Gadgetory

this is one of those beautiful spring days when it feels great to just be outside I love getting shots like this hello mr. Swan you are majestic okay this is going to be my opening shot zooming under this bridge and now I'm turning around okay or not okay I've lost my connection it's just hovering now there's somebody over there she's walking her dog maybe if I it'll pull us back no okay now it's moving again this is bad please stop Oh God out of the way lady reviewing a drone in many ways it's like reviewing a phone how long does the battery last is the software intuitive how does the hardware stack up against the competition in terms of power and speed but before you get to all that there is one simple question you need to answer if I put this thing in the air can I be sure that I can control it safely with the new bebop drone from parrot the answer is too often no parrot had one of the most successful drones from the first generation of consumer quad copters but it was definitely a toy for the bebop parrots vision is to transform their offering from a toy into a tool something anyone can use to capture high-quality photos and videos from a great distance like parrots earlier models you can control the bebop with just a smartphone or tablet but you can also use a more traditional controller which parrot said extends the range of the unit to 1.2 miles unfortunately in our testing the connection between the pilot and drone was simply not reliable when using my phone I would often lose connection to a bebop flying just a dozen feet away I got nothing I got no control so the drone got maybe like what 12 feet away and we lost our connection and now it's just going on its own I literally just lost the signal again like I'm not right now in the best case scenario it more or less hovered in place while I furiously click through my settings and the app trying to reconnect in the worst case it just kept flying wherever it was headed perfect now there are some nice things about the bebop it's very small and light fits easily into a backpack even my two year old toddler can carry it it's cheap at $4.99 although that price doesn't include the optional sky controller which tax on another 400 bucks and the video the bebop captures while not as nice as you might get from the latest GoPro is good enough to make friends on Facebook jealous of your latest hiking trip or surfing adventure when it maintains its connection the bebop flies well for complete beginners the fact that the bebop uses a smartphone as the controller makes it really approachable it might be good enough for some very limited flying just as you learn but for really getting the most out of your drone the app is a controller Falls way short it can be hard to see the screen and figure out how to toggle between menus to get to all your controls the bebop does come with a hood which you can wear to block out life but in our testing this was pretty awkward and not always safe the bebop takes a really unique approach to its camera rather than mounting an external unit underneath with a gimbal it has an internal camera with fisheye lens you can use your thumb in the app or special joystick on the sky controller to pan around 180 degrees within the cameras field of view this can prove really useful if you're out trying to get a shot you can just let the drone hover in place and focus on framing without worrying about where you're headed the drawback is that all the video footage has a slightly stilted quality to it as a result of being stabilized with software and when you do crash the lens on the camera is in prime position to bear the brunt of the impact the basic bebop comes with two batteries but you're not going to get a lot of flight time out of them I average between 10 and 12 minutes depending on the wind and the number of backflips I decided to do that's far less than the 15 to 20 minutes you can get on many comparable drones and after having spent a couple of weeks with the bebop I have to say the overall build quality is a little suspect the power button on the sky controller popped off and the covers on the bottom of the aircraft fell off as soon as I pulled it out of the box this same issue shows up with the battery for some reason pair designed it in such a way that it never really snaps into place with a solid connection to solve this they provided a little velcro strap you can use to secure the battery in place this is literally putting a band-aid on a design issue and after any amount of rigorous flying I always found the battery had slipped a bit leaving a noticeable gap the be-bop feels like it landed right in between a tool and a toy in terms of its price and feature set that makes unique in the market when it works you're getting a great value but the build quality and software lack attention to detail and the number of times we lost connection paired with parrots and vicious claims about range are frankly a little dangerous the bebop is a drone that gets a lot right but it also promises you can do things which it is really not reliable enough to safely attempt