Is Yuneec Breeze so simple as Yuneec says

There’s a drone in drone industry, and the company that makes it, Yuneec, says it’s a total breeze to fly.

No flight experience or even a flight controller is needed–you operate it all on your smart phone, with an app.

Yuneec doesn’t even call the Yuneec Breeze a drone, but instead a “flying camera,” one which the company suggests should be used for group shots and selfies.

The Breeze sells for around $400, which is a pretty low price for a drone. A comparable device from no. 1 drone manufacturer DJI also sells for $499–but DJI’s Phantom 3 Standard comes with a flight controller that must be mastered before the drone can take off–and videos are recorded at 2.7k resolution.

The Phantom weighs 2.6 pounds, while the teeny Yuneec Breeze is under a pound, and promises heftier 4K video resolution. The Breeze has internal memory, offering only 12 minutes of flight time before re-charging.

I spent some time with Yuneec recently checking out the Yuneec Breeze, flying it by a seaside cliff here in the South Bay area of Los Angeles with product manager Trent Siggard.

In Siggard’s hands, the Yuneec drone took off as a flying camera swiftly. The app offers choices like “Selfie” mode, where the camera flies in place at eye level, to snap shots of you and your friends, and “Follow Me,” mode–where the Yuneec Breeze camera senses your presence and moves with you as you change locations.

We played back the footage on my phone pretty easily, and I later transferred the files to the computer, where they looked decent–about what you’d expect for a $400 drone. (That day we also looked at Yuneec’s top of the line Typhoon H, which blew the Yuneec Breeze, as you would expect out of the water. The images were steadier, richer in color and looked outright amazing.)

After our cliffside drone sessions, Siggard and I went into town and sat at an outdoor cafe, where we both got the Yuneec Breeze to fly at eye level, for some selfies. All worked well.

But then, when I went home–remember this is a first impression–I tried again and user error came in.

I clicked the Yuneec Breeze “launch” button on the app, the Yuneec drone took off a walloping 40-50 feet above my backyard deck. This was way, way higher than expected, or desired.

I kept clicking on the app it to bring it back down to earth, and there was initially no response. After a few agonizing minutes, it finally did what it was supposed to do and landed atop an outside plant.

At my first glance, the Yuneec Breeze wasn’t a total breeze for me– but with time to master it, hopefully it will be as simple for me as Yuneec says it should be.

The post Is Yuneec Breeze so simple as Yuneec says appeared first on Drone Inner.