Founder. Environmentalist. EV Enthusiast. Dad.

Phantom 4 Accessories – The best ones to buy

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Straight out of the box the Phantom 4 is ready to fly, as long as you learn the basics of how to fly it and how to stay safe when flying it, however, here are the full list of things I’ve purchased for the Phantom 4 and what I believe are ‘must have’ accessories:

ssdf

A decent larger memory card

The Phantom 4 comes with a 16GB card but that’s quite small in reality, so an upgrade was needed you need a memory card that can handle the 4K footage produced by the Phantom 4. A SanDisk Extreme is the bare minimum with a SanDisk Extreme Pro being my go to card for anything I need to ensure 100% works.

Amazon (UK) | Amazon (USA)

apple-cable

A short cable

Having a large cable hanging around doesn’t look good and it also often tangles around things

Micro USB (UK) | MicroUSB (USA)

Apple Lightning cable (UK) | Apple Lightning Cable (USA)

battery

A secondary battery

Overpriced IMO but the only option and a must for any long days out / professional filming

Intelligent Flight Battery

You might want to combine this with a secondary charger & charging plug (UK) or (US/Canada).

car-charger

In-car charger

Originally I was planning on buying this one from Amazon, however after further research, it has become obvious that using one of these would cause damage to the Phantom Charger. Instead, I’ve got for the official car charger.

Why would it damage the charger? The DJI mains charger is a switch mode unit which is designed to operate on a pure sine-wave mains supply and the cheap inverters suggested above put out a square wave 240v out put that will probably damage the DJI charger. Thanks to Nick for this explanation.

Phantom 4 in-car charger

battery1

An external battery for your phone / tablet

Having a low battery for your display will stop you flying in many cases. I always pack one of these Anker battery packs just in case.

props

A set of replacement propellers

You get two sets in the box but having another set is worthwhile especially if you’re a newbie.

The official ones are the only ones currently available and work very well.

phantom-case

A backpack & hardcase

From my old Phantom 2 I’ve got a B&W hard flight case that just fits the Phantom 4 and remote, however, it’s bulky and a pain to carry but ideal for storage / long trips etc.

Having a backpack is essential, amazingly I have an  Eastpak bag that fits the controller, Phantom 4 (without blades attached), spare battery and the other accessories in perfectly (albeit a little snug), which is ideal for day trips etc but I wouldn’t want to rely on it. Manfrotto sell a decent backpack for the Phantom 4 which I’ve not tried yet but I think I will grab.

You could consider a ‘hard’ case from eBay but I don’t think they’re anywhere near as strong as my flight case, DJI have an official backpack that seems very good but a tad expensive.

ssd

A portable SSD drive for storage of all those 4K files

I use a 250GB Samsung USB3 drive but you could easily create a DIY SSD storage.

ndfilters

ND filters

If it’s a very sunny day you may find an ND filter will be extremely useful at reducing the amount of light that enters the camera (as the Phantom 4 has a fixed aperture). ND filters will also increase motion blur, remove Jello effect from bright sunlight conditions and reduce reflections if you grab a polarizing filter.

ND 4 = Daylight use
ND 8 = Bright daylight use
ND 16 = Bright daylight use heading into sunlight

Phantom Official ND Filters or from eBay (UK) or eBay (USA)

anker-usb

Anker Micro USB 3 Card Reader

Pretty obvious what this does and it’s my go-to brand for tech.

Amazon (UK) | Amazon (USA)

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