Tech Junkie – The drone that follows you

by: Kirk Yuhnke

Posted: 

With so many drones on the market these days, it’s hard for one to stand out from the others. The HOVERAir X1 stands out. It’s a unique small lightweight drone described as a “self-flying camera.” While that seems like clever marketing speak, it turns out, that’s exactly what the X1 is! I took the HOVERAir X1 for a test.

Hardware

The drone itself is surprisingly small and light. It’s available in black or white, I tested the white model. The body of the drone is made up of mostly the battery and some tech guts and the gimble mounted camera. The wings fold out with a cage to protect the propellers. On the top you have a power button and a mode selector button that switches between the 5 built-in flying modes. This includes hover, zoom out, follow, orbit and bird’s eye. I shot a demo of the 5 modes below:

Software

The phone app is a great tool for adding additional modes to the 6th “custom” option on the drone. You can also use the app to manually control the drone. That manual control worked well in my testing although it’s clearly not designed to be used like this. This drone is designed to fly itself but it’s nice that they offer the option to fly it yourself if you need to. Overall, the app is surprisingly helpful for controlling the drone, setting up the drone and transferring pictures and videos wireless to your phone.

A few things to keep in mind

The battery is small (and has to be to keep the drone light) so you’re only going to get about 11 minutes of fly time before you need a recharge. This is usually plenty of time to grab a few shots but if you think you’ll need more time than that, you may want to consider the kit that includes an extra battery and an external charger.

Also, object avoidance is minimal with the X1. If you’re sending the drone up for a bird’s eye view, just double check that the air is clear.

Overall

The HOVERAir X1 is the coolest drone I’ve seen in years. Not because it’s the biggest, fastest, strongest or best drone. Frankly, it’s not. It’s cool because it’s different. It basically flies itself, is super easy to use and puts out impressive, smooth HD videos. All of this for $350. For those reasons I’m giving the HOVERAir X1 a 5 out of 5!

Unfortunately the X1 has been pretty popular and is sold out but the company says you will be able to pre-order the HoverAir X1 on their website.

The original source from: https://newatlas.com/drones/review-hover-camera-x1-drone/