I’ll give you my opinion, as someone who recently bought a Mini 3. I’ve been buying a drone for 10 years, but just couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. In fairness, there were lots of other hobbies to consider, like a car, another car, metal detecting, photography, and yet another car 
But seriously, when I did finally decide, after all my research, reading up, considering blah blah, I ended up buying a Mini 3, because it came at a good price (Fly more kit was sub £500). Ok it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that the Mini 4 Pro has, but it’d take a real pixel peeper to see the difference between the 12MP images from the Mini 3 and the 48MP from the Mini 4 Pro.
I thought the Mini 3, at this price was a good place to start. If I enjoy it, and want to expand into something else, I can. Most likely, if I was to expand, I would want to jump to a drone with a bigger camera sensor, perhaps the Air 3S.
To be perfectly honest, the rules around drones remind me a bit of metal detecting rules, at least in Northern Ireland. Metal detecting is not against the law in Northern ireland, but it is frowned upon by the authorities, and they go out of their way to make life difficult for you. The rules are a bit vague, and open to interpretation. I seen a case where the Dept for Communities pressed hard to prosecute three guys for searching for treasure, which is contrary to the law; in fact searching for anything over 300 years old is technically against the law too. In their case, a farmer lost his wedding ring, and his wife had passed away. He advertised, asking if someone could help find it on his 80 acre farm. Whilst there, the three friends, stumbled upon a coin hoard; a mixture of coins intentionally deposted in the ground, ranging in date from the mid 16th century to the mid 17th century. The sort of thing a metal detectorist can only dream of. They followed the legislation to a ‘T’, and reported the find to the Dept of Communities. The Dept then tried to have them prosecuted, because they argued that these guys knew the farmer’s land was likely to hold treasure, and said that was why they volunteered. In reality, that had nothing to do with it. The case never made it to court, but it left a sour taste with the three pals, and created issues for the hobby as a whole.
A while later, the Dept tried to prosecute members of a club, who had sought permission from the landowner of an area in the estate of a historic castle; the estate covered c. 350 hectares. The club had researched their event and done their best to avoid any known archaeological features. It transpired that the Dept’s reason was that the club was within 200 yards of a scheduled site. In actual fact they weren’t; they were 210 yards away from a medieval church, which wasn’t scheduled, and nearly 350 yards from the (actual) scheduled site. The Dept done everything they could to shut the club down.
I don’t think that would even happen in Great Britain. Going by what I read about the Portable Antiquities Scheme, detectorists are obviously advised to stay away from known sites, but if anything new is reported, they actually support the finder. It certainly would put you off metal detecting here. Mind you, the guys I’ve seen breaking the law and detecting scheduled sites doesn’t help the hobby.
Getting back to drones, I thought about all the rules and regulations, where I could and couldn’t fly, and certainly here (in N Ireland) we have a lot of tourism sites, a lot of ARZ’s, lots of restricted places, but nowhere near as many as the Republic of Ireland. Good grief, I’m surprised people are allowed to live down south 
However, if you really sat down and thought about all the places you couldn’t fly, you’d never buy a drone. Instead, I came up with a plan of what I was going to do with the drone - in my case, with my interest in local history, I plan to visit historic sites (when people aren’t around) and take videos and images of them. I’ll add that media to a GIS map I’ve made identifying all of the sites (and if they’re suitable I can add them to the flyers map here too). I’ve around 990 sites in my council area alone, so I’m not going to run out of things to film anytime soon.
So my advice is - 1. Consider how you’re going to use your drone 2. Research which drone suits you, and your pocket best, and then 3. Go and buy the drone, and have fun flying it. I did that, eventually, and now I’m not looking back. It has extended the hobby I had, and taken it in different directions. My only regret was not making my mind up sooner.
