The Hover Camera Passport from a Chinese startup Zero Zero Robotics retailes at $599. It comes in the unique form of a foldable cage while packing cool features like body tracking, face tracking and orbiting.
One thing that sets the Hover Camera Passport apart from the other high-end foldable drones like DJI’s Mavic Pro and GoPro’s Karma is its size,weight and caged propellers.At just 242 grams, or 0.53 pounds. The Passport is unlikely to hurt anyone should something go wrong, as its propellers are shielded by a carbon fiber enclosure. When folded, it’s just 33mm (1.3 inches) thick, and even in its 45mm-thick protective case (which stores the drone and two batteries), it fits in my backpack with plenty of room to spare.
Unlike most other drones, the Hover Camera Passport can only be launched from one’s hand: Hold up the powered-on unit with its wings open, tap the power button to rev up the propellers for about one second, and then release the unit to let it hover. Similarly, you can retrieve the hovering Passport with your hand without ever having to worry about the blades: Grab it and tap the power button to kill the propellers, or you can first tilt the unit downward to slow the propellers down before tapping the power button. When the battery level is critically low, the drone can slowly land itself using the sonar sensor under its belly; you can also use the One-Touch Landing button to toggle automatic landing at any time.
It’s safe to say that the Hover Camera Passport is one of the very few — if not the only — drones that can be launched and retrieved so safely. This is guaranteed to impress your family, friends and strangers alike.
While the Hover Camera Passport is impressed me and is ahead of similar drones like Dobby, the pocket-friendly drone category still faces some limitations. The worst problem is the battery life which is fairly shot. Expect about 10 minutes of air time from Hover Camera. Though with a charge time of about 40 minutes, it won’t be long until you’re back in the air again.
The Yuneec Breeze, another selfie drone, offers about 12 minutes of flight time.While,you can fly the DJI Mavic Pro for over twice as long, a reported 27 minutes of battery life, giving you much more time to the shot you want. And according to Xiaomi Mi drone, you can expect to get 27 minutes of flight time on a single charge.
This might not seem like a big deal if this is your first drone and you’re just getting used to flying in the first place, but having to change the batteries just to get less than a half hour of flight time is going to get really old, really fast.
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