Why sub-250 grams is important in the drone world

Josh Spires | 13 May, 2022 | News

Sub-250 grams, a term that you've likely seen when looking for a new drone has grown in popularity over the last few years with manufactures, such as DJI producing drones to specifically fit into this category. But why go to the effort of doing so?

What sub-250 grams?

The reason it's used so much is pretty straight forward, regulations.

Back in 2015, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) created a sub-250-gram weight category for drones. 250 grams was the decided weight after a committee of aviation and drone experts were tasked by the FAA to decide the minimum weight of a drone that needed to be registered for recreational use.

Not long after other countries, Canada, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and Australia agreed on this weight category and began to implement it into its laws and requirements.

As a result of the almost global uptake of the 250-gram weight category countries started to use it as the threshold for many drone regulations as it is considered to light to pose a safety risk.

DJI's whitepaper

In 2017, DJI thought it would take a closer look at the weight limit set by the FAA and found that the 250-gram limit was very conservative. DJI found that drones up to 2.2 kilograms should be considered lowest risk.

However, due to the quick uptake of the 250-gram limit by most countries around the world not much could be done.

250-gram drones now

A few years on and a couple of generations later DJI has just released DJI Mini 3 Pro, an impressive drone that packs a lot of technology and power in less than 249 grams.

DJI's Mini 3 Pro features obstacle avoidance in three directions (forward, backward, downward), packs a powerful camera with great lowlight performance, and has a flight time of over 30 minutes. DJI has done an amazing job adapting to the limitations set.

Source: DJI