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As regular viewers will recall, we met up with Joseph Aletky from 3D Robotics at the FlySafe training event held earlier this year in Las Vegas, and he gave us a sneak peek at the company's new Iris Plus quadcopter.

Just recently, he managed to send us a demo unit to try out for ourselves, which is actually the very same aircraft we saw in Las Vegas, as it happens. Alas, we have to send it back to the mothership now that we're finished putting this review together for you – which is a shame, because I really like this bird!

You're not going to tear up the sky with it, but it's a very graceful camera ship and as you saw for yourself in the video, it is capable of producing some extremely smooth footage.

Also, we just barely had time to scratch the surface of the autonomous flight mode – but clearly there is a rich trove of capability there that elevates the Iris Plus from being a mere “toy” to a potentially useful tool for a range of professional aerial imaging tasks.

All of that in a lightweight, RTF package that can be yours for $750. To kit it out like the one you saw in our video – with the GoProfessional case, the FPV monitor and the GoPro sports camera, along with a couple of other accessories – would set you back more like $1,800.

That's not cheap, I realize, having once purchased a full-sized, manned automobile for $300 myself, but for that price you're ready to travel the world with a robust, real-time aerial imaging tool tucked inside your luggage.

Not bad – and if you'd suggested that you could have such a thing for $18,000 five years ago, they would have looked at you like you were crazy. It's enough to make you wonder where we'll be five years from now...