How far can a drone fly? Of the drones that use hand held remote controls, the one with longest transmission distance is the DJI Matrice 300 RTK Commercial Drone System. It can fly up to 9 miles (15km) away from its remote control.
When surveying a set of 14 hand-held remote control operated, commercial, industrial and retail videography type drones, with prices ranging from a couple hundred dollars, to close to fifty thousand dollars, the average distance they could fly, away from their remote controls, was 4.7 miles.
The shortest nominal distance belonged to the Sony Airpeak S1 Professional Drone, which could only fly 1.2 miles from its remote control. The furthest nominal transmission distance belonged to the DJI Matice 300 RTK, as previously stated.
For the purposes of this article, I won’t be covering military style drones, or any other drones not controlled by a small, hand held remote control with an internal battery. Nor will I cover drones under $100, that are more along the lines of toys.
How far can a drone fly in terms of linear mileage in the air?
As far as how many flight miles a drone can fly on one battery charge, the answer is too complicated to know without extensive controlled testing on various makes and models.
One would first have to know the most efficient velocity a particular model of drone can travel at. Then figure out the battery draw down rate at that velocity. And this is best done through experiment.
Examining DJI spec data and its limitations
DJI does often publish flight velocities for their various drone models in which the longest battery life was observed. Based on this one can sort of create an implied max flight distance for these, by converting the flight times to hours then multiplying such by the corresponding velocities.
However this process is clearly flawed, as can be observed when looking at the DJI Mini 3 Pro’s measured max flight distance, versus it’s max distance based on it max battery life, and velocity observed at that maximum. For whatever reason DJI gave us a measured distance just for that particular model.
Calculated max distances for DJI model drones based on max battery time
| Drone | Max flight time and corresponding velocity | Max flight distance |
|---|---|---|
| DJI Mini 3 Pro (empirically measured max distance) | not applicable | 25km with Intelligent Flight Battery Plus |
| DJI Mini 3 Pro (implied max distance based on max flight time) | 47 min. @ 21.6kph | 16.9km |
| DJI Mini 2 | 31 min. @ 16.9kph | 8.7km |
| DJI Mini SE | 30 min. @ 17kph | 8.5km |
Correcting the flaw based on DJI Mini 3 Pro data
Just looking at the implied max distance versus the actual, observed max distance for the DJI Mini 3 Pro, 16.9km versus 25km, we can then say it’s true max distance is 48% above its implied one. And if that held true for all DJI models we could then say the Mini 2 could fly a max of 12.9km, and the Mini SE could fly a max of 12.6km.
Anyway let’s try to explain these discrepancies.
Finding the sweet spot
If you gun a drone at max velocity, it will likely run the battery down quickly, as it deals with pushing the air molecules out of its way, as it travels through air space. This is because in the fluid dynamics equation, that defines power needed to push a vehicle through the air around it, as a function of velocity, that velocity component of the equation is squared. This means, past its most efficient velocity, it takes exponentially more power to fly at a marginally higher velocity.
Related: Check out my calculations on how much an overhead, rack mounted luggage carrier reduces a Toyota Prius Prime’s fuel efficiency. There you’ll be able to see the equations I used to solve that problem, which are similar in nature to the fluid dynamic equation needed to figure out a drone’s max efficiency.
Conversely if you fly the drone too slow, then all the power ends up going to just keeping the drone in the air, and less power is diverted to pushing it forward for a given unit of time. So in this case the drone suffers from inefficient power allocation to its horizontal plane.
The sweet spot is of course between these two extremes.
Thought experiment example
I watched a guy on YouTube push a DJ Mavic Mini out 18,090 feet, and it barely made it back to its launch spot, before the battery failed at 24 minutes and 2 seconds into the flight. That means the drone was able to fly at 1,507 feet per minute (27.6kph) on average, for a total of 6.85 miles.
But what if the drone had be throttled to 1,250 feet per minute (22.9kph) on average, and that let the battery last to 30 minutes? In that case the drone would have been able to fly 7.1 miles. I’m not saying this is true. I’m just illustrating the concept of the most efficient flight velocity.
You can only find that sweet spot by observing multiple flights of varying velocities, in similar, preferably minimal wind velocity conditions.
Best max flight time to weight ratio may provide a clue
But in lieu of knowing this sweet spot velocity, or a particular drone’s drag coefficient, etc., I’m going to surmise that the drone that can fly the longest linear path is the one that has the best max flight time to weight ratio. Well, at least when it comes to drones of similar weights.
But since many small drones are designed to be right around that 249 gram cut off weight, where the user doesn’t have to register it with the government, then all that’s left to do is look at how long their battery lasts.
And this is true for the DJI Mini 3 Pro, as shown above on my first table.
How far away can a drone fly away from its remote control?
However, since folks asking this question are really asking which drones can be flown the furthest from their remote controls, let check out some different categories with that in mind.
Commercial and Industrial Application Drones
How far can a commercial drone fly? I did a semi-random survey of high priced, commercial application drones, used for anything from inspecting power lines to data heavy geological mapping and surveys.
The prices ran from a few thousand dollars, up to forty nine thousand dollars! You’d think for these type of prices, they would fly huge distances. Alas, some of them were designed to carry heavy payloads, large professional cameras, or were designed for applications that didn’t involve being that far away from the operator.
I did find it interesting that the most expensive drone in the survey, the Leica Aibot, didn’t list a max transmission distance, but did list a max vertical distance of up to 2.8 miles, or about half the altitude of what a commercial airplane flies at.
| Drone Model | Max distance from RC | Max flight time per battery |
|---|---|---|
| DJI Matrice 300 RTK Commercial Drone System | 9 miles (15km) | 55 min. |
| Leica Aibot SX RTK UAV Drone Package | 2.8 miles vertical (4.5km); travel not specified | 18-33 min. |
| Sony Airpeak S1 Professional Drone | 1.2 miles (1.9km) | 12-22 min. |
| Teledyne FLIR SIRAS Professional Drone With Thermal and Visible Camera Payload | 6 miles (9 km) | 31 min. |
| SwellPro Splashdrone 4 Fishing Drone Bundle New | >3.1 miles (>5km) | 30 min. |
| DJI Matrice 210 RTK-G Drone Combo | 4.3 miles (7km) | 13-38 min. |
How far can a drone retailing between $500 and $1,000 fly?
I repeated my survey for drones under $1,000, but over $500. These are premium priced, hobby and semi-professional videography style drones. And they are quite lighter than their commercial counterparts, possibly giving them more room to run. So surely they would have credibly high transmission ranges, right?
Turns out, when your design a drone to be small enough to skirt the registration regulation, this limits that battery size, and then that limits flight time. Therefore you don’t see an extreme difference in flight times between the smaller drones here, and those larger commercial counterparts.
Remote control weight and comfort are a limiting factor
But what really limits the transmission distance on these is how much power the remote control can utilize to power their radio waves. Stronger signals allow for longer transmission distances, but eat battery power. And thus the real limiting factor is user comfort in holding their remote control, with regard to battery size and weight.
| Drone | Max distance from RC | Max flight time per battery |
|---|---|---|
| DJI Mini 3 Pro (DJI RC) | 7.5 miles (12km) | 34-47 min. (depending on battery model used) |
| EXO Blackhawk 2 | 5+ miles (8km+) | 35+ min. |
| Sony Cinemaster 4k GPS | 6 miles (9.7km) | 40 min. |
| Autel Robotics EVO Nano+ Drone | 6.2 miles | 28 min. |
How far can a drone retailing between $100 and $500 fly?
And here is my survey of drones between $100 and $500. After a while you start to see a pattern, where the DJI made drones have the best transmission distances, regardless of category. DJI’s tend to be better quality than their EXO competitors, when it comes to real world performance.
| DJI Mini 2 | 6.2 miles (10km) | 31 min. |
| EXO Mini | 5 miles | 41 min. |
| Potensic DREAMER Pro GPS 4K | 1.2 miles (2km) | 28 min. |
| NiGHT LiONS TECH GPS Drones with 4K UHD | 2.5 miles (4km) | 30 min. |
Further Reading
Thanks for checking out my thoughts on how far a drone can fly. I’m mostly tackling the subject of drones from the perspective of a hiker and backpacker, wanting to grab some trail and wilderness footage. So check out my article on which drones I think are best for hiking and backpacking. Or check out my landscape photography and videography page for hikers. See ya out there…