Reviews Coming In...

[loyukfai]

Skydio 2 Review: This Is the Drone You Want to Fly

Flying this $999 obstacle-dodging drone is a magical experience

spectrum.ieee.org

Skydio 2 first impressions: An improved experience all the way around

Skydio's latest drone is still smart, and easier to fly with new manual flying via a phone app, controller or beacon.

www.zdnet.com

Skydio 2 First Impressions: Autopilot Drone Is A Clear High-Flier - SlashGear

Drones are fun, but learning how to fly drones effectively is generally a lot less fun, and that's where Skydio 2 comes in. The second-generation…

www.slashgear.com

Skydio 2 review: A drone that’s almost impossible to crash

To test Skydio's sophisticated auto-follow drone, I went to the most densely-forested mountain bike trail I could find and had the drone chase me. Could it keep up? Well, let's just say I wouldn't want to be on its bad side.

www.digitaltrends.com

 

[kaz911]

DCRainmaker

 

[Agchenry]

Why didn’t any review mention video or picture quality ?‍

 

[loyukfai]

Why didn’t any review mention video or picture quality ?‍

Yeah, that stuck me too... Part of the review agreement maybe?

Since the units are being shipped out, it wouldn't be long until people start evaluating picture quality.

Another thing is that under what conditions Skydio will refuse to fly? For instance it is not going to fly in complete darkness, but how about dawn/dusk?

Cheers.

 

[dirkclod]

Guess we going to have and wait for members to start reviewing.
I never pay much attention to reviews unless they are real life ones.

 

[UNIXman]

Yeah, that stuck me too... Part of the review agreement maybe?

Since the units are being shipped out, it wouldn't be long until people start evaluating picture quality.

Another thing is that under what conditions Skydio will refuse to fly? For instance it is not going to fly in complete darkness, but how about dawn/dusk?

Cheers.

Go to DC Rainmaker's site. He just put up 25 minutes of RAW video, unedited, to look at. I was unhappy with the muddy video on the YouTube sites, but downloaded his RAW video and it is STUNNING. CLEAR and EXC. COLOR.

 

[netsonic]

Two new ones, fresh from youtube.

I am no fan of Billy K. as he has no clue how to properly review these things, but the video did actually show how the Skydio R2 does behave when it needs to do some obstacle avoidance and high speed tracking in the same time. Clearly it did not see some thin branches or wires and Skydio has posted publicly on the YT page that these dangerous flights might void the warranty.

This is also an interesting video from OriginalBodo. While it was not a wow, it shows that the drone got "stuck in the woods" and that it did auto land once it was low on battery. Skydio has also answered in the comments and provided solutions how to turn tracking off and how to cancel auto landing if needed.

While both videos show positive and negative things, I see tremendous potential and the software will continue to be improved. Let's say that these are the usual bugs that need to be addressed and suddenly I do not feel bad that my Skydio is going to be delivered in Q2.

A controler review. Wait.. what? You do not have any telemetry data readout. In plain English.. no flight distance, altitude or how fast the drone was going. I hope that these things will be corrected in future versions of the software.

 

[UNIXman]

While I've had some "Oh no, PLEASE don't do that!" moments, I've learned SO MUCH from all the videos that I've watched while waiting for my S2 to arrive. I'm glad that they were posted. I'd rather learn from OTHER folks' mistakes than from my own. BTW: I ordered on 2 October, but haven't yet gotten my e-mail from Skydio.

 

[netsonic]

I couldn't agree with you more.

Here is a fresh one from Billy K

It's a narrow trail tracking flight. Skydio handles it great, speed and following is pretty impressive even if he does fly through trees on a narrow trail, until Billy went into a tunnel where it had less light so it crashed.

Fresh review from OriginalDobo. He does provide a lot of constructive feedback.

Observed issues:

1. Auto jump or fall back to JPG if is its set to raw. You set it to DMG but on the card you'll find only .jpg pictures.
2. Murky jurky moves or lack of smoothness.
3. Connection issues between phone and controller. Might be related to smartwatch due to interference.
4. Bad video down link connection or frequent disconnects
5. Cannot take off when you are in low light (twilight sunrise).

 

[Ridefreak]

I couldn't agree with you more.

Here is a fresh one from Billy K

It's a narrow trail tracking flight. Skydio handles it great, speed and following is pretty impressive even if he does fly through trees on a narrow trail, until Billy went into a tunnel where it had less light so it crashed.

Fresh review from OriginalDobo. He does provide a lot of constructive feedback.

Observed issues:

1. Auto jump or fall back to JPG if is its set to raw. You set it to DMG but on the card you'll find only .jpg pictures.
2. Murky jurky moves or lack of smoothness.
3. Connection issues between phone and controller. Might be related to smartwatch due to interference.
4. Bad video down link connection or frequent disconnects
5. Cannot take off when you are in low light (twilight sunrise).

Dobo obviously is having interference that I suspect are causing 2, 3 and 4. After he turned off the watch the initial connection issues went away but returned after he powered up next time, that sounds like his handset to me. What would have been telling is to ditch the watch and the phone and perform the same test with another device.

As for # 2 and 4, depending on the WiFi environment any receiving device has to take the time to look at any packets in the ether and decode/decide if they are meant for that device, that takes CPU cycles. I've seen similar issues with other wifi technologies, you must consider that the controller/phone needs a constant stream, unlike a laptop or other device that requests data and then buffers said data as it arrives providing what appears to be an uninterrupted stream to the user when in fact it's parsing the end server constantly and receiving it's incoming stream in chunks, in between that it's decoding the addressing on any other packets it detects. With the drone using WiFI control plus video streaming in real time it's dependant on constant uninterrupted connectivity. Another topology would likely handle this situation better but unfortunately that's not an option here.

 

[Zoom]

Really not a big fan of you tubers review other then (Ken) originaldobo I want to trust his content. Everyone else are just ( Mod Removed)

 

[loyukfai]

So, Skydio 2's obstacle avoidance and tracking is in a league of its own right now.

OTOH, many other aspects are half-baked at most, to the point that even basic telemetry is missing.

Let's see how it goes in 2-3 months.

One thing that is quite concerning to me is that, Skydio doesn't allow turning off the obstacle avoidance system and just let the user fly, and according to one reviewer it wouldn't fly at dawn when there's not enough sunlight.

Cheers.

 

[Zoom]

Well written

 

[Ridefreak]

So, Skydio 2's obstacle avoidance and tracking is in a league of its own right now.

One thing that is quite concerning to me is that, Skydio doesn't allow turning off the obstacle avoidance system and just let the user fly, and according to one reviewer it wouldn't fly at dawn when there's not enough sunlight.

Cheers.

Why would you want to turn off OA? To fly at night? It's no secret that this drone doesn't do that and how would that play out with their warranty? They don't want you to turn off OA, no surprise there. SDs goal with this drone was to make it as easy to use as a cell phone and it is. Their method for OA requires light to work, since the target audience for this drone is everyone, not just experienced pilots then being able to turn that off OA means some will be crashing it, avoiding that is far more important to them then being able to fly at night. Even the conventional controller is obviously an afterthought to appease the owners that prefer that, altitude will be available once the 400' ceiling is turned off. The app shows the drone's GPS location overlayed on GE and for the majority of users that will be sufficient. Their goal was to build a drone that anyone could fly, not to replace the Mavic or other DJI products. That distinction was made by everyone else once the SD2's details started coming out. They are a small company that has to protect their interests and fluid OA is the drone's primary feature and it's most important selling point.

If telemetry and night flying is important then a DJI drone is a better choice, the key word being "choice"

 

[leenanj]

Why would you want to turn off OA? To fly at night? It's no secret that this drone doesn't do that and how would that play out with their warranty? They don't want you to turn off OA, no surprise there. SDs goal with this drone was to make it as easy to use as a cell phone and it is. Their method for OA requires light to work, since the target audience for this drone is everyone, not just experienced pilots then being able to turn that off OA means some will be crashing it, avoiding that is far more important to them then being able to fly at night. Even the conventional controller is obviously an afterthought to appease the owners that prefer that, altitude will be available once the 400' ceiling is turned off. The app shows the drone's GPS location overlayed on GE and for the majority of users that will be sufficient. Their goal was to build a drone that anyone could fly, not to replace the Mavic or other DJI products. That distinction was made by everyone else once the SD2's details started coming out. They are a small company that has to protect their interests and fluid OA is the drone's primary feature and it's most important selling point.

If telemetry and night flying is important then a DJI drone is a better choice, the key word being "choice"

We want it all, let us turn OA off if we want. Many people want a smaller bubble or to fly at night.

What happens the first time a tree branch takes your drone out with OA turned on?
They will just say we told you not to fly around small branches, no warranty for you.

 

[Agchenry]

We want it all, let us turn OA off if we want. Many people want a smaller bubble or to fly at night.

What happens the first time a tree branch takes your drone out with OA turned on?
They will just say we told you not to fly around small branches, no warranty for you.

Better to give you option to make OA sphere smaller at your own risk. (From 3’ to say 1.5’)

 

[Ridefreak]

We want it all, let us turn OA off if we want. Many people want a smaller bubble or to fly at night.

What happens the first time a tree branch takes your drone out with OA turned on?
They will just say we told you not to fly around small branches, no warranty for you.

You're painting them with the DJI customer service brush, their warranty customer service is unknown right now.

The SD2 stores video of its last flight along with it's other logs. When you return it for warranty repair they'll know exactly what the conditions and obstacles were present when it crashed.

 

[leenanj]

You're painting them with the DJI customer service brush, their warranty customer service is unknown right now.

The SD2 stores video of its last flight along with it's other logs. When you return it for warranty repair they'll know exactly what the conditions and obstacles were present when it crashed.

Your right, we don't know yet how lenient or strict they
will be when it comes to crashes and there warranty.

They have an entire page on obstacles you should avoid flying in.

Most of the videos flying through trees and dense forest would not be covered
under warranty if it clipped a branch and crashed.

Still I am glad it is able to maneuver so well under these conditions.

 

[loyukfai]

Obviously, anyone who turns off OA, flies, and crashes into things will have his/her warranty claim voided.

However, not being able to fly even at dawn/dusk could be problematic for some.

When I took this video, in some instances the drone had to be up in the air before the sky was fully lit in order to get into position for the shot.

Of course, one can always get another drone for shots in low light...

BTW, it may not be technically feasible at all? Since the S2 doesn't have a compass, and they have said that it is designed to fly with the OA all the time.

So there are 2 issues at play:
1. Is it technically feasible for the S2 to fly without OA?
2. If yes, will Skydio allow it?

Anyway, it's an option which I'd say is "good to have", but not a must... as long as people are aware of the drone's strengths and limitations. As said above, one can always get another brand or model.

That being said, the S2 is offering something quite extraordinary in the current dronescape, and not everyone has the budget for more than one drone. So it will be nice if, going forward, Skydio can offer this option.

IMO, in this case It's not necessary to have a right/wrong answer, people can offer their opinions and make requests, the company can listen or ignore, or they may listen but is indeed unable to respond satisfactorily, and at the end of the day we can vote with our wallet. : )

Cheers.

 

[netsonic]

New day, couple of new videos of reviews:

1. Skydio 2 Cinematic | Gold Coast

Even if OriginalDobo complained about "Murky jurky moves or lack of smoothness." this video is great. i know that he has post processed and edited it, but talking about quality.. it's just great!

2. Skydio 2 real world test. How good is the controller?

There is a difference between controllers as OriginalDobo's had just a single USB port and this controller from Danny Mcgee has two usb ports.

3. Skydio 2 gimbal settings, Flight speed adjustments etc.

Observed issues:

• Does not take off at night
• it will not take off if you do not have 500mb of free space on the tablet or phone if you're flying your Skydio.
• Drone complains that it needs cleaning if you grab it by hand and get the camera dirty.
• Does not fly quickly with the app or the beacon out of the box. You need to tweak the settings by "trial and error" to make it behave quicker or slower. Detailed settings in the video
• When the drone returns to home automatically (after loosing signal), it will return the same way as it's orientated when it lost signal, you cannot turn it around or turn the camera around.
• Poor range with the controller in residential area, about 1 mile (1.61 km) before loosing signal.

4. Skydio 2 dronie mode while tracking the beacon

Dronie mode is kind-of good in open areas. The SD lost tracking, using beacon tracking it flew into the trees and remarkably avoided all the branches.

5. Skydio 2 Trust Flight

Skydio tracking a subject while walking on a trail through the woods. Solid performance with no issues.