Parrot's little, lightweight Bebop Drone is fun, but flawed
Gadgets
[MUSIC]
With it's 14 megapixel camera and fisheye, F-22 lens, 1080p full HD video capture and the ability to fly by smartphone or tablet or a full fledged controller.
Parrot Bebop Drone looks like a great starting place for anyone interested in capturing better than average areal photos and video.
In reality, it's got a handful of potential deal breakers to make you put away your wallet.
I'm Josh Goldman with CNet, and the first thing is likely the battery life.
Its batteries are rated up to 11 minutes, and while you get two of them, you'll of course have to stop your flight to land safely and swap them out.
And I also never got that much flight time out of them.
The video quality's okay but soft and had some aliasing artifacts and frequently flickered when adjusting for light conditions.
Video and photos are stored to its eight gigs of internal memory but once it's full you either have to transfer wirelessly to your phone or tablet or plug into a computer And turn it on while you transfer.
It's easy enough to fly with your mobile device, but using touch alone takes practice.
You can buy the Bebop bundled with Pirate's sky controller which gives you physical controls.
However, the bundle is $900, and at that price, it's competing with more capable models from DJI and 3D Robotics among others.
The Bebop alone is $500, which is pricey but not entirely unreasonable given what it can do, and how small and light it is.
But even that advantage has its downside, in that it has a tough time staying stable in wind.
You can read the full review on cnet.com, but basically if you want something compact that you can throw in a backpack and have a few minutes of fun.
And capture some scenic video, it's a good, easy-to-learn option.
Otherwise you'll want to look elsewhere.
I'm Josh Gowman and that's a quick look at the parrot bebop drone.
