Skydio Announces End to Consumer Drone

[GFields]

Skydio will no longer be selling drones to consumers.

For years, Skydio has denied rumors that it was planning to pivot away from consumer sales, and start selling drones strictly to enterprise customers.


Just two months back we shared news that the Skydio 2+ had been out of stock for quite some time, a fact that Sally French of the Drone Girl speculated was due to preparation for a pivot away from the consumer market. At the time, a Skydio spokesperson told French that the shortage was simply due to high demand.


But now we know she was right.

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[look]

Is there any alternative out there for tracking without app or remote? Something else that use a beacon like autonomous flying?

 

[Ridefreak]

If you want autonomous subject tracking at decent speed with avoidance the SD2 is the only game in town.

 

[look]

Well... but it is not available anymore...
So which options private customers have?

 

[Ridefreak]

Find a used one.

 

[look]

great answer. but even these will end soon...
What about the batteries?.. software upgrades? hardware support?
to buy discontinued drone ?...

 

[Ridefreak]

I purchased 4 new batteries from SD after the announcement if that counts for anything. As a long time user with other drones I know there's nothing I can buy that can replace the SD2 for certain things, one of them is filming an off-road MC ride almost 100% autonomously. I immediately bought a nice used spare when they made that announcement.

It's disappointing, I was one of their early testers and always appreciated its capabilities as many of us on here. As a typical consumer, getting the enterprise announcements from them touting their new capabilities is like salting the wound.

 

[VEGASROBBI]

great answer. but even these will end soon...
What about the batteries?.. software upgrades? hardware support?
to buy discontinued drone ?...

I've come to learn that software updates are not always a good thing.

Fortunately the last update seems to be a good one my S2 has been performing well, I have no desire or a need to update it anymore.

 

[VEGASROBBI]

I have (3) S2/S2 +'s, I'm stocking up on batteries and props while they are available.

I feel it will be some time before DJI, Autel, and the others, will catch up to the tracking performance of the S2 if ever.

I'm happy with the current software so status quo is fine with me. As far as getting service if I crash hopefully it will remain available.

 

[kenmavic2zoom]

I have (3) S2/S2 +'s, I'm stocking up on batteries and props while they are available.

I feel it will be some time before DJI, Autel, and the others, will catch up to the tracking performance of the S2 if ever.

I'm happy with the current software so status quo is fine with me. As far as getting service if I crash hopefully it will remain available.

Too late, the DJI tech has already caught up....or at least close. DJI fans are raving about the OA on the Mini 4 Pro and since they are mostly unaware of what Skydio can do, it's just a matter of time before DJI becomes the defacto king of OA. In my opinion, the Skydio was almost crash-proof but Skydio pilots wouldn't support that idea as they frequently pointed out all these strange scenarios where the Skydio would crash (started out with pilots mostly using inappropriate connections).

Therefore, the Skydio was never thought of as super-impressive which will allow these other mediocre drones to take over the spotlight much quicker: Crash a few times, ok, but wow look how far these DJI drones have come.

I agree with you, no DJI drone in my lifetime will ever be able to keep up the pace I put the Skydio 2+ thru a few times.

This guy is the best at testing OA:

 

[VEGASROBBI]

I agree DJI has come a long way but the mini 4 is still no S2. I've owned practically every DJI consumer drone from the Phantom 1 to the Mavic 2 Zoom and none are usable for my purpose.

I'll stick with my S2 until something better comes along.

 

[paularity]

Too late, the DJI tech has already caught up....or at least close. DJI fans are raving about the OA on the Mini 4 Pro and since they are mostly unaware of what Skydio can do, it's just a matter of time before DJI becomes the defacto king of OA. In my opinion, the Skydio was almost crash-proof but Skydio pilots wouldn't support that idea as they frequently pointed out all these strange scenarios where the Skydio would crash (started out with pilots mostly using inappropriate connections).

Therefore, the Skydio was never thought of as super-impressive which will allow these other mediocre drones to take over the spotlight much quicker: Crash a few times, ok, but wow look how far these DJI drones have come.

I agree with you, no DJI drone in my lifetime will ever be able to keep up the pace I put the Skydio 2+ thru a few times.

This guy is the best at testing OA:

Actually am I the only one who thinks these drone YouTuber's are actually pretty sub standard at testing the OA?

Billy Kyle cruising on his One Wheel and DC Rainmaker riding his bike slowly in a straight line are not really putting these drones to task in my opinion

They must have like 6-7 videos of flying in the same spot, doing the same thing every time a new DJI comes out

And the reality is nobody is doing any 'extreme' solo follow cam action whilst somehow carrying their big controller so it's kind of a moot point, why don't they have someone else fly the drone and do some rapid direct changes or ride faster or something more relevant...

4 years on and the Beacon is superior

And people the comment section in YT videos are just keyboard jockeys with no clue for the most part DJI just has better marketing

To be fair though, I've seen very few Skydio videos over the years besides most of the crew on this very small forum that really exemplify the flying auto GoPro concept of the Skydio 2

One thing I can’t remember if I mentioned that I’ve been doing inspection work with the S2+ in oil and gas for like the past year as part of my job - kinda purely off the back of my personal Skydio use

Had one of the other ropies get put through his commercial drone license recently and he has like zero flying experience

We just had a few days of me ‘mentoring’ him and was crazy to see how like instantly confidence inspiring the OA allows people to fly

I’m talking like 3-4 hours hands on at a live gas plant and he’s buzzing around the pipes no problems with the close OA bubble enabled from the Enterprise software haha!

Hoping my company will spring for the X10 when the Aussie Skydio guys get over West for demos - that thing is next level!

 

[DrtBkDav]

The story unfolding with Skydio reminds me of another company that was up against superior marketing: Contour Cameras.

The Contour camera was designed as a helmet camera and had laser sights to line up the the shot and a large one button operation that beeped once when recording and twice when powering off/stopping recording. It was so simple to use and at the time it came out was far superior quality in image and finish that its biggest competitor the Gopro.

Gopro' s version of the action camera was just a square box (still is) with a camera lens in one corner. No good way to mount it and its biggest problem is you could not tell if it was recording or not. I don't know how many times I was out riding with my buddy and I got good footage with my contour and he got footage of the inside of his gearbag on the way to the desert and back.

But Gopro had very good marketing. So they outperformed Contour in sales every year until eventually Contour went broke.

Now the Gopros are way better than the original ones but still have the same quality issues and mounting issues. I finally broke down and bought two years ago and its already junk. It turns on but the video is black most of the time. Now I will have to either buy a new one or try the DJI camera.

My old Contour that I bought in 2004 still works as if it was new. Its video is only 1080p witch was pretty good at the time but now when I couple it with my Skydio, it looks horrible by comparison.

At least Skydio has not gone broke. Maybe we will yet see something come out of them like a spin-off. Or maybe DJI will develop a beacon as well. Either way I see several similarities here.

 

[VEGASROBBI]

Reminds me of 3DR, Solo was years ahead of the competition. To this day Solo does things my modern drone's can't.

DJI was so afraid of 3DR they tried to buy them.

3DR made many bad decisions which offset their superior product in the market.

Seems to me Skydio took a more conservative approach. They started in the lucrative consumer market to fund R&D and get the bugs out. Honestly the consumer market must really suck for small drone manufacturers, lots of costly customer support and warranty repair, plus lots of whiners putting the product down if it doesn't work perfectly.

Stepping up to the prosumer or professional market they're dealing with better trained and more careful pilots with realistic expectations which can lead to a higher bottom line. Let's just hope they don't go the way of 3DR.

 

[Ridefreak]

I've often thought the same thing, there's a lot of cost, effort and headache in supporting an expensive consumer drone system. Especially for a startup.

 

[paularity]

I've often thought the same thing, there's a lot of cost, effort and headache in supporting an expensive consumer drone system. Especially for a startup.

If you have a search around on the more 'professional' slanted LinkedIn there are knowledgeable people plugged into the drone industry who claim that Skydio was pretty much losing money on every S2 in the consumer market

Consumers basically demand that all these hectic new features should come at a very low price point that DJI has set because they effectively own that segment of the market

You can see Skydio's VC funding is a lot of big players in the tech space who are much more bullish on the bigger picture

And even when they announced 3d Scan over 2 years ago that was really setting the stage for the capabilities that are now much better with the new X10 hardware

They just cop a lot of **** because they are jumping on the band wagon of the anti-China sentiment in the US to their commercial advantage

 

[BlueHeeler]

If you have a search around on the more 'professional' slanted LinkedIn there are knowledgeable people plugged into the drone industry who claim that Skydio was pretty much losing money on every S2 in the consumer market

Consumers basically demand that all these hectic new features should come at a very low price point that DJI has set because they effectively own that segment of the market

You can see Skydio's VC funding is a lot of big players in the tech space who are much more bullish on the bigger picture

And even when they announced 3d Scan over 2 years ago that was really setting the stage for the capabilities that are now much better with the new X10 hardware

They just cop a lot of **** because they are jumping on the band wagon of the anti-China sentiment in the US to their commercial advantage

When I bought my first Skydio2 at the low price of 999. for the Starter Kit, I thought it to be too low of a price, they could have sold it for 1500 or more, I still would have paid, personally I believe they got out of the consumer market because most consumers are a pain in the azz ( I was a co-owner of a car audio shop years ago ) people were a pain in the azz back then, they still are today.

 

[Racin8de]

Wow, that's a surprise! I was hoping to get a Skydio drone. It's a bummer they're going enterprise-only now. Wonder if they'll change their minds later.

 

[KlubMarcus]

Wow, that's a surprise! I was hoping to get a Skydio drone. It's a bummer they're going enterprise-only now. Wonder if they'll change their minds later.

After my Skydio Care runs out, then I'll just buy 2 / 2+ used. Still can't find a drone that will track me through trees. I'll buy used Enterprise Skydio 2+ drones in a few years when they hit the used drone market. It's more efficient than buyin g one disappointing drone after another, which barely get flown!