P3 Battery Life

[mchernis]

I got my P3 last week and have taken it out for 4-5 flights using my Nexus 7 and the newest Android app. I have NOT upgraded to the new firmware released today and for the most part everything seems to work properly. However, I'm not experiencing anything close to the 24+ minute battery life DJI is suggesting -- I'm getting closer to 16-17 minutes. On one of the flights, we also took out my P2V3 and did a bit of a comparison and found the P3 was down to 20% while the P2V3 was still at about 45%. Particularly, worrying is how quickly the battery seems to drop after it falls below 70%.

I've tried a lowering the video quality to 1080p/24 but that did not seem to make much of a difference. The other thing I noticed is that the Nexus 7 gets very hot and also chews through its battery when using the DJI app. I doubt this is issue is related to P3 battery life but certainly suggests both devices are working pretty hard and chewing up the battery.

Ideas? How are others feeling about battery life with the new bird?

 

[BrewserB]

I've got the same setup. I've only been able to fly once due to nonstop rain. I never noticed the heat. I also didn't time my flight but it seemed to go pretty fast but I was really pushing it, like taking it as high as it could go and zooming around the neighborhood. I ran 4k but I highly doubt changing the res would affect battery. I'll reply back as soon as I can use it again.

 

[Txtwostep]

I've had my P3P since 4/30/2015 and logged 10 flights so far. I noticed the first five or so I was getting around 16-18 minutes flight time. My last several flights have shown an increase in time though. Now I'm getting 20-23 minutes. Obviously, flying more aggressively (higher, faster, farther) does cut into the time as I saw when trying out ATTI mode. Maybe the increase is due to conditioning the battery after several power cycles.

 

[mchernis]

Interesting. Hopefully, it is just conditioning the battery as I have not been flying aggressively at all. If I have the time tomorrow, I'm going to do a P2V3 vs. P3 battery life contest. I'll charge up both birds, make sure the video settings are the same, and record the battery life while hovering at equal altitude.

In most regards, the P3 is a big improvement over the P2V3 (I'll be selling that one soon) but the battery life is very disappointing so far.

Mark

 

[Ian H]

I got my P3 last week and have taken it out for 4-5 flights using my Nexus 7 and the newest Android app. I have NOT upgraded to the new firmware released today and for the most part everything seems to work properly. However, I'm not experiencing anything close to the 24+ minute battery life DJI is suggesting -- I'm getting closer to 16-17 minutes. On one of the flights, we also took out my P2V3 and did a bit of a comparison and found the P3 was down to 20% while the P2V3 was still at about 45%. Particularly, worrying is how quickly the battery seems to drop after it falls below 70%.

I've tried a lowering the video quality to 1080p/24 but that did not seem to make much of a difference. The other thing I noticed is that the Nexus 7 gets very hot and also chews through its battery when using the DJI app. I doubt this is issue is related to P3 battery life but certainly suggests both devices are working pretty hard and chewing up the battery.

Ideas? How are others feeling about battery life with the new bird?

I'm using a Nexus 7 (2013) as well and my tablet stayed very cool actually, no heating up at all through my first 4 flights - didn't chew up the battery too badly on my tablet, maybe 25% per 20 minute flight which I find acceptable considering the hard work it's doing to live stream.

I will time my next flights, but I'm guessing that battery conditioning will help as well - I think that battery life will level out quite well. Considering I'm coming from a SYMA X5C at 7 minutes per battery this seems like an eternity in the air!