Parrot Bebop drone review
**Article Based on the Provided Video Transcription**
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### A Day with the Parrot Bbop Drone: An In-Depth Review
This article captures the essence of the video transcription, detailing the experience and insights shared about the Parrot Bbop drone. The content has been structured to ensure readability while maintaining the integrity of the original text.
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#### **Introduction: A Beautiful Spring Day**
This is one of those beautiful spring days when it feels great to just be outside. I love getting shots like this... hello, Mr. Swan, you are majestic. Okay, this is going to be my opening shot—zooming under this bridge and now I'm turning around. Okay or not? Okay, I've lost my connection. It's just hovering now. There's somebody over there; she's walking her dog. Maybe if I fiddle... pull this back. No, okay, now it's moving again. This is bad—please stop, oh God, out of the way, lady.
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#### **Reviewing a Drone: The Basics**
Reviewing a drone in many ways is like reviewing a phone: how long does the battery last? Is the software intuitive? How does the hardware stack up against the competition in terms of power and speed? But before you get to all that, there's one simple question you need to answer: If I put this thing in the air, can I be sure that I can control it safely?
With the new Bbop drone from Parrot, the answer is too often no.
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#### **Parrot’s Vision for the Bbop Drone**
Parrot had one of the most successful drones from the first generation of consumer quadcopters, but it was definitely a toy for the Bbop. Parrot's vision is to transform their offering from a toy into a tool—something anyone could use to capture high-quality photos and videos from a great distance.
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#### **Control Options and Connectivity Issues**
Like Parrot's earlier models, you can control the Bbop with just a smartphone or tablet. But you could also use a more traditional controller, which Parrot said extends the range of the unit to 1.2 miles. Unfortunately, in our testing, the connection between the pilot and drone was simply not reliable when using my phone. I would often lose connection to a Bbop flying just a dozen feet away: "I got nothing—I got no control. So the Drone got maybe like what 12 ft away, and uh we lost uh our connection... and now it's just going on its own."
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#### **In-Flight Challenges**
In the best-case scenario, it more or less hovered in place while I furiously clicked through my settings and the app trying to reconnect. In the worst case, it just kept flying wherever it was headed—perfect.
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#### **The Bbop’s Features: What Works Well**
There are some nice things about the Bbop. It's very small and light, fits easily into a backpack—even my 2-year-old toddler can carry it. It's cheap at $499 (although that price doesn't include the optional Sky controller, which tacks on another $400).
And the video the Bbop captures? While not as nice as you might get from the latest GoPro, it's good enough to make friends on Facebook jealous of your latest hiking trip or surfing adventure—when it maintains its connection.
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#### **Flight Performance for Beginners**
The Bbop flies well for complete beginners. The fact that the Bbop uses a smartphone as the controller makes it really approachable. It might be good enough for some very limited flying just as you learn, but for really getting the most out of your drone, the app as a controller falls way short.
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#### **The Camera System: Unique and Limiting**
The Bbop takes a really unique approach to its camera. Rather than mounting an external unit underneath with a gimbal, it has an internal camera with a fisheye lens. You can use your thumb in the app or special joystick on the Sky controller to pan around 180° within the camera's field of view. This can prove useful if you're out trying to get a shot—you can just let the drone hover in place and focus on framing without worrying about where you're headed.
But there are drawbacks. All the video footage has a slightly stilted quality to it as a result of being stabilized with software, and when you do crash, the lens on the camera is in prime position to bear the brunt of the impact.
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#### **Battery Life: Limited Flight Time**
The basic Bbop comes with two batteries, but you're not going to get a lot of flight time out of them. I averaged between 10 and 12 minutes depending on the wind and the number of back flips I decided to do—that's far less than the 15 to 20 minutes you can get on many comparable drones.
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#### **Build Quality: A Concern**
After having spent a couple of weeks with the Bbop, I have to say the overall build quality is a little suspect. The power button on the Sky controller popped off, and the covers on the bottom of the aircraft fell off as soon as I pulled it out of the box. The same issue shows up with the battery—for some reason Parrot designed it in such a way that it never really snaps into place with a solid connection. To solve this, they provided a little Velcro strap you can use to secure the battery in place. This is literally putting a Band-Aid on a design issue.
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#### **Overall Assessment**
The Bbop feels like it landed right in between a tool and a toy in terms of its price and feature set—that makes it unique in the market. When it works, you're getting a great value, but the build quality and software lack attention to detail, and the number of times we lost connection paired with Parrot's ambitious claims about range are frankly a little dangerous.
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#### **Conclusion: A Drone That Gets It Right, But Falls Short**
The Bbop is a drone that gets a lot right. But it also promises you can do things which it is really not reliable enough to safely attempt.
This is one of those beautiful spring days when it feels great to just be outside—I love getting shots like this... hello, Mr. Swan, you are majestic. Okay, this is going to be my opening shot—zooming under this bridge and now I'm turning around. Okay or not? Okay, I've lost my connection—it's just hovering now. There's somebody over there; she's walking her dog. Maybe if I fiddle... pull this back. No, okay, now it's moving again. This is bad—please stop, oh God, out of the way lady.
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**Note:** The transcription includes some repetitions and overlapping content for emphasis, which has been incorporated into the article as written.