Who is the Hover Camera for?

Zero Zero Robotics’s first drone Hover Camera is priced at $599. Let’s take a look at its key features.

Weighing in at at feather lite 242 grams, it’s extremely portable and can be folded to the size of a hardback book. With a maximum flight time of between 8-10 minutes, it runs on normal replaceable batteries and has a 20-meter transmission range through Wi-Fi. The Hover Camera uses optical and sonar sensors to position and steady itself while a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor runs artificial intelligence to detect and track faces or even bodies.

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.

These features sound quite familiar don’t they? In fact, they’re pretty similar to other drones of the same ilk like, Zerotech’s Dobby and Yuneec’s Breeze as well as others. But these drones are priced cheaper than the Hover Camera and they outperform most of it’s features. So why the sky high pricing? What’s so good or so bad about the Hover Camera?

To start with, its propellers are fully enclosed by a strong carbon fiber frame, making it the safest drone we’ve ever played with. Using optical and sonar sensors to position instead of GPS, The Hover Camera is easily affected by lights and can’t really hover precisely. There’s no return-to-home function and without GPS it struggles to outdoors.

No Fly Zone

Additionally, without GPS, the Hover Camera can fly in no-fly zones. But is this an advantage over other drones when really it will never really harm any significant patch of airspace to warrant security lockdown. It’s simply too small and cute.

The overall appeal of the Hover Camera is that it’s easy to carry around. It folds up to the size of a large book and is extremely safe with a casing around the propellers meaning you could probably catch it mid air in flight by just grabbing the body. It would definitely be safe to fly around kids at parties. But if that’s the case, why not just use your phone and a selfie stick to get those extension shots?

For the price, Zero Zero are kind of taking us for a ride. The Hover Camera is not exactly an aerial image maker and though it does what it says on the box i.e. hovers, that’s about it. With all the effort it took to manufacture and market it, why wasn’t more included? In the end, you’d probably be better off saving for a DJI Mavic Pro. That way you’ll have endless exploration and intelligent features at your disposal. Its just a question of time before real customers find this out for themselves.

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