A couple of weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban new DJI drones in America – which is now sitting around awaiting the Senate's attention. At first many panicked and rushed to sell their drones – but that might be a very bad move.
I actually spoke to DJI about the proposed ban, who openly called it worrying, but even if it passes it is not likely to be retroactive – meaning that existing DJI products would still work.
In fact, for the drones to stop working, the American government would have to ask a company that it keeps labeling as a "Chinese company" to send a software update that would brick them. Not only would that be exceptionally fascist, but it is asking a lot of a company you've just barred from doing business; when the US government banned Huawei phones, that company didn't brick old models either.
At the moment, DJI has the best contenders in most categories of our best camera drones guide – as well as best thermal drones and best beginner drones. Of course, some businesses will insist you use non-DJI drones, so we do have a list of the best non-DJI drones, but even some of those are licensed clones.
In terms of camera drones especially, there isn't really a lot of competition from American companies. Skydio, for example, pulled out of the consumer market and only sells higher-priced commercial models, while most never even tried.
A DJI ban will, at first, simply leave a bit of a vacuum, so the best tech will be the drones you're not allowed to buy any more – or at least, come from a company not allowed to get FCC licenses on new models.
That could actually increase the value of all the DJI models on sale up until the ban, the DJI Air 3 and DJI Mavic 3 Pro being prime examples. Any other models DJI manages to get approved while the FCC is still acting free of a ban would be valuable, too.
The same applies to DJI's cameras, like the rumored Osmo Action 5, though DJI's competitive advantage in that space is far lower than with drones.
I've already seen commentators on YouTube and Reddit discussing this issue and saying how they plan to keep their DJI drones aloft as long as possible.
It's also unlikely that an American company would be interested in entering the consumer drone market, given the frequent changes of legislation around consumer use. The US alone is too small a market – and drone rules have changed far more than, say, light aircraft licenses.
It's also true that the same congresswoman, Elise Stefanik, who promoted the first ban (which, we should remember, still hasn't passed) is already promoting a massive tax hike on Chinese drones.
If passed, that would over time make all DJI drones (and, frankly, most that compete on any level with them) much more expensive – again adding value to the used drone market.
All of which is to say, you might judge it to be a very good time to snap up a DJI drone after all.
(All of this is relevant only to the country threatening the freedom to buy drones – America. The market in the rest of the world won't be threatened, and any Mavic 4 or the like will arrive as usual).
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