Jealous much? Of your friends having loads of drony fun at the park that is, while you stay home counting trees. Want yourself some piece of the action but without obliterating your bank account, the piggy bank or the college fund? Well, Yuneec‘s got your heart and your back too into the bargain.
Well, everyone within a 20-mile radius knows you got ten thumbs and an inordinate interest in aerial photography/videos. As well as absolutely no interest in flying the unwieldy contraptions now popularly called drones to get the perfectisimo shot. Give up or battle on? The Yuneec Breeze 4K was designed with only you in mind and is a more compact, eminently usable sibling to its more upscale, premium priced and specced bros, the rather ogre-like Yuneec Typhoon series. It’s a real breeze to fly too and possessed of a slew of automated slick moves you just need to tap out to get your pretty mug all over the video screen. Which you can then download to your phone, edit, share ad nauseaum to anyone anywhere and get your 10 seconds of fame. Don’t get your hopes too much though cos a DJI Phantom it ain’t with no obstacle/terrain avoidance mode. Just imagine it as simply a portable, flying camera for the selfie-possessed/obsessed and you are good to go. Indoor flying is easy too, thanks to an indoor positioning system that enables it to stay aloft while imparting stability.
Need to get it somewhere specific? Then the on-screen controls are awaiting. But are limited to a maximum distance of 100 meters and a maximum height of 80 meters only. Battery capacity is rather small and flight time and fun times are thus capped at a meager but still useful 10-12 minutes. With battery recharging time of around 50 minutes. And oh, you can crash it all you like if you like as its as durable as the rubber-faced man, and replacement parts aplenty abound for every conceivable part of it anyway. Each comes in a carrying case with two batteries and a set of prop guards that help in safeguarding your drone friend. No controller is included, and your smartphone is rather the default controller with the help of Yuneec’s Android and iOS app. Which sadly makes for some rather imprecise and oft frustrating controlling. But you can’t have it all right?
The camera is adequate but not earth-shaking, to say the least. It has vibration dampeners, but no stabilized gimbal to keep the flow silky smooth and hence your shots suffers severely from this in all but totally windless days. On 4K resolution that is. Drop way down in video quality to say 1080-720p and digital image stabilization that works somewhat well enough takes over the show. The camera has an 117 field of view, can take 13 MP stills as well as beam live video to your waiting smartphone so you can endlessly drool at the sight of you.
Price is around $500, which is somewhat steep. But you can always consider throwing that your ultra-pricey premium smartphone in the air to take selfies otherwise.