![]() But past that range I experienced two disconnects, and with the amount of terrain in between, couldn’t move close enough to recover the signal before the drone returned home. That unit has a Wi-Fi range extender on top, which let me fly the Bebop 2 out to roughly 550 meters with full control and only small hiccups in my video feed. ![]() ![]() I did manage to get more range out of the Bebop 2 when using the optional $399 "Sk圜ontroller," which is Parrot’s delightful name for its traditional two-stick remote control. In desperation I hopped a fence, shimmied along a pier, and by getting a few dozen feet closer, managed to recover the Wi-Fi network, reboot the app, and hit the return home button, landing with just 9 percent of my battery to spare. I watched helplessly as the drone hovered in place, battery dwindling. But when it disconnected, for whatever reason, it didn’t return home after 60 seconds. It got to 250 meters, the farthest I flew using just the phone as my remote. I flew the drone out over the East River, figuring that if it fell into the drink, that would make a great conclusion to my review. Disconnections were a constantĪfter a number of failures I decided to go all in and test a potential worst-case scenario. Most of the time it hovered in place for 60 seconds before rising to 30 meters and returning to the home point where it launched. If I walked to within 50 meters of the drone, I could sometimes reconnect. ![]() At 150 meters or more I frequently lost connection. But once it passed about 100 meters, the video feed began to get choppy, freezing up and pixelating. In every instance it was easy to connect, takeoff, and fly with the Bebop 2. I have flown drones from DJI, Yuneec, 3D Robotics, and Blade at these same spots in the past without any troubles. I made sure to test it on all the available Wi-Fi bands: 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, and a combination of the two. I flew the Bebop 2 in three different locations: a park in New York City a beach in Hammonasset, Connecticut and a golf course in Fairfield, Connecticut. Neither process is fast or convenient, and the wireless transfer option means you’re burning battery on both devices instead of flying. That means you need to stop and transfer footage to your phone or computer or pull footage directly from the drone to your phone or tablet using a Wi-Fi connection. When you compare the blurry, compressed footage to what we shot at identical locations with cameras from DJI and Yuneec, the Bebop is clearly far inferior.Īnd there is still no option for removable storage, just 8GB of internal memory, which fills up pretty quickly when you’re shooting 1080p. There is still no removable storage Unfortunately, the camera itself hasn’t been upgraded much. The new Bebop has done a nice job improving the quality of video when you are panned straight down to the ground, a viewpoint that is unique to aerial filming and can produce some magical results over interesting terrain. Instead of using a remote to manually pan and tilt a camera, you can shift your focus within the wide field of view generated by the fisheye, a trick accomplished through software. For capturing images and video, the Bebop 2 takes a different approach than most drones: it uses a fisheye lens attached to the nose instead of an external camera mounted on a gimbal.
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