Back to the future with Yuneec Breeze 4k

Yuneec China 12-minute flying selfie stick not what the world needs.

Good ideas catch on and are quickly imitated, as the selfie stick shows. But it is unlikely that UAV drone manufacturers will look to copy a drone “selfie” like the Yuneec Breeze 4k that gets easily buffeted by the wind with a battery life counted optimistically at 12 minutes.

Indeed, unlike the Yuneec Breeze 4k, if a selfie stick is damaged or lost it can be easily replaced. But the beetle-shaped 1-pound Yuneec drone at US$500 makes the prospect of damage or flyaways a bit costlier.

On damages, the Yuneec Breeze 4K does come with fold-in propellers, but not a dedicated carrier offering foam or other protection. The landing gear in the Breeze is made of plastic that can easily chip or break if carried in a backpack unprotected and hand guards for the propellers are missing-in-action.

Just that R&D effort alone raises question about the commitment of Yuneec to quality and reliable usage as it targets first-time drone buyers in a push that UAV drone manufacturers just starting out appear to have already won with prices as low as $99 for versatile models that can add 4K cameras from other manufacturers.

In fact, even the 4K in the Yuneec Breeze 4K name should be taken with a grain of salt as many early reviewers suggest using 1080P to get a more stable and ready-to-use video because of the patchy connection via an APP to smartphone WiFi and limited range of 80 meters–and then hopefully post it to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Instagram or WhatsApp.

At that price and for far better camera features at a 2.7K video feed and a 3-axis gimbal and reliability the DJI Phantom 3 Standard is true value for money, especially for first-time drone buyers, and time tested for GPS reliability and under $500. There is really no comparison that the Yuneec Breeze 4K can stand up to.

In fact, unlike the Yuneec drone, the DJI Phantom 3 returns to the user at the press of a button and does the same if the control signal is ever lost and the stability of the drone in flight and hover brings back razor-sharp images.

However, the Yuneec Breeze 4k camera is not mechanically stabilized when filming in 4K, though images are electronically stabilized at 1080p–showing that 4K is not always 4K.

All of this has caught the attention of initial reviews of the Breeze with comparisons not at the nimbler and reliable models like the DJI series, but at newer drones that have flying times more than double the Yuneec Breeze 4K.

And the inevitable comparison of the Yuneec Breeze 4K is to the Yuneec Q500 4K, which has struggled as a bulky product beset by internal WiFi card issues and GPS reliability. Yuneec has attempted to move on from the Q500 4K with the Typhoon H class-but the legacy problems have reportedly impacted production and engineering fixes for the hexacopter.

In fact, some drone pilots suggest Yuneec risks getting lost in the crowd of low-end drone manufacturers that for now are not in the long-term game of innovation to gain customer loyalty like DJI.

 

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