Best Drones for Virtual Tours

Intro

Hey all, welcome back to another Momentum 360 weekly blog! If this is your first time with us, welcome aboard! We teach millions of people around the world how to grow their business with content. In this one, we’ll be discussing the best drones to use for virtual tours!

If this is your second time reading one of Momentum 360’s blogs, welcome back! We’re glad we could provide you enough value to come back again.

So let’s tackle this question, as virtual tours become more and more popular, what’s the best option? Which one produces the best value? Which one produces the best panos? What’s the most expensive? All of these questions will finally be answered!

So grab a snack, pop a squat, and read what we hope to be an action packed blog of value to help your business grow or make it easier for you to hire us if you need this service!

Why Are Drones Used for Virtual Tours?

Best Drones for Virtual Tours

Drones for virtual tours really started becoming popular back in the early 2010s as virtual technology was first coming up. 360 photographers were able to simply take ground 360 panos with their ricoh theta cameras and other beginner 360 cameras were starting to come out.

To couple that with softwares such as 3D Vista, Cloudpano and other ones coming out that can handle drone panos, there’s so much more value with adding in a drone. On top of just looking good, it lets the tour flow so much better and show off the property.

For example, if a real estate listing has over 10+ acres, and the realtor just wants to market the interior and exterior of the property, I’d say they’re doing their client a disservice because they’re not marketing the most valuable part of the property, which is the land!

With the increasing acceleration of technology, drones will now have the capability to do 3D style renderings, somewhat of what Matterport does for their 3D models. What this simply means is that now builders and developers alike will have the ability to model their own building from drones, instead of relying on engineers and architects to get them drawings. This is a huge use-case for virtual tours integrating drones.

The best drones for virtual tours have a multi-use fix that creates tremendous value for separate types of niches.

Benefits of Using Drones for Virtual Tours?

Best Drones for Virtual Tours

Like we discussed in the previous section, there’s just so much more value that’s created when using drones for virtual tours. The ability to see an aerial perspective or a real estate property or small business gives more confidence, clarity and decision power to the buyer. Without drone panos in all honesty, the buyer is somewhat missing out on crucial details that they themselves would have to look up.

If I’m a realtor and I’m faced with whether or not to create my virtual tour with drone panos, I’m going to do them regardless 100% of the time. I’d much rather create trust with my client immediately with the property since they know where the property is, if it’s a good/decent/bad location in proximity to the rest of the area, and many more factors and variables that go into a real estate transaction.

More realtors will be using drones anyway to do videos, so it’s only logical that as virtual tours become more popular, virtual tours will continue to add drone panos. The same goes for business owners looking to provide more clarity to their customers.

And what happens when you give more clarity to your customers? You make them trust you more, so you have more credibility in the marketplace so you’re able to win more customers from referrals and other people who love your product.

Which Drone Brand is Ideally Used for Virtual Tours?

There’s no many types of drones that are used for many different purposes. From the thousands of projects that Momentum 360 has finished since 2017, we’d recommend using a DJI drone for any virtual tour project.

When looking around for a brand that has the best capabilities on average, it’s the DJI brand. We’re somewhat biased towards DJI hence we’re only used them and no other brand, but from what I’ve seen and who I’ve talked to in the industry, I’d say our claim is justified.

DJI has a solid reputation in the industry with many different industries such as real estate and small businesses, with popular virtual tour softwares such as Cloudpano, 3D Vista, Kuula and many others using DJI drones to capture their content.

We get asked some questions that shouldn’t we be using more expensive drones, more advanced ones. To be honest, we don’t need any advanced drones as they don’t add any other value to our production. Even if we were to buy a drone that costs most likely in the $10-$20k range, the benefits that we’d be getting are so marginal that it’s not worth it at all.

Best Drone Value for a Virtual Tour?

Best Drones for Virtual Tours

If you’re solely looking for value, and don’t care about price, this is the section for now. By now, you know that dealing with the DJI brand is what we recommend, but which drone in their arsenal creates the most value for your clients? Our answer is the DJI Mini Pro 3. Coming in at roughly $1000, this is one of the most valuable drones that one could buy in today’s market. Momentum 360 would love to help with this!

Specs:

Weight = 250g
Controller = Yes
Camera resolution = 12.1MP
Flight time = 35 minutes
Range = 8-12 km

We’ve used this drone several hundred times this year without any complaints, the value that it’s been able to generate with our clients is tremendous. If you aren’t worried about price, we’d recommend using something like the Mini Pro 3 for your aerial 360 virtual tours.

We’ve used so many types of DJI Mini’s over the years, each drone increasing in value as time goes on.

Best Drone Price for a Virtual Tour?

Now, if you’re looking for a drone that creates good value but doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, we’d recommend buying a DJI Mini 2. Coming in at around $450, a photographer that’s looking to begin their portfolio of shooting drone panos will be very well off using the Mini 2.

Specs:

Weight = 250g

Controller = Yes

Camera Resolution = 12 MP

Battery Size = 2,250 mAh

Range = 5.8 GHz: 10km (FCC); 6km (SRRC)

For what it’s worth, you’re better off just buying this drone for your virtual tours until you can invest in a camera that has better specs and capabilities. You can also contact Momentum 360 for all your needs!

What’s the Best Drone for a Virtual Tour?

So, the answer you’ve all been waiting for. From all of the DJI drones we’ve used in the past and what we anticipate in the future, we would say the best pound for pound drone for virtual tours, is a DJI Air 2S. Coming in at $1000, this drone is the best all-around drone for capturing video, photos, and most importantly panos as we’re talking about.

Conclusion

Best Drones for Virtual Tours

Momentum 360 has been doing virtual tours including drones since 2017, if you’re a real estate company or any other business looking for a virtual tour with a drone, or a virtual tour in general, we can help with this.

Momentum 360 is a Premiere Small Business and Real Estate marketing company in Philadelphia and tri-state area. Our main service offerings are 3D Virtual Tours powered by Matterport, as well as photography and videography. We are both a Matterport Service Provider and Google Trusted Photography agency.

While 3D Virtual Tours started in real estate, they are versatile and applicable across every industry. Momentum 360 specializes in virtual tours for real estate, small businesses, restaurants, retail, healthcare, professional services, and much more. These virtual tours help our clients showcase their business online, while also allowing them to rank higher on Google with SEO, and get more followers on social media. Call for a quote!