Gadgetory

with its 14 megapixel camera and fisheye f-22 lens 1080p full HD video capture and the ability to fly by smartphone or tablet or a full fledged controller parrots bebop drone looks like a great starting place for anyone interested in capturing better than average aerial photos and video in reality it's got a handful of potential deal-breakers to make you put away your wallet I'm Josh Coleman with CNET and the first thing is likely the battery life its batteries are rated up to 11 minutes and while you get two of them you'll of course have to stop your flight to land safely and swap them out and I also never got that much flight time out of them the video quality is okay but softened had some aliasing artifacts and frequently flickered when adjusting for light conditions video and photos are stored to its 8 gigs of internal memory but once it's full you either have to transfer wirelessly to your phone or tablet or plug into a computer and turn it on while you transfer it's easy enough to fly with your mobile device but using touch alone takes practice you can buy the be-bop bundled with parrot sky controller which gives you physical controls however the bundle is $900 and at that price is competing with more capable models from DJI and 3d robotics among others the bebop alone is $500 which is pricey but not entirely unreasonable given what it can do and how small and light it is but even that advantage has its downside in that it has a tough time staying stable and wind you can read the full review on cnet.com but basically if you want something compact that you can throw in a backpack and have a few minutes of fun and capture some scenic video it's a good easy to learn option otherwise you'll want to look elsewhere I'm Josh Goldman and that's a quick look at the parrot bebop drone