THE BAD The large Skycontroller adds $400 if purchased with the Parrot Bebop Drone or runs $500 when purchased separately. While its size and weight make it nice to travel with, it doesn’t handle wind well, and its small batteries tap out in less than 11 minutes.
THE GOOD The Parrot Bebop Drone is small and lightweight for its capabilities. It’s relatively tough, but also user repairable if it breaks. It can be piloted with a smartphone or tablet as well as the optional Skycontroller.
THE BOTTOM LINE The Parrot Bebop Drone gets points for being a compact, durable, easy-to-use quadcopter for capturing good video and photos. Battery life, performance and overall value make it tough to flat-out recommend, though.
While other flying-camera makers have gone after enthusiasts, the Parrot Bebop Drone is very approachable to average consumers looking to start shooting aerial video and photos without a big investment. (There’s a good reason why you can find Parrot’s drones in major retailers including Best Buy, Apple and Harvey Norman, as well as from mobile service providers.)
Made from foam, strong plastic and fiberglass, the Parrot Bebop Drone is the safer, gentler quadcopter that you can pilot with the smartphone in your pocket. In an attempt to capture some of those enthusiasts, however, Parrot perhaps stretched a bit too far, making something that was too pricey for beginners and with not enough features or performance for experienced users. It’s good for what it is, but in category that’s growing rapidly, it’s a tough sell.
Getting started with Parrot Bebop Drone
Like Parrot’s AR.Drones that came before it, the Bebop can be up and running in minutes. You’ll want to charge up a battery, of course, and install Parrot’s FreeFlight 3 app on an iOS, Android or Windows device. And if you’re flying indoors, you can clip on the protective propeller hull, but really that’s about it.
There are almost no instructions included in the box, though. To figure out the controls, you can download a user guide from Parrot’s site or browse the mobile app’s Help section, where you’ll find written and video tutorials for the Bebop. There have been several feature updates to both the Bebop and FreeFlight app, but because the tutorials remain unchanged for the most part, some things you’ll have to figure out on your own.
With the $499 Bebop (£400; AU$800) you’ll get two batteries and one charger; a Micro-USB cable; the indoor hull and four additional propellers with a small mounting tool to lock them in place. For an additional $400 (£330; AU$700), you can pick up a Bebop bundled with Parrot’s Skycontroller, which can also be purchased separately for $499 (£400; AU$800).
If you’re not a fan of flying by touchscreen alone, the Skycontroller is a very large, clunky wireless controller that gives you two joysticks, discrete controls for the camera, a button for taking off and landing and one for emergency motor cutoff, status lights for the battery of the Bebop and the controller and a return-to-home button. Additionally, you can wirelessly pair a tablet or phone with it for first-person-view (FPV) flying.
The Skycontroller runs on Android, which allowed Parrot to install the FreeFlight app on it, so you don’t need to pair a mobile device to fly — you just won’t have a visual from the camera. (It also means it takes a minute to boot up before you can use it.) A full-size HDMI output on the side lets you connect an external display to see what the camera sees and also supports VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, completely immersing you for FPV flight.
On top of the Skycontroller is an amplified Wi-Fi radio and four antennas allowing you to fly farther — up to 1.4 miles (2.3km) — than you can using a mobile device alone, which is up to 820 feet (250 meters). Unless you’re in an area free of wireless interference and obstructions, this is more of a theoretical distance (for both, actually) and nothing you should actually attempt. Keep in mind, too, that while you might be able to fly out that far, with the Bebop’s brief battery life, someone better be waiting at the other end.
Speaking of battery life, the Skycontroller uses the same pack as the Parrot Bebop Drone, and when you buy the bundle you get a total of three batteries. Regardless, if you want physical controls as well as increased wireless range, the Skycontroller gives you those things, along with a place to mount a phone or tablet.
There are, however, many options in the vicinity of the $1,000 mark, such as the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced or for GoPro owners, 3DR’s Solo — or any number of other, lesser-known quadcopters. Also, the build quality on my test Skycontroller was a bit iffy given its price, and the thing is really big compared to transmitters for other models.
Design and features of Parrot Bebop Drone
The Bebop’s foam body and ABS-reinforced structure might look a bit less polished than other ready-to-fly (RTF) quadcopters, but it is deceivingly tough. The materials keep the Bebop light — its maximum weight is 410 grams (14.5 ounces). It’s compact, too, measuring roughly 12 inches (28cm) square and 1.5 inches (3.6cm) tall. Since the camera is electronically stabilized on three axes, there’s no fragile gimbal to worry about should you crash.
If you do crash and damage a component, Parrot has made replacement parts available — from props and batteries to camera and motherboard — for you to buy and install yourself. Even if you don’t crash, you’ll probably want to buy another battery or two, some extra propellers and a few spare landing feet (I lost three of four after just a few flights).
The camera is a step up from the one found on its previous models like the AR.Drone 2.0, with an f2.2 fish-eye lens that has a 180-degree angle of view and a 14-megapixel sensor. Though the camera can’t physically move, you can digitally pan and tilt it to help you get the shot you’re after.
It can capture video at 1080p full-HD resolution; the AR.Drone 2.0 is limited to 720p. Video is recorded to the Bebop’s 8GB of internal storage (there’s no microSD or SD card slot) in MP4 format. Photos can be captured as JPEGs or Adobe DNG raw format.
Unlike the AR.Drone 2.0, the Parrot Bebop Drone has a GNSS chipset with GPS, Glonass and Galileo built in. The chipset allows the Bebop to return to its take-off location on its own and hover in place 2 meters above the ground. The Bebop can fly in winds up to about 24 mph (40 kmh) and can reach speeds of around 45 mph (75 kmh).
When you can’t get a GPS lock, such as when you’re flying inside, a vertical camera and ultrasound and pressure sensors keep it from drifting while hovering at up to 8 meters (26 feet) above the ground.
Being so small and light means you don’t have much room for a big battery. Held in place by little more than its cable connector and a velcro strap, Parrot’s batteries give you up to 11 minutes of flight. Outside, I was able to get up to 10 minutes, but that was mostly just hovering in place while recording video. High winds, doing flips and fast flying will shorten that time, and unless you want to drop from the sky, you’ll want to land well before the battery dies.
Just as with the company’s older AR.Drones, the Parrot Bebop Drone works with Parrot’s FreeFlight app (version 3) for piloting the drone as well as controlling the camera, changing settings, and viewing videos and photos from a smartphone or tablet (Android, Windows Phone and iOS are supported). Eventually, the app will allow you to use the Bebop’s GNSS chipset to set waypoints and create a flight plan for the drone allowing for completely autonomous flight. This feature is not yet available, and when it finally is released, Parrot will make it an in-app purchase.
