x is cool, especially when filming something further out that you either can’t or shouldn’t fly closer to, however, it's quite apparent that it's digital, and doesn't look that great.
It might be acceptable for social media, but don’t expect this to replace a dedicated telephoto lens. That said, just using the zoom feature while looking at it on screen while flying, was pretty fun. I had one flight over a frozen lake where I could hardly make out these small figures walking below. It wasn't until I switched to 4x that I was able to tell it was two people walking their very energetic dog.
Just like with video, I wouldn’t ever use 4x. If you're taking a still image on a 20mp sensor, you’re better off just taking a 1x photo and cropping in the edit as needed. Unless you’re just trying to make a fast and easy shot to post right away, I don’t see the need. Again, I wouldn't use these videos for any kind of professional work, but to get your bearings or just to have fun, it's a great option.
Rather than being inserted downwards, the batteries slide in flat from the back.
They also have two buttons on the side to release them, but I found that the process wasn’t as smooth compared to the DJI Mavic Pro 2. Likewise, the charging with the multi-battery dock is probably one of the most annoying parts of the Autel EVO Lite+. Because of how they have to slide to attach to the connectors of the charger, it’s very awkward and usually requires a few tries to get them secure.
What's worse, is when you try to connect that second or third battery after. The other batteries slide out easily, and it overall isn’t as compact a design compared to the Mavic. Similar to DJI, the multi-charger tops off the battery with most charge first, then moves on to the next.
Currently, there are no third-party chargers available that can charge all three batteries simultaneously.
The Autel EVO Lite+ offers great hardware, flight performance, and photo/video quality. It's also consistently receiving software updates that bring new features and improvements. By the time you read this review, some of the issues I faced will likely already have been fixed.
Similar to its competition, this drone was released with the promise of many other features still yet to come, making it a much stronger contender as a "pro" content creation tool.
In terms of price and feature set, it sits right between the DJI Air 2S and the Mavic 3, which could make it the better choice for some users. If you're looking for a reliable drone for under $1600 that can take excellent photos and videos (even in low light), has long battery life, and is easy to operate, the Autel Evo Lite+ checks all those boxes.
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Tech reviewer, YouTuber & video producer that specializes in pro camera & audio gear. When he's not out filming or editing, he's usually thinking of creative ideas for his next project. Reach out to say hello or discuss future opportunities!
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