DJI O3 vs Avatar V2 vs Caddx Vista Range and Penetration Testing 

I'm skeptical of the Walksnail reported latency numbers. It's not plausible to me that the actual latency is as consistent as they report.

There is one piece of information missing here: The DJI system calculates the distance to air unit by measuring the signal propagation time and reacts in some way to that. (By the way, that is how the Goggles V2 does know when to cut the video output at 13.3km). We don't know yet if the system scales its output power with measured distance. This has to be measured in the open, since you cannot easily simulate signal propagation time in a lab.

Can confirm in real life that 03 has more penetration in concrete than any other video system (vs analog, hdzero, og dji, and walksnail)

Awesome work! With this first round, HDZero could very well jump in! Great content as usual!!!

Just started watching, but just wanted to say THANK YOU! Finally someone who does a proper test.

One thing I notice with walksnail is that it seems to perform best at 700mw on 25mbps. Would be interesting to see a bench test with those settings.

Thank you from Brazil! Great content.

Nice video Mr Rosser. 🇬🇧You sound normal again after that nasty cold, (Prob flu 🤒) good that you’re back. 👍😎

Great testing! I've done something similar but with vista and antennas. Attenuation in my case by distance ;) Cool to see in such a controlled test how the o3 is more consistent in the extremes, which correlates to a lot of real world flying in the wood tests. Greets, Mario

The problem is that this is the reported latencies, and we know that WS is not reporting the true latency...but O3 looks to keep the link with a lot more range and low latency at the limit not spiking, we should also check how the image looks like when the bitrate drops that would be more useful because on the same bitrate O3 will have a much better looking image

long awaited, thanks)

This is great and sheds a lot of light on the two major variable latency digital video systems. I too would love to see a comparison between the Avatar power and latency modes to see why it seems to counter intuitively so better on lower power.

Hmm, the fact that the Power output of the O3 seems to be the same in CE and FCC strongly suggests that there is some flaw in the Test setup... But interesting nevertheless... Will be interesting to see the true rms power in the two modes :)

walksnail consistency OP! great stuff. i had a feeling it was good.

I look forward to the next video on this! From my findings, the V2 Avatar system has less range then the V1. Also, for some reason the V2 wants to be powered by 6S or the voltage OSD will be red like it's warning you that it's to low of voltage, and I believe it's affecting the range just slightly, not by much but some. The V1 system has the best range, as I have tried several different antenna setups and configurations and the V1 was the best everytime. Cheers 🍻

Really cool testing! I do wonder tho, how accurate the walksnail delay readings are. Werent does numbers self reported by the system quite fake and higher in reality?

Hi Chris, is it possible that the higher framerate fluctuation for the DJI units is due to that system using a smaller time window to calculate the framerate compared to Walksnail? Curious to also see you do some testing using 700mv on Walksnail.

Great work! Still thinking about a digital system to go on with. DJI and Walksnail both have pros and cons. Hard choice which costs a lot.

Respect for your work and time you tale to choose the good process. I don't know what is your job but i think your company has Lucky.

Well done!!!!

I wonder if the latency reporting by dji and walksnail are directly comparable as one could be using some sort of averaging algorithm to make the latency seem more stable than it is. I guess the only caveat to this is that you are reliant of the two systems reporting of latency and bitrate being accurate and/or truthful.

Good testing. I'd also add information about sw verions that was used in tests. WS users report performance degradation for 33.39.10

Very interesting, having flown walksnail I think I prefer the delay values for the O3, the occasional spikes to hundreds of ms are far more annoying than consistently going between 30-50 imo. One other factor that determines range/pen in a practical sense is the method of breakup for each of the systems; Walksnail when I fly in bandos starts horizontally smearing a lot which makes me less confident flying at lower bitrate walksnail than I would be with the O3 breakup, which is fuzzy round the edges and holds the centre image very well.

great data

Thanks, very interesting! Could you please provide links to the variable attenuator and power meter you used? Thank you!

Great to see this done with math and science Chris! I'm a trained artist and only a "self taught scientist" so my method for this test was fly the same forested trail with the various systems multiple times each system. My results def mirrored this (for O3 and Vista, have no Walksnail) except you reported minimal latency for O3 before cut but I've always experienced dramatic latency ~100-200ms and massive FPS drops before video-cut. I've always preferred testing by phenomenology instead of measurements when it comes to consumer products which is why I went the route I did in my testing -- I had developed a method of using faraday cages of various strengths to place over the quads but scrapped it for sake of "I want to get out and fly and feel the differences and react accordingly." p.s. this isn't a bash, 2 sides to a coin and all, loved this video and methodology. Thanks for doing what you do!

Very interesting as always! I would be curious to know if switching to 8 channel 25mbps mode changes the behaviour of the penetration for the DJI system. What is your guess on that?

Thanks Chris! Science! Fook It 👍👍👊😎👊

I have had delays of more than 120ms with the AU, V2 and stock antennas at distances over 5km which also took a long time to come down again.

Thanks

Hi, great research! Could you also look into output power on different channels? We know HDZero is strongest on R1, I wonder what channel should I use for my Walksnail flights.

Did you use the same antennas for the walksnail and DJI goggles? In the video it looks like you have DJI antennas on the WS goggles, so I'm assuming you use the same for both, but I didn't see it explicitly mentioned. Can't wait to see the data for the WS V1 diversity module to see if I'm missing out for my longrange planes. I'd also suggest you scale the graphs equally and possibly make a simplified trend graph that overlays them so you can more easily make comparisons. Cheers!

When you say consisten latency - you are actually saying it reports a consistent latency.. are we sure that this is acurate? - Same goes for the bitrate...

Would you say that Walksnail has bettere signal penetration then analoge or HDzero?

Could be possible combine the 2 power outputs of the old air unit into a single antenna? To get more power without the phase problems Thanks 🤗

I think that the other important part of the story is that the o3 bitrate and the vista bitrate cannot be directly compared because they use different compression schemes. If the objective is to know if one has "better video" that the other with various penetration tests, it would be interesting to see how much the compression scheme affects the end result - what we see in the goggles. What I have found in my testing is that the o3 has better video farther out that the vista when I do long range flights. This can be dangerous a bit because the o3 will SEEM to fail faster because it can "hang on" to a better image for longer than the vista because it can cobble together a better image at a lower bitrate.... until it can't.

What happened to not relying on walksnail to accurately display the delay? Was this fixed on v2 vtx or with a firmware update I didn't hear about?

Fantastic testing, Chris! Thanks a bunch for all the info! 😃 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

Did you use the stock Walksnail antennas, or good antennas like TrueRC or Lumenier? It is commonly known that the stock Walksnail antennas are absolute garbage. So I'm very interested in hearing if the stock ones were swapped for proper antennas in this test.

Thank you for your scientific testing! Its what i was hoping for to find out which digital system to get. Would also be interesting to see HDzero in the mix :). Anyway questiointime: Is it just me or does the walksnail latency seem just a bit tooo consistent? To be clear, i haven't flown any digital system yet, but from a technical point it just seems a bit too good to be true? Has anyone tested, if the reported latency is accurate on walksnail when obstructions/obstacles occur? Probably tough to setup, but if your running this at home two ethernet connected microcontroller of some sort might do the trick of providing physical refference fixed latency connection?

Would it be possible to see a few seconds of video from each time the attenuation is increased? Just curious to see what the "real world" experience is - although you may need a moving image to get a better feel for things. If you have a chance to include HDZero in any future testing it would be interesting as its response to a weak signal may be more visual than the other systems.

Can't you do ham file on 03 to get more power? Also would be cool to see your latency test at different attenuations and compare that to the goggle readout.

Good info - just want to add that O3 eats up soooooo much bandwidth that it kinda "obliged" to deliver superior performance.

nice!!

Thanks Chris. Some time ago in a video you said you would test 3.5" props. Is that still planned? I'd love that. Maybe add some 4" props too.😊

What ring light are you using over your bench there and what camera?

Nice technical analysis as always 👌 What Goggles did you use for the O3 air unit? Goggles 2 oder V2? Also did you use the same antennas on all VTXs and Goggles?

I think not using the second antenna would have a negatively be effect on the results. You are trusting that the numbers in the OSD are correct but the software might be rounding the displayed value which would explain why the value is more consistent. I’ve heard others say they thought the numbers on the Walksnail system were a bit higher that the quality would indicate for latency at least.

would i be right in thinking that when the latency is varying, that means the footage your seeing would be slightly speeding up and slowing down compared to real time?

Walksnail has a new firmware coming... apparently they've made some improvements to the radio link.

Thank you! What I want to know it's about antennas on O3 unit, because original antenna have left and right polarization. But for now, I don't see that somebody do experiment with different polarization on goggles. I tried to install one left and one right antenna on goggles, but it's looks no different. Also, on air unit antenna for 5.8 and 2.4. Maybe if to install antenna for just 5.8 and both with same polarization...

Need test with the Vista on firmware 1.0.0. Which works with DJI Googles 2.

is there a reason you didnt test the hdzero system?

Is this method Wez Varty approved? nice work here

The fade to black transitions are a little bit distracting, its make me think that my cellphone is about to lock. Any way thanks for all the hard work.

I have all hd systems excluding the 03 and goggles 2. I have found my walksnail experience to be the overall best if i was to choose only one. The 1s option is so good on my babytooth. The others just can't compete with that. The goggles are pretty nice as well. I think Hdzero is just too different from the others compare.

The latency is probably based in what these systems log. Can we trust these logged values?

You shouldn't rely on the goggles data for latency, we don't know if it can be trusted.

But.. So all the measurements on the O3 were done with only a single antenna connected??? Could you maybe clarify? I think this can then not really be an accurate test.

How to fix the dji goggles 2 fit and focus ?

Whens the new test coming! 😂

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link...I'm not sure I'd trust the caddx reported latency and bitrate numbers and kinda hurts the analysis of these systems as many have reported WS numbers to be inaccurate. The WS curves looked very strange to me, how does it 'lock' in at steady bitrates and latency over the signal attenuation? Seems as signal attenuation increases, bit rate should have a continuous negative response and latency positve. Am i not understanding the data or is my dji bias raging again?

Why do you always ignore HDZero?

im no expert but O3 ce (25mW) and fcc (2W) modes are both seen to have the same output power ... i was expecting ce mode be almost invisible...

I'd have thought you really went out and did some long range and can tell us about what distance you did and where they limited at. That would ba awesome. Dji has a 13km hard limit I saw. Not sure how far you can push walksnail

At last!!! Science not a subjective opinion ;-)

🤘🤠

You did it you did it you did it! I knew you could come up with a way to test those RF-signals more scientifically and rationally. This is a pretty interesting result - I'm impressed about the overall consistent latency now... I remember my caddx vista about 2 years ago was consistently spiking and doing all kinds of crazy stutters and needed seconds to recover. Those links have come a long way since then. I would love to see a bit of an orientation on how much DB certain objects draw and that -60db would mean in reality. I'm also curious how they perform on different output power levels. And... can any object just be described in x dB of attenuation of an RF signal or is there more to it than this?

You cannot add 50ohm to dji and pretend it output the same between fcc and ce as they work in balanced mode you have to test both antenna.

Hi Chris, I love your videos and actually haven't missed one in a good 2 years. But with this video, we're getting to a point where the whole topic is just way too theoretical. In my eyes, the only truly representative analysis of range and penetration is a field test. My experience has shown that the Walksnail Avatar system does not come close to the range and penetration of the DJI systems. Please don't get me wrong, I am anything but a DJI fanboy and wish there was a real alternative to DJI in terms of image quality, but so far there isn't.

Could you please verify the data using a real-world environment to confirm that your home setup correlates with what happens in an actual building? If yes then I think more people would accept the results.

If only the O3 could penetrate even the slightest bit of darkness

Strange results between O3 and caddxvista ?? In real life the O3 is way better in bitrate, pénétration and range than caddxvista Maybe due to the diversity antenna ? So strange ...

Love your videos. Your accent sounds just like another channel I watch "the wood fired oven chef" from sound alone, I would aware you were his son, you appearance even could match. Check him out I love his content, as I do yours :)

im actually relieved and dissapointed, Releived there is actual science behind this, However dissapointed as i was hoping for something with better penetration. I have an Avata at the moment and it just seems when i get into any kind of forest im lucky to get 500m, open range line of site range is fine, but the penetration is what seems to be killing me.

What is the point of comparing DJI O3 - 33dBm (2 Watt) vs Caddx /Avatar 30dBm? Like - "Omg! 2 watt is more powerful (more penetration) than 1.2 watt !!!!?" Also, you don't know how the DJI algorithm works - how it "takes in to account" the distance to adjust power output.

Guys is it just me seeing continuous microlag with walksnail at 720p 50mbs 100fps even when flying in the open field 30 meters away? it's an impossible thing to fly...... Nobody sees them? How is this possible?

I think dji hardware is more faster than walksnail.. faster memory faster processor for dji ...

Walksnail V1 has better range than v2.

DJI fanboys in disbelief

Don’t even gotta watch the video to know walksnail is the third wheel in the digital market. Dji knockoff