Autel Robotics gets ahead of DJI with end-of-September launch event for new EVO drones

As rumors of the “upcoming” DJI Mavic 3 continue to dominate drone forums and tech blogs across the web, it looks like Autel Robotics will be the first drone maker to launch a new drone this fall.

And if the leaks are accurate, we could possibly see more than one drone announced by Autel before the end of September.

“A new realm of aerial photography”

The upcoming Autel event was first discovered by @techdronemedia in an online group for Autel pilots.

And while there is no official event announcement from Autel Robotics (as of writing), the promo image appears fairly credible.

Looking at the image we have the tagline “A new realm of aerial photography” written in Chinese above the forms of one small and one larger drone.

The date of 9/28/2021 at 10am Shenzhen time (9/27/2021 at 10pm EDT) also appears just below the tagline — it’s fairly safe to assume that this is when the event/launch will take place.

UPDATE: A few hours after this was written, Autel tweeted out an official teaser for the launch.

New EVO drones on the way?

The reveal of this event comes hot on the heels of a number of leaks surrounding upcoming Autel drones (including this poorly staged “accidental” leak from last week).

Twitter user @JasperEllens also shared a number of images that shed a lot more light on exactly what new drones we might be seeing from Autel.

Currently, from all these cumulative leaks we know of three new drones models that Autel may be set to launch this fall, each with a few different configurations.

• Autel EVO III
  • Basic with 1-inch CMOS sensor
  • Pro with a 4/3-inch CMOS sensor
  • Zoom with 8K dual camera and 10x zoom
  • Supersense with 1.4-inch CMOS sensor
• Autel EVO Lite
  • EVO Lite with a 1/1.28-inch CMOS sensor
  • EVO Lite Plus with a 1-inch CMOS sensor
• Autel EVO Nano
  • EVO Nano without obstacle avoidance
  • EVO Nano Plus with obstacle avoidance sensors

Which drones will we see Autel launch on the 27th?

Currently, everything points towards the Nano and Lite drones being released at the upcoming event.

From the original leaked spec cards provided by @JasperEllens, it appears that Autel plans to launch the Nano and Lite drones before the flagship EVO III.

This timeline also lines up with the fact that the leaked promo image for the event includes only two drones.

Because the Nano and Lite are Autel’s response to the DJI Mini/Mini 2 and Air/Air 2S, which are already out, Autel is doing everything to fast track its consumer line and is fine with leaving the EVO III for later since DJI’s Mavic 3 is still at least a month away.

Judging from Autel’s past releases, the drones will compete with or even exceed their DJI counterparts on specs but Autel might have a hard time matching DJI’s cutthroat pricing tactics.

Luckily, we don’t have to guess much, because two more recent leaks have seemingly confirmed this

The two above photos give us a great look at the front of the upcoming EVO Lite & Nano drones.

This shows that the Lite is using a larger 1/1.28 inch sensor than Mavic Air 2’s 1/2 inch quadbayer and that the Nano is packing the same size sensor as the Mavic Air 2 despite being in a similar size/weight class as the DJI Mini 2.

Conclusion

Where there’s smoke there’s fire and from all the leaks it’s plain to see that Autel is about to release some new drones.

Though almost all the leaks seem to point to it being the Nano and Lite which will be coming first, Autel could have a trick or two up its sleeve.

But, with the event less than a week away (if/when it gets confirmed by Autel), you can bet that there will be plenty of more leaks trickling out before the drones make their official debut.