Parrot - Bebop Drone - Red

I have several drones. 1 which is a more higher end (supposedly) than the Bebop. The Bebop is extremely stable and easy to fly. I like the lightweight and compact design compared to my bigger bulky drone. Big plus is camera inside the body and not underneath hanging, so in the event of a rough landing, no need to worry about camera or gimble damage. Only real disappoint is the video feed, very laggy. You definitely can not fly it via video feed or it will 100% result in a crash. Hopefully Parrot can address this issue with a software update. The camera takes really great video and stills, but is sensitive to the sun. If the sun hits the lense just right the video turns very dark and almost looks as a night video. I will be making my own lense hood to fix that issue. Overall I am very pleased, more so than with my other $1300 drone, I would highly recommend it, for a beginner to a pro flyer. There is no real manual included in the box, just a setup leaflet. There is a pdf manual on parrots website to view or download. Definitely read it and learn to drone and functions. I can 100% guarantee, all the bad ratings that I have read are all a result of user error because they didn't take the time to learn the proper setup and controls to operate. I spent an hour learning and reading and first time in flight was at 600ft and a half mile away with 100% confidence.

This is my first drone and it has been pretty easy to learn and use. My first unit lost all network connection so it had to be returned. This unit flies great, the range is reduced by the range on my android tablet. I am waiting on my Skycontroller to show which should extend my range. The video on this drone is pretty amazing, even in wind, which this drone does not do well in, was pretty stable and clear.

I enjoyed flying the drone and the taking the videos, however I broke an arm off it on the second flight. I repaired it with some plastic epoxy and was able use for a few more days before sending back. Wifi conections are a bit buggy at 30-40 feet and I have lost connections. Luckily, I have been able to get control back, but concerned about doing video over water or ledges where I might lose a connection and it flies off to where I cannot retrieve it. I also had an instance where it dropped from 40 feet out of power. Power level was at 22% and was loosing connection next thing I know it was falling like a rock, completely dead, I thought supposed to land itself when low. Video doesn't look HD and I have three dead pixels. Like I said I enjoyed playing with it and hope Parrot can fix the problems or get me a better working unit. If your looking to buy one I would check it over really good and would recommend setting the inclination and elevation low until your familier with the controls, I would also recommend testing its limits slowly and in a safe or retrievable environment. For my first drone I think it could have been worse but it could also been better.

I've read the negative reviews and felt compelled to chime in, as my experience has been quite different. While the instructions are non-existent, there's quite a bit of detail on how to operate the drone on youtube and the parrot website. I would not recommend opening it up and running outside to fly it, do some research on flying it, as there is a decent learning curve... I'm using a Galaxy S3 to pilot the drone for now, but will be purchasing the sky controller. Out of the box and after a dozen flights, I've had no problems with this drone. The picture quality for me is just fine and the video image stability is crazy-good. I've attached a screenshot from a video I took. Be careful of dogs, my buddy let his dog outside who b-lined it for the drone hovering at about 3 feet. I had to ascend quickly and land it on the roof bc my buddy was laughing so hard he couldn't call off his dog... All in all... I'm having a good time with the Bebop.

The Good It is slightly cheaper than the DJI phantom and is made of better material. It handled crashes while I was learning to fly. If you are an experienced flyer then I see little reason to purchase this instead of a DJI Phantom. If you are willing to take it slow and do a lot of practice to avoid collisions, then the Phantom is definitely the better product. The Bad There is no controller provided unless you purchase the additional $300-500 sky controller. This means you are limited to the wifi sensitivity of the device you run their app on. Most people report being about to fly about 50-300m with their phone or tablet device. Contrast this to the DJI Phantom 3 Standard which has about a half mile range and includes a real controller. The cost of the bebop and sky controller surpases the DJI Phantom 3 standard which is a far superior product with further range, longer battery life, WAY BETTER GPS, imagining and better stability. The App...The other problem is that the app frequently crashes. If you are in mid flight it can be another 10-30 seconds to reopen the app and hope you can reconnect before the drone moves out of range. While the return home feature does work in most instances, it only takes once to kill your drone good bye. Also the controls in the app are based on the device's gyroscope. Joysticks work way better and allow for more precision in flight so I would definitely recommend researching how to add a game controller to your device or look into an Nvidia shield. The UGLY Fly aways! If you check out the Parrot forms you will see multiple reports from users having fly away problems. I have had 2 bebops decide to fly away on me. My first lost connection during flight. After a little bit of time passes the bebop is supposed return to it’s launch location. Nope, it sailed off to some magical land and I have never recovered it. The last reported coordinates in the Free Flight app stated that it was nowhere near where I was flying and it went in a totally different direction then all my previous take off spots so where it was going I still have no idea. I spent 8 hour searching for it and finally gave up. The second bebop I got to fly exactly 3 times. This time I created a GPS flight path with Flight Plan (an additional $9.99 purchase for the app), and created a path to help me search for my first drone. The first two flights went flawlessly but I forgot to tell Flight Plan to record. On the third take off my bebop shot up and moved away at an accelerated rate and I quickly lost connection and the drone, even though I was using the same Flight Plan path that I had just run. I was able to thoroughly search the field where the last reported coordinates were and there was no drone. Both times I had GPS lock before starting the flights. Again you can check their forums and other drone enthusiast forums and there are many many reports of fly aways. In other words, your $450-500 can fly away and never return with a moments notice. I purchased my Bebop on October the 11th. I did a lot of research before buying my drone and there was no mention of the Bebop 2.0 coming out in December. You can verify this by doing a custom range search on google. The new 2.0 Bebop is about 30% faster, and the battery life last twice as long. $450-500 is quite an investment in something that will be outdated in less than two months. Nowhere else in the tech industry does this happen with products around this price point. Think about smart phones that often come in around this range. You know months ahead time when the new one is about to be released. One month notice is unacceptable. Put another way, say you bought a brand new PS4 or XBox One at release when they were $500. Now imagine that two months after purchasing one of these, a previously unannounced next-gen console is released by sony/microsoft for $50 more. People would be flipping out and never buy from that company again. I offered to pay the difference and send in my 1.0 but sadly Parrot has refused. If you were planning to get one of these on black friday DON’T!! It will be outdated by Christmas. At the end of the day, the Bebop is nice but not at this price point. Once you factor in the cost of a controller the Phantom is leagues ahead and cheaper. I will definitely be returning this and getting a phantom in the next week or so.

Extremely fun and easy to fly. It is very fragile, so learn to fly in an open area before attempting to use around obstacles.

Store people Theron and Kimmy were very helpful and knowledgable. The Bebop drone is amazing for the price. very responsive to my commands, the GPS return home function is reliable, flight or hovering is remarkably stable, still and video are of good quality. Battery life is so so. I cannot think of anything negative about this product.

We bought this drone for our son for a Christmas present. It was super easy to set up including the software on an iPhone. It is very easy to control and we had it up to over 250 feet very quickly. The picture quality is amazing. To compare, we purchased another competitors drone a week later while on vacation and it was a disaster. We could not control the other drone and wished we had this one with us. On the other drone the battery would only last for 7 minutes and takes 2 hours to recharge. This drone runs for about 11 minutes comes with 2 batteries and recharges very quickly. Get this one, it works great.