Hover Camera Review: Just a flying camera?

My first drone flight experience was with the DJI Phantom 3 Professional, and as much as I appreciated its advanced capabilities at the time, I longed for something more compact — a device so small that I wouldn’t need to carry a separate bag or case for it. Eventually, a Chinese startup called Zero Zero Robotics released the $599 Hover Camera Passport, which comes in the unique form of a foldable cage while packing cool features like body tracking, face tracking and orbiting. I got to spend some time with the Passport over the past few weeks, I find time to take it for a quick spin and the Hover Camera review.

The Hover is Zero Zero Robotics’ first product and is designed to be safe, portable and savvy solution to allow let anyone to “effortlessly capture exciting moments indoors and out, from creative new perspectives.” Using Embedded AI to intelligently navigate its environment and the Qualcomm Snapdragon Flight drone platform, Hover Camera captures personal moments, but is not viable for tracking sports beyond the family Thanksgiving football game.

As the Hover Camera review, we should first focus on the camera specs, the core function of drones. Equipped with 13-megapixel camera, it’s capable of shooting 4K video at 30fps and at the same time offers live 720p HD video. Furthermore, it uses electronic image stabilization (EIS) for anti-shake. But EIS and No-GPS means shaky video in strong wind and outdoors.

Some of the issues with the Passport might get fixed in the future, since the drone gets software updates fairly regularly. My first gripe, and one that may be fixed, is with the auto-follow modes. It’s actually a little difficult to get the camera to follow you if you aren’t moving extremely slowly and staying in its field of vision at all times. So, it’ll follow you on a run in a straight line, but it tends to cut out or “lose” you if you turn — even if you go slowly. That’s just for the body-based follow mode. The face-based mode should follow you based on facial recognition, and I only got that one to work once.

Keep in mind that the auto-follow modes are one of the Passport’s biggest selling points, so this is kind of a big con. However, like I said, the drone gets software updates, so this issue could be resolved. The company even said they might add auto-follow for animals or objects (which isn’t available yet).

Compared to Mavic Pro 7KM controlling distance, Hover Camera’s 20M Wi-Fi distance may be not that satisfied. So does the 10mins flight time, if you want to shoot something great, you need to prepare more batteries.

That’s the simple review of Hover Camera, that’s not to say the Hover Camera doesn’t have some cool features. It does. And if you’re looking for a simple way to snap a selfie and video quality isn’t that important to you – go for it.

But $599 puts you very close to the Mavic Pro. Spend the extra $150…and you’re not just hovering. You’re flying.

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