Skydio 2+: A Longterm Review Of The Best Autonomous Drone.
hey everybody it's Thomas get out Arizona and you're watching another great episode of garage talk so let's get on it now today I'm going to be giving you my long-term review of the skydio two plus drone now when I say long-term review I mean 12 months coming up on 12 months I originally purchased this in mid-may of last year and since we're at the beginning of May it's just about 12 months I've put this through thing through everything as far as the Desert Regional Parks here in the valley up north and Sedona and parts of Flagstaff it's followed me while I've been mountain biking hiking backpacking four-wheel driving this thing has been amazing every step of the way with some caveats now this is not a sponsored review skydio did not pay me to do this review nor do they have any input on this review whatsoever I've purchased the Drone and accessories with my own money so you know I'm going to be giving you my unadulterated opinion as I normally do regardless of circumstance now if you're looking for a review that has to do with the Deep dive into settings or menu functionality this isn't it I'm going to leave a link down below to Billy Kyle who actually did a really great review on this concerning those items last year which includes flying it with the remote as well as key framing which this drone does do have only done it twice just to see how it worked and other than that it's been tracking me every step of the way using the beacon and the phone which again we'll get into in just a minute now the kit when I purchased this I purchased it with the beacon all right and two batteries and I'm going to have the price here off to the side someplace because it's been so long I can't remember what it was I think it was like 10.99 now since then I've bought additional batteries as needed and those batteries realistically depending on conditions and when I say conditions as far as heat cold and wind and actually am I having it rotate around me do the orbit or am I just having it track me last me anywhere from realistically 20 to 30 minutes the time it lasted me 30 minutes I was quite shocked but I'd say on average somewhere between 20 and 25 I've always been very impressed with the flight time and just as a rule of thumb I figure each one of these is going to give me about 20 minutes and so that's how I time the flight as far as what I want to do and what I want to capture now this will capture in 4k60 which I use and I do not use the Vivid color profile I use the regular standard profile and add contrast to taste I feel I get the most realistic colors and representation of my environment by doing this the Vivid is just a little bit too Punchy to me not saying it's bad that's just my preference so if you want to use Vivid and not worry about color grading you're more than welcome to I think you'll be satisfied but for me it's standard and adding contrast now it does record an h.264.
I'm not worried about that some people kind of gripe because it's a larger file size but I'm okay with that because it tends to edit easier and it actually uses a Micro SD card here in the bottom slot okay and currently I use Angel bird micro SDs will be a link down below for these and this is a 256 gig one and it's a V60 type 2. can you get away with that standard SanDisk v30 absolutely and initially that's what I was using but I found that the angel bird SD cards tend to be more reliable and on those trips that I have a butt ton of footage and yes that's an actual real word but ton it transfers over to the computer a lot more quickly and so the extra money between the angel bird and the SanDisk is worth it to me now super easy batteries you press you're going to see how much you have and hopefully that shows up these are going to lock in with a magnet unlike the djis that actually click and lock in I can honestly say there's never been a time where the battery has come separated become separated from the Drone itself and then from there you put up the antenna you press and you hold and then it's going to start to flash blue okay and it's here at this point that after it gets done flashing blue it's going to go to a solid blue profile and from here you can actually link it to your beacon and then the beak into the phone now the app is actually quite intuitive I haven't had any issues with it there was only one time that there was an issue and that was due to a firmware update all right it just couldn't quite do it I'm not going to hold this against skydio because there's other companies that have had similar problems pushing firmware updates so now as we can see it's gimbal's done its thing it's solid blue and I am going to open up the skydio app on my phone and as you can see it's going to ask me to connect and then from here I'm going to hit connect and then it's going to say do I want to join the Wi-Fi network I'm going to hit join and I actually did this the wrong way I should have turned on my beacon first but it's going to join and I'm going to kind of give you just an example so now it's saying that it's connected I'm going to hit done it says it's ready to fly and now you can see it's showing everything in front of the screen here now if I were to actually take off here in the garage which I'm not going to and it's even telling me that I'm in an unsafe spot to Launch um the screen would give me a display that's going to show exactly what it's doing I have it set to Auto record it would take off it's going to start auto recording and then I'm going to see and I should I'll cut in at some point there's going to be a cut in so you can see um exactly what I'm talking about I can choose to have the Drone follow me to the 12 o'clock the six the three and the nine o'clock position but I can always do that in the centers okay quartering that out now I can fly that with the beacon and not the phone app if I want to but I link the the phone through the beacon to give myself a better range now when I say better range that's a relative term this drone typically doesn't fly any further away than say 30 to 50 yards for me at any given time again I'm wanting it to track me and what I'm doing whether I'm biking or four-wheeling or hiking and I found over the last 12 months that's a pretty good distance for whatever I need it to do but this Beacon is truly the star of the show because with this Beacon it does not matter if I'm going through trees um if I go you know I'm riding on the trail I pass by some bushes or large Cactus or something like that this Beacon makes sure it stays locked on to me at all times now every once in a while I'll get beep I'll get feedback that says that it lost me but it's still tracking with this and then it finds me and it locks on 100 percent again it actually works extremely well now some of you might be going well Thomas so you hold the beacon in your hand no I don't I actually use a peak design capture clip okay and I put a Garmin uh male adapter on the back of here and I modified a capture clip hold we're going to kind of cut really quick and now we're back I'm going to try to zoom in on this as much as possible this capture clip is made by Peak design and I had capture Clips on all my backpacks so when I'm backpacking okay we're mountain biking for that matter I have this in the capture clip and then I have the beacon locked in and it sits right there in my chest so it's unobstructed the phone itself is held in place by my phone mount on my bike now when I'm four wheeling I have an adapter that this locks into my Tacoma right there by the windshield so again it's unobstructed and then of course this is in my foam Mount as well and my Tacoma so the entire system that I've constructed actually works pretty good and I'm going to go ahead and turn this battery off right now here we go and separate it the whole system works incredibly well and again the only times I've had issues where it's actually lost me as far as it's not tracking anymore I've got to stop what I'm doing and go back and you know physically use the app so it reacquires me is when I've had it flying into the Sun so Sun's hitting it it's just that extreme exposure and it has issues keeping track of me and even then it still does a good job out in the open it's only when I start getting into again overhead trees Forest you know I'm riding through stuff whether it's bushes or large cactus in the regional parks or something like that or in the morning as the sun's coming up and there's not a lot of contrast okay um then sometimes it has issues not necessarily locking on but when I pass through stuff staying locked on and having to go back and let it reacquire now if I were to sit there and say a hundred percent ninety percent eighty percent I would say at least 90 percent and that's not being generous that's being true and accurate ninety percent of the time this is locked onto me without any issues and that other 10 of the time either it's using the GPS on this to at least stay with me or it's just stop tracking all together now as I said before in the failing light of the Dawn or the direct sunlight of the high noon day it's when this drone is at its most vulnerable these are the two times that I've actually crashed the Drone okay now skydio says it will not or not that it won't but it will have difficulty avoiding anything that's less than a half inch diameter okay and that's pretty pretty small and the only time I've had any issues again that low light in the morning and I was coming around the curve on a trail the sun's coming overhead and it caught it and yeah sure enough that bush those branches were tiny clipped it boom crashed the other time was in Sedona similar thing the lighting was horrible and it was kind of my fault I tried to land it and it crashed both times I sent it back to skydio both times they fixed it for me I didn't have the extended warranty and since it was my fault on the crash it did cost me a little bit of money but they've always been excellent with customer service and we'll get to that now other than that ideal light the sun is fully up I'm not going through anything that would be considered risque less than half an inch diameter it's worked just fine now I've removed the flight ceiling on this as far as the coming down so when I'm walking through forests and thick woods and everything like that I have it tracking right behind me and it will stay there and it will follow it does an amazing job now I'm not going to cut in a bunch of footage from old trail videos you guys can just go to the on trail section of get out Arizona and anything from the last year that includes a drone tracking me that was skydio all right it's been amazing now let's talk about some of the shortcomings I wouldn't say battery life battery life is great I think it's great um you can't fly this drone at night it tells you in the book you can't buy the strogan at night this drone uses okay the five cameras that it has the five 4K cameras and this is what it uses to develop a picture so it's constantly assessing its environment to move around and avoid this it needs light to do it so if you're hoping to get this to track you at night think again it's not going to it won't even take off and there's been a couple times where I've had to wait for that Sunrise to get just a little bit more for it to say it's safe to take off you know due to lighting conditions you know and conversely sunsets and all of a sudden it's beep and I'm like wait I got plenty of battery and it tells me not enough light it's going to land and it gives you that warning and the opportunity to land the Drone itself yeah what I call this a strike against the Drone no because I knew this going into purchasing the Drone that was a limitation and I'm okay with that because any other time it works masterfully some of the issues that I've had with this drone had to do with firmware and having that firmware push properly to the Drone through the app and once it's pushed through it actually working okay now that has happened twice in 12 months and I'd say that's still pretty good considering I have issues with apple all the time and there are updates on the iPhone and then if we count the two crashes that I've had plus two other items that were just me not understanding fully and this was in the beginning on how to get certain things to work that means six times I've had a contact skydio customer service and this is another reason why I believe skydio is amazing is their customer service every single time I've contacted customer service I've talked to a person at skydio okay it's not a call center and some far off land these people at skydio actually know the Drone because they work for skydio there was one time I talked to the Head engineer dude was awesome super nice the gals I've talked to super nice everybody I've talked to super nice and helpful yes what can we do I'm gonna send you an email link follow the instructions or no I'm staying on the phone with you to make sure it actually works correctly there's been a couple times where I've called and they weren't able to answer right away okay leave a message they call back all right that says something any company can sell you a product but a great company backs that product and I have to say skydio has what would be in my opinion okay if I were to put a label on it award-winning customer service I've had no issues now I've seen some other reviews on YouTube saying that the Drone doesn't track that well okay that it doesn't work and it's constantly losing them and you know it wasn't worth the money and so they're sending it back I honestly don't know what those people are doing wrong I love this drone here in less than two weeks I'm going to be in Sedona for five days okay that's four hikes and four mountain bike rides and every single one of those I'm going to be using the skydio to track me it's become an integral part of my content creation as far as my trail videos and I even had somebody comment just the other day on how the Drone footage just really set that content apart and I think they're right where I could just use my insta360 camera you know to show all that stuff or when I'm Vlogging and I'm hiking and everything like that one of my Sony cameras but I think the skydio adds depth and dimension because you can see how far that cliff fall is that beautiful view out in the distances I'm driving and forward willing to a trail or spot and that's just something you can't get with an action camera or even one of my Sony cameras now someone might say well Thomas why don't you fly your DJI Mini 3 Pro and I would say right if I'm going to Pilot I'm going to fly the DJI if I want to be tracked and I don't want to have to worry about a gosh darn thing I'm using my skydio six days a week and twice on Sundays my friend this Takes the Cake you know with the DJI the active track isn't all that it's cracked up to be believe me I've tried it a couple times just to compare and with that big nasty RC controller that I'd have to mount to my handlebars or Mount to my bag or hold in my hand why the heck do I want to do that that's inconvenient so if you're looking for a drone the bottom line is to track you while you're doing dirt biking four-wheeling you're in your ATV sand cart or something along those lines mountain biking hiking like I do I don't think you can go wrong with the skydio Drone they're constantly doing firmware updates they're constantly improving and refining the drone's capabilities okay and that says something too about a company that is willing to after more than 14 months of release time on the two plus continue to innovate with what they have have and I'm telling you I am super excited to see when skydio comes out with the skydio 3 what it's going to be capable of I'll pre-order the day it happens take my money now just based on everything that this drone has done for me already you know so I hope this you know if you have any additional questions I should say comment down below I know this kind of glossed over everything it was just one of those hey you know here it is type things this is what I feel and I think that's important I didn't want to bore you with a lot of details and frame rates and all this other hullabaloo I use this drone to track me and when it comes to tracking it's impeccable okay when skydio when it comes to their customer service they're impeccable and to me that's a winning combination that shouldn't be ignored so on that note my friends like subscribe Bell notification icon it's the trifecta we love so much here at get out Arizona helps out with the video helps out with the channel there's going to be links down below Instagram Tick Tock Facebook the devil's work it's social media but it's required all right to get the word out about get out Arizona and you can keep up to our day-to-day Affairs we have group hikes we have group rides we have a lot of fun we're an Interactive Group here well I'm an interactive person so if you want to come hang out ask questions any requests on toolbox topics any of that stuff that's where you're going to do it in the comment sections below down below or our social media there's going to be other links down below they are affiliate links but not an affiliate link for this okay um if you follow one of those links we receive a small commission though you will not be charged any additional money and that helps out with park passes gas money and coffee money it's the other Trifecta that we enjoy so much down here or I should say here at get out Arizona so my friends seriously you can't go wrong the skydio2 plus and at that what do we say be kind to yourself and others be amazing stewards out on that trail and we have to ask what are you waiting for get out Arizona we'll see you on that next adventure take care everybody
