Today I flew with the new DJI goggles around my neighborhood to see how everything works and looks. I've had a lot of experience with Headplay goggles over the last year, and I was pretty impressed with the clarity with my P4 and P3P, so now I have a Mavic also and just received the goggles Monday. I've only flown three batteries so my testing isn't extensive, but here's what I have learned so far.
1. The true unique capability of these goggles with DJI Mavic is the fact you aren't tethered to the RC with a cable. You can hand them to someone else (with touch pad locked of course) to see what you're seeing on the iPad. That person could be a half mile away too, if for some reason you need to do that, such as search and rescue, giving the rescue stud the ability to see from the air, a birds eye view, while talking to him by cellphone.
2. The quality of the product is top notch, rating a 9. The comfort of the goggles rates an 8 if you have a strong neck. The ability of using glasses with the goggles rates a 10, every comfortable and accommodating. The tip up ability of the goggle is very convenient if you have good young eyes, but don't help much if you need strong readers to focus the screen, more on that below.
3. The lack of Diopter adjustment rates a 1. It's too bad they couldn't include that, but given the complexity of how the optics work, it appears that it may have been too difficult to accomplish. I'm over 60yrs old, and normally use 2.75X readers for reading a paper or viewing my computer monitor. However with the goggles I need a 6.00X reader to have clarity in the goggles. I found a good selection of quality readers at Speert.com. With 6.00 readers things are crystal clear inside the goggle for me, but if I tip the google up (which is very convenient), you can't see squat, way too blurry of course with that strong of reader. If you hold the iPad about 4" away you can see clear, but you can't see the craft. You really need to have your regular glasses hanging on your shirt ready to use when you fly in to land via VLOS. I would like DJI to offer these goggles with optional optics so I can order 6.00X in lenses and install them myself, but then most other people couldn't use them, only me.
4. Regular monitoring mode. The goggles boots up to monitor in regular mode, meaning it's like any other goggle you buy on the market, viewing-wise, just viewing only, going along for a ride. This mode is what you'd let others use when loaning to see what's showing in your iPad. When you do that its extremely important to lock the goggle's touch pad control with a two finger "swipe to the rear", otherwise the viewer could accidentally, and unknowingly touch the touch pad in a way to take over the craft navigation. If that were to happen by accident your only option without retrieving the goggles and take back control is to enable RTH. This is important to remember if you get disoriented and the viewer isn't nearby to grab the goggles. Just make sure you're way up in the sky away from trees and buildings when you give the goggles to someone else when you first start using them. If you have them in REGULAR mode, this will impress anyone you show them to while flying, it's a very immersive and euphoric experience the first time someone sees it.
5. Navigation "follow head motion" mode. This is an interesting and fun mode. During flight, you basically give the craft a forward flight command with the right stick and let your head movement do the navigation. Look right to turn right, and look left to turn left, look down to descend, look up to ascend. You can also ascend with the left stick since it's the master. The craft will yaw left and right fairly good, and smooth, with practice, however the up and down movement of the gimbal is rough, much rougher than doing this with the gimbal wheel in normal mode. It seems like the sensor technology in the headband doesn't have adequate resolution to move the gimbal with fine precision, like the gimbal wheel can. Hence, this mode is useless when capturing video, it looks terrible with the "notchy" gimbal pitch movements.
6. Gimbal "follow head motion" mode. This is also an interesting and fun mode, however it exhibits the same "notchy" movement with gimbal pitch AND gimbal pans. It's very cool to fly along in one direction and be able to look left, right, up and down with the camera, controlling only the gimbal movement with your head movement. This might be desired when flying for fun, or if your looking for something from the air, however it's worthless when capturing video because the movements are too jerky, or what I'd call "notchy". It reminds me of digital zoom in the Phantom, it's great, but not so great for video during movements, jittery. It's more of a novelty than anything. This mode would be a little risky to let someone else experience while you fly, but it's doable if you're navigating VLOS. You can still see the iPad display if someone else is using the goggles, but the goggle user may not be looking the way you need or want to see. That said, if looking straight ahead forward, the goggle can only look left or right about 30 degrees (my estimate), so you can still see forward direction in the ipad, barely, given the 78 degree FOV, so you can see the direction you're flying, barely. But if the goggle user looks straight down, this may pose a navigation problem if you're beyond VLOS. You may need to say to the user, hey look up so I can see how to navigate, or you simply stop forward motion momentarily until the user looks up again.
7. Screen navigation is intuitive, somewhat. The touch pad on the side take some training, which is offered in the goggle, and it's very useful to go through a couple times and memorize. I admit I haven't read the manual cover to cover, shame on me. However I have watched a lot of YT videos and messed around with the menus inside before I flew. I also stayed at a Holiday Inn Express
, so there you go! With that amount of training I was somewhere competent at using the goggles on my first flights today. The only brain fart I had was figuring out how to turn off a particular flight mode. After successfully clicking and flying with "navigation head follow" mode, I wanted to click back into "regular mode", which is viewing only, but I didn't see this option button in the display. So I clicked the "gimbal follow head" mode and tried that out for a while. After that I was still trying to find the button that said "regular mode" or something to that effect. Turns out there is no button for that, you just have to know to turn off all other modes by clicking them again, and presto, you're back in regular mode by default. That part wasn't as intuitive as I expected, but I figured it out.
8. Value? So I asked myself, would I recommend to buy these to my brother? This is a hard question. Here are my thoughts. I would unlikely use any of the flight modes because they don't move the gimbal in a smooth cinematic way, no video would look good IMO. However, the quality of the screen view is great, even a little better than Headplay, but not much. The comfort is the best on the market IMO. The real value is the wireless feature with Mavic, however I don't fly my Mavic much because I'm not a fan of the camera and gimbal, as I've been spoiled with the P3P, P4 and now P4P. Letting someone else see what you're seeing in the iPad, with the luxury of goggle view, without the bright sun glare, is really nice, I mean really nice. I just wish the goggle would work with P4P, wirelessly, in the same way, in which case I would recommend them to anyone with P4P. So to answer my question, if money is no problem, buy them for the wireless convenience and image quality, not for the gimmicky modes IMO. If $450 is a lot of money to let loose, Headplay's ($250) are almost as good for clarity, and I believe the new Eachine Goggle 2 ($182) may be also (I haven't tried them yet), but don't buy their Goggle One, the screen isn't compatible with DJI dislay aspect ratio, it cuts off the telemetry data on top and bottom. However, those WON'T work with Mavic, only Phantom and Inspire, which have the HDMI port. If you have an HDMI port on your RC or Nvida Shield K1, the Eachine Goggles two may have a problem with wearing glasses, so be careful. The Yuneec HDMI goggle wasn't comfortable, it didn't fit my face, a sharp edge touched my nose, and my nose isn't big. It's made for people with flat faces.
I'm just starting to get use to these DJI goggles. My next test will be using them with my P4P, via USB. What are your thoughts? If you own these goggles, what do you like or dislike?
9. Speed, lack of. When flying with the DJI goggles in any mode the craft if limited to 20mph. This is a PITA, and tips the bucket for me. I won't recommend them to friends for that reason alone, so I'll be selling mine soon.
10. PITN (Pain in the NECK). OK, so I'm over 60, I'm not sure how much that factors into this problem, but extended use of the DJI goggles is a definite problem. Yesterday I flew just one battery for 20min and came away with a neck ache. This is the second time I've notice this PITN.
UPDATE: June 18
I flew my P4P today with the goggles via USB. I rate that with a 3, very poor IMO. The clarity was bad, less than 720 resolution with lots of artifacts. I had the settings at 1080 @ 30FPS but the display was unimpressive, nowhere close to the clarity I got yesterday with the Mavic, wirelessly. I also found out you cannot calibrate the compass or set the RTH height with DJI goggles, you need to disconnect the goggles and use the iPad to do those tasks when flying via USB with non-Mavic craft. My next test is using HDMI, as soon as I get a cable adapter for the DJI provided cable. Can you believe it? DJI didn't include a compatible HDMI cable that will plug into the RC HDMI port, I have to buy an adapter!
UPDATE: June 30
I finally got the HDMI adapter needed with the DJI goggles to fly my P4 via HDMI port. The DJI goggles work OK with the P4, but just OK IMO. I went out on a 10min flight during the golden hour and keep saying to myself I need to focus the camera, but I wasn't flying my P4P. The P4 needs no focusing, so lack of clarity wasn't because of camera focus. The clarity was definitely better than using the goggles with the USB cable, which exhibited a lot of artifacts, but not as good as I was expecting to see with an HDMI connection. I'm pretty sure my Headplay goggles are more clear. So when I got home I compared the Headplay with DJI, and Headplay's are definitely brighter, but I'm unsure about clarity. I'll need to test while flying, side by side to pass judgment. I just remember being so impressed with Headplay's clarity using HDMI, and I was expecting the same with the DJI goggles via HDMI, but no joy. I know my reader glasses (6.00 X) are correct because during bootup the DJI logo is crystal clear on the screen.
UPDATE: July 4
I must have been mistaken about NAVIGATION via HEAD MOTION when flying the Mavic. You cannot descend and ascend with head motion like I thought during initial testing. I could have sworn it did, but I cannot reproduce it. However, my goggle was not working right anyway, as I couldn't even get the GIMBAL to follow HEAD MOVEMENT mode to work, at all! Something strange is going on with my goggles, and I'm not sure what. The NAVIGATION to follow HEAD MOVEMENT works OK to turn left and right, but the mode to control the gimbal only was broke.
I did a comparison side by side of the Headplay goggle with DJI's goggle via HDMI with my P4. Both of them were about the same for clarity, but the Headplay screen is brighter. Even with the DJI brightness setting at MAX, the Headplay screen was brighter, which makes Headplay look more clear, but it was really about the same for clarity between the two goggles at 720 resolution when using the HDMI port with my P4 craft.
I struggle to see all of the telemetry information on the screen of the DJI goggle without having to move the goggle with my hand on my head, up and down. When the top of the screen is in view, the bottom of the screen isn't. This may be due to using glasses, I'm not sure, but I have the same problem with Headplay goggles. This is a bit annoying, but tolerable.
Yesterday I flew 3 batteries in a row with the DJI goggles for the first time, one with my P4 and two with my Mavic. At the end I had a seriously sore neck from the weight of the goggle. Past flights with the DJI goggles I didn't notice this, but I had only flown one or two batteries, so beware this may be an issue with some people. I've never had this issue with Headplay goggle, which is lighter.
1. The true unique capability of these goggles with DJI Mavic is the fact you aren't tethered to the RC with a cable. You can hand them to someone else (with touch pad locked of course) to see what you're seeing on the iPad. That person could be a half mile away too, if for some reason you need to do that, such as search and rescue, giving the rescue stud the ability to see from the air, a birds eye view, while talking to him by cellphone.
2. The quality of the product is top notch, rating a 9. The comfort of the goggles rates an 8 if you have a strong neck. The ability of using glasses with the goggles rates a 10, every comfortable and accommodating. The tip up ability of the goggle is very convenient if you have good young eyes, but don't help much if you need strong readers to focus the screen, more on that below.
3. The lack of Diopter adjustment rates a 1. It's too bad they couldn't include that, but given the complexity of how the optics work, it appears that it may have been too difficult to accomplish. I'm over 60yrs old, and normally use 2.75X readers for reading a paper or viewing my computer monitor. However with the goggles I need a 6.00X reader to have clarity in the goggles. I found a good selection of quality readers at Speert.com. With 6.00 readers things are crystal clear inside the goggle for me, but if I tip the google up (which is very convenient), you can't see squat, way too blurry of course with that strong of reader. If you hold the iPad about 4" away you can see clear, but you can't see the craft. You really need to have your regular glasses hanging on your shirt ready to use when you fly in to land via VLOS. I would like DJI to offer these goggles with optional optics so I can order 6.00X in lenses and install them myself, but then most other people couldn't use them, only me.
4. Regular monitoring mode. The goggles boots up to monitor in regular mode, meaning it's like any other goggle you buy on the market, viewing-wise, just viewing only, going along for a ride. This mode is what you'd let others use when loaning to see what's showing in your iPad. When you do that its extremely important to lock the goggle's touch pad control with a two finger "swipe to the rear", otherwise the viewer could accidentally, and unknowingly touch the touch pad in a way to take over the craft navigation. If that were to happen by accident your only option without retrieving the goggles and take back control is to enable RTH. This is important to remember if you get disoriented and the viewer isn't nearby to grab the goggles. Just make sure you're way up in the sky away from trees and buildings when you give the goggles to someone else when you first start using them. If you have them in REGULAR mode, this will impress anyone you show them to while flying, it's a very immersive and euphoric experience the first time someone sees it.
5. Navigation "follow head motion" mode. This is an interesting and fun mode. During flight, you basically give the craft a forward flight command with the right stick and let your head movement do the navigation. Look right to turn right, and look left to turn left, look down to descend, look up to ascend. You can also ascend with the left stick since it's the master. The craft will yaw left and right fairly good, and smooth, with practice, however the up and down movement of the gimbal is rough, much rougher than doing this with the gimbal wheel in normal mode. It seems like the sensor technology in the headband doesn't have adequate resolution to move the gimbal with fine precision, like the gimbal wheel can. Hence, this mode is useless when capturing video, it looks terrible with the "notchy" gimbal pitch movements.
6. Gimbal "follow head motion" mode. This is also an interesting and fun mode, however it exhibits the same "notchy" movement with gimbal pitch AND gimbal pans. It's very cool to fly along in one direction and be able to look left, right, up and down with the camera, controlling only the gimbal movement with your head movement. This might be desired when flying for fun, or if your looking for something from the air, however it's worthless when capturing video because the movements are too jerky, or what I'd call "notchy". It reminds me of digital zoom in the Phantom, it's great, but not so great for video during movements, jittery. It's more of a novelty than anything. This mode would be a little risky to let someone else experience while you fly, but it's doable if you're navigating VLOS. You can still see the iPad display if someone else is using the goggles, but the goggle user may not be looking the way you need or want to see. That said, if looking straight ahead forward, the goggle can only look left or right about 30 degrees (my estimate), so you can still see forward direction in the ipad, barely, given the 78 degree FOV, so you can see the direction you're flying, barely. But if the goggle user looks straight down, this may pose a navigation problem if you're beyond VLOS. You may need to say to the user, hey look up so I can see how to navigate, or you simply stop forward motion momentarily until the user looks up again.
7. Screen navigation is intuitive, somewhat. The touch pad on the side take some training, which is offered in the goggle, and it's very useful to go through a couple times and memorize. I admit I haven't read the manual cover to cover, shame on me. However I have watched a lot of YT videos and messed around with the menus inside before I flew. I also stayed at a Holiday Inn Express
, so there you go! With that amount of training I was somewhere competent at using the goggles on my first flights today. The only brain fart I had was figuring out how to turn off a particular flight mode. After successfully clicking and flying with "navigation head follow" mode, I wanted to click back into "regular mode", which is viewing only, but I didn't see this option button in the display. So I clicked the "gimbal follow head" mode and tried that out for a while. After that I was still trying to find the button that said "regular mode" or something to that effect. Turns out there is no button for that, you just have to know to turn off all other modes by clicking them again, and presto, you're back in regular mode by default. That part wasn't as intuitive as I expected, but I figured it out.8. Value? So I asked myself, would I recommend to buy these to my brother? This is a hard question. Here are my thoughts. I would unlikely use any of the flight modes because they don't move the gimbal in a smooth cinematic way, no video would look good IMO. However, the quality of the screen view is great, even a little better than Headplay, but not much. The comfort is the best on the market IMO. The real value is the wireless feature with Mavic, however I don't fly my Mavic much because I'm not a fan of the camera and gimbal, as I've been spoiled with the P3P, P4 and now P4P. Letting someone else see what you're seeing in the iPad, with the luxury of goggle view, without the bright sun glare, is really nice, I mean really nice. I just wish the goggle would work with P4P, wirelessly, in the same way, in which case I would recommend them to anyone with P4P. So to answer my question, if money is no problem, buy them for the wireless convenience and image quality, not for the gimmicky modes IMO. If $450 is a lot of money to let loose, Headplay's ($250) are almost as good for clarity, and I believe the new Eachine Goggle 2 ($182) may be also (I haven't tried them yet), but don't buy their Goggle One, the screen isn't compatible with DJI dislay aspect ratio, it cuts off the telemetry data on top and bottom. However, those WON'T work with Mavic, only Phantom and Inspire, which have the HDMI port. If you have an HDMI port on your RC or Nvida Shield K1, the Eachine Goggles two may have a problem with wearing glasses, so be careful. The Yuneec HDMI goggle wasn't comfortable, it didn't fit my face, a sharp edge touched my nose, and my nose isn't big. It's made for people with flat faces.
I'm just starting to get use to these DJI goggles. My next test will be using them with my P4P, via USB. What are your thoughts? If you own these goggles, what do you like or dislike?
9. Speed, lack of. When flying with the DJI goggles in any mode the craft if limited to 20mph. This is a PITA, and tips the bucket for me. I won't recommend them to friends for that reason alone, so I'll be selling mine soon.
10. PITN (Pain in the NECK). OK, so I'm over 60, I'm not sure how much that factors into this problem, but extended use of the DJI goggles is a definite problem. Yesterday I flew just one battery for 20min and came away with a neck ache. This is the second time I've notice this PITN.
UPDATE: June 18
I flew my P4P today with the goggles via USB. I rate that with a 3, very poor IMO. The clarity was bad, less than 720 resolution with lots of artifacts. I had the settings at 1080 @ 30FPS but the display was unimpressive, nowhere close to the clarity I got yesterday with the Mavic, wirelessly. I also found out you cannot calibrate the compass or set the RTH height with DJI goggles, you need to disconnect the goggles and use the iPad to do those tasks when flying via USB with non-Mavic craft. My next test is using HDMI, as soon as I get a cable adapter for the DJI provided cable. Can you believe it? DJI didn't include a compatible HDMI cable that will plug into the RC HDMI port, I have to buy an adapter!
UPDATE: June 30
I finally got the HDMI adapter needed with the DJI goggles to fly my P4 via HDMI port. The DJI goggles work OK with the P4, but just OK IMO. I went out on a 10min flight during the golden hour and keep saying to myself I need to focus the camera, but I wasn't flying my P4P. The P4 needs no focusing, so lack of clarity wasn't because of camera focus. The clarity was definitely better than using the goggles with the USB cable, which exhibited a lot of artifacts, but not as good as I was expecting to see with an HDMI connection. I'm pretty sure my Headplay goggles are more clear. So when I got home I compared the Headplay with DJI, and Headplay's are definitely brighter, but I'm unsure about clarity. I'll need to test while flying, side by side to pass judgment. I just remember being so impressed with Headplay's clarity using HDMI, and I was expecting the same with the DJI goggles via HDMI, but no joy. I know my reader glasses (6.00 X) are correct because during bootup the DJI logo is crystal clear on the screen.
UPDATE: July 4
I must have been mistaken about NAVIGATION via HEAD MOTION when flying the Mavic. You cannot descend and ascend with head motion like I thought during initial testing. I could have sworn it did, but I cannot reproduce it. However, my goggle was not working right anyway, as I couldn't even get the GIMBAL to follow HEAD MOVEMENT mode to work, at all! Something strange is going on with my goggles, and I'm not sure what. The NAVIGATION to follow HEAD MOVEMENT works OK to turn left and right, but the mode to control the gimbal only was broke.
I did a comparison side by side of the Headplay goggle with DJI's goggle via HDMI with my P4. Both of them were about the same for clarity, but the Headplay screen is brighter. Even with the DJI brightness setting at MAX, the Headplay screen was brighter, which makes Headplay look more clear, but it was really about the same for clarity between the two goggles at 720 resolution when using the HDMI port with my P4 craft.
I struggle to see all of the telemetry information on the screen of the DJI goggle without having to move the goggle with my hand on my head, up and down. When the top of the screen is in view, the bottom of the screen isn't. This may be due to using glasses, I'm not sure, but I have the same problem with Headplay goggles. This is a bit annoying, but tolerable.
Yesterday I flew 3 batteries in a row with the DJI goggles for the first time, one with my P4 and two with my Mavic. At the end I had a seriously sore neck from the weight of the goggle. Past flights with the DJI goggles I didn't notice this, but I had only flown one or two batteries, so beware this may be an issue with some people. I've never had this issue with Headplay goggle, which is lighter.
Last edited:
