AUW: All-Up Weight and Why It Matters
AUW (all-up weight) is everything that leaves the ground: frame, electronics, battery, HD camera, GPS, mounts, strap — the lot. Spec sheets love quoting weight without battery; the number physics cares about is AUW.
Why it dominates flight time
Hover power scales roughly with weight to the power 1.5. Add 10% AUW and you need ~15% more power to hover — while carrying the same battery. This is why strapping a full-size action camera on a cinewhoop can cut flight time by a third, and why long-range pilots obsess over every gram.
It also compounds: a heavier quad needs a bigger battery, which is itself heavier. Efficient builds escape the spiral; overweight ones never do.
Typical AUW by class
| Class | Example | AUW (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| 65 mm tiny whoop | Meteor65 Pro | 30–35 g |
| 75 mm 1S whoop | Mobula7 1S | 35–45 g |
| 2S whoop / 2" | Mobula8, FlyLens 85 | 60–110 g |
| Sub-100 cinewhoop | Pavo Pico | ~99 g |
| Sub-250 cinewhoop / LR | Defender 25, Explorer LR4 | 245–250 g |
| 3–3.5" cinewhoop | Cinebot30, Cinelog35 V2 | 380–500 g |
| 5" freestyle | Nazgul5 V3 | 620–700 g |
| 7"+ long range | Chimera7 Pro V2 | 1,100–1,400 g |
All from our quad database — each spec page lists weight with and without battery where the manufacturer publishes it.
The 250-gram line
Below 250 g AUW, most jurisdictions (FAA in the US, EASA C0 class in the EU) drop registration and some operational requirements. That single number explains an entire product category — sub-250 long-range quads ship with exactly-sized batteries (the Defender 25's 550 mAh pack exists purely to hit 249 g). Know your local rules; the threshold is about takeoff weight, not dry weight.
Crash energy and agility
Kinetic energy grows linearly with mass (and with speed squared): a 700 g 5" hits an order of magnitude harder than a 35 g whoop. Lighter also means faster direction changes at the same thrust — the reason racers shave grams off already-light builds.