Now it’s time to talk about the Performance of the AR Drone. Essentially this is the stone throw from the Conclusion, So I’m going to bundle them together, This is the Performance and Conclusion!
Performance
I have be using the AR drone now for about a week, I must say straight off the bat, It’s extremely fun!! Now i mean that in the best possible way, It’s actually insane to use, The controls are just so stable and flying it in my experience was just so easy and fluid. I didn’t expect it to be that easy to fly, Seeing all the adjustment that you can make at the begining just made be feel so afarid that it would be impossible to control.
That was not the case, I simply left them at default for the beginning, I was using it indoors for the first time and in a big room, It took off like a charm and just began to hover right in front of me, The controls straight away were instantly responsive and i can move forward and back and up and down without any issue, The speed was perfectly fine and i had not problem straight away doing some precision flying going from one room to another was actually more fun that i had imagine using the AR Drone.
At the beginning i was starring right at the Drone when flying it, Like normal remote control devices, I stayed that way for about a minute, Until i realised the camera was in front of me, The quality was actually surprsinly smooth and of decent bitrate, I had no issues seeing where i was going and getting use to the idea of using it while starring at my phone instead of the Drone itself wasn’t too hard, But i did continue to poke my head up every now and again to see it flying as it was just cool to see it flying.
Landing was a little difficult and first and so i was landing it by very slowing getting it to the ground, But after awhile i was easily able to land it without much effort, It became almost intuitive to use. That being sad, It was almost scary at first to attempt landings, But once you get the hang of it, It just feels easy.
Outdoor Flying
Now the reason this part is in bold is simple, The AR drone is so much faster and a completly different beast when using it outside, When you enable outdoor hull and outdoor flying, It enables the Drone to go so much faster, It was flying around a field so fast, It was like the thing had nitrous in it. I assumed it had something to do with the less weight on it, But Parrot actually make it go faster when outside as you would obviously have more room to play with and so more speed was just what was needed.
There was no difference in stability or easy of controls outside as inside, Just the fact the Drone was much faster, Oddly it felt even easier to land, But that was probably because I got use to it so much.
Conclusion
Now it’s time to wrap this review up and has it been fun, I must say that at the begining i assumed this would be the type of toy that would see little use, Now while that will obviously be the case for some people, I just loved flying it around so much, It was just great. That brings me to the Pros and cons.
Pros
1. Easy to setup and even easier to change from indoor to outdoor hull.
2. Amazingly stable and flying is just easy to say the least.
3. Controls are very intuitive and extremely easy to use.
4. Adjustments in the settings are huge and allow for so much improvements in different environments.
5. Works with many devices, Including, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and most Android devices.
Cons
1. Cost, This thing costs €300, which is very expensive.
2. Needs iPhone/iPad/iPod or Android device to control, Which wouldn’t normally be too bad, But on top of the fact it costs €300 which makes it extremely costly to be able to actually fly one.
3. 12 minute battery, This is probably the biggest draw back, It’s long considering what this Drone is actually doing, But 12 minutes flies by(Ha Ha, Great Pun) when you are using the Drone. I would have hoped to see an extended battery available, But that would obviously add more weight, But two batteries inside the Drone would be easily doable and 24 minutes would actually be pretty good.
So, What do I think of the AR Drone, Taking everything into account, Well, I love it, Simply put it’s an awesome gadget and amazingly fun to use and play around with, The battery life and cost are seriously are something that will stop alot of people from buying it, But those that can get passed it, Will have so much fun, Also, You can just buy more batteries and have more fun.
To be honest, There isn’t much more i can say, If you have the money for it then i wouldn’t have a problem recommending it to you, That being said, I would highly suggest you pick up at least one extra battery aswell. Now i would not suggest this gadget to anyone who doesn’t have a device already that can control this thing, Spending that kind of money would be insane, Although it is very fun to use, I would think you would use the the device you purchased to control it more as it alone would cost around the same as the Drone itself.
I do love the AR drone and consider it Great Geek Tech!! Thanks for all for reading this review, Also a big thanks to Neil and Kate at Mischief and Parrot for sending this over for review.
