Hi,
So after being disappointed over the weekend with the abysmal range on my P3S. I’ve been advised to upgrade to a P3 Advanced. My question is, do I stick with phantom or go down the mavic route?
TIA
This question is a bit “How long is a piece of string?” 
Are you looking to replace the drone only because of the range issues? What’s your definition of abysmal range? 200m? 1000m? 3 miles?
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I loved my P3A rock solid, great quality, but it was like lugging a rock around.
What range do you need? How good is your eyesight?
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Signal loss at 40m height, as in straight up from take off. Signal loss at 100m away, both activated RTH.
It dwpwnds on how much kit you have. If you have a number of P3S batteries, extra props, hard case or backpack then get an Advanced or a Pro.
If you only have the one battery and no other bits then eBay the P3S. If portability is important then a Mavic Air or Air 2 wile give you a small aircraft with a good range and camera. Don’t tell any of the drone police but I have gone over 500m with my Air with good signal, both uplink and downlink.
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Portability doesn’t really bother me, i have the manfrotto d1 on recommendation from this forum and I love the size of the drone to be honest. P3S on ebay and start looking for a P3A.
This in no way is meant to read as condescending.
Before spending more money than you have to here are some things to check.
Are the antennas on your P3S completely clear of all obstructions other than the Phantoms legs that they run down?
Are both antennas on your P3S securely connected to the RF connections on the main board?
Also do the same checks as above with the antenna on the controller.
Are you experiencing the same range limitations in different locations? If it’s in one location this maybe due to localised interference. As an example, if I try to use either my Spark or Anafi on ch163 on the 5.8GHz allocation in my backyard I have connection issues at around 15metres out, even though both are configured for FCC outputs. This is because of a very strong signal causing interference on the same frequency.
If there’s no interference and the antennas are fine then you may have either a faulty receiver or controller. These are very rare faults but do happen. If the output stage of the transmitter has failed then the output would be down in the micro-watt region. Similarly if the receiver has developed a fault on its input the range would be severely impacted.
Nidge.
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I stopped using my phantom 3 standard after the last firmware update.
It would lose signal for no reason at all sometimes within less than 100mtr distance.
I decided to get Mavic mini which in 3 weeks has been used more than phantom 3 in the many years I owned it.
At least it works with no issues of distance unless you fly behind buildings then it will hover or return to home.
I had a similar issue with my inspire, upon take off do u ou have any Amber warnings pop up on your screen?
Mine was a battery fault causing the drone to limit the distance it would travel from the controler. 40m was the max hight and 100m was max distance.