Gadgetory

so for the last few years there's been a basic rule of thumb with drones if you want the best picture and the most advanced features you have to go with something that's expensive and pretty large now you could get something smaller and more portable but then you're sacrificing those advanced features long range and decent battery life now obviously everybody wants to take a drone with them on their vacation that epic aerial foot is just going to make those memories so much sweeter but do you really want to lug around a giant case that looks like it was designed to hold the nuclear codes luckily there's a new breed of drones this year ones that have figured out how to minimize their profile and fold up their wings they're easy to take with you you can't slide them in your pocket like a smartphone yet but you can definitely slip them into a backpack or even a purse all the drones we tested this year were able to deliver crisp smooth high-quality footage and add battery life better than 20 minutes with those things a given what matters now is a new dimension for drones portability the clear standout from this year's crop of drones was DG eyes pneumatic Pro it's by far the smallest and the easiest to set up but it doesn't sacrifice on features it has all kinds of autonomous navigation and the best range of any of the drones we tested the picture it delivers is also fantastic just as good as the DJI phantom 4 maybe with a slightly smaller field of view now one of the things that's great about the Mavic is that you can use it with just your phone just the tiny remote or your phone in the remote together and while it is small it can go up to 40 miles an hour meaning you can pull off some really tricky tracking shots in some really high octane environments now there is a downside to being so small the Maverick has a harder time standing up to strong winds and while it's trying to stabilize against those winds it's burning a lot of battery if you're a professional looking for something that's going to hold up in strong winds rough conditions the Mavic may not be best for you but for the average consumer it's the clear choice it has all the features of a high-end camera drone in a far more affordable package the Mavic pro wasn't the only really portable drone we tested out this year our runner-up was going to be the Karma drone from GoPro like the Maverick it has a cool foldable form factor that makes it easy to slip into a backpack and you can also detach the gimbal and use it as a handheld stabilizer so it's more flexible than the Mavic if you're going out on a big adventure in fact you can also take out the camera and use that as a waterproof action cam unfortunately the Karma has been falling out of the sky some kind of battery issue maybe and GoPro has decided to recall the product entirely so until they get that sorted out we're going to set this one aside the typhoon H drone from unique seemed really promising when we saw it at CES earlier this year but it's finally here now with all the promised features and it's too much too late in the sense that it's just too big there's no reason to have a six rotor drone that comes inside of a giant carrying case anymore now the footage that you get from a typhoon H is crisp and smooth and it can definitely stand up to strong winds so if you're thinking about going out and shooting on a regular basis and punishing conditions this might be the drone for you it can even lose a rotor and safely stay on the air and land itself but in terms of portability this drone is a joke it comes in a huge case it takes a long time to set up and it's definitely not the sort of thing I would think about bringing on a hike we've been doing these drone overviews for three years and the fundamental pillars remain the same price performance and ease of use so there's a fourth dimension to a good drone now portability with something like the DJI Mavic pro you have a drone that you can easily throw into a backpack or a purse you can even fit it into a big jacket pocket now the same thing was also true of the GoPro Karma but unfortunately that drone isn't on the market right now still I'm hopeful that other manufacturers will take up this new form factor and start designing drones that are easy to carry not a piece of gear you have to worry about bringing along with you in fact I'm hopeful that by this time next year we'll have a high quality camera drone that anybody can slip into their Park like the Mavic Pro to go yeah okay you ready like the Mavic Pro the