Author: Tristan Greene / Source: The Next Web
Vivitar recently released its 360 Skeye View Follow Me Drone, a quadcopter sporting a built-in 360 degree camera and some nifty GPS features. I spent a few weeks putting a review unit through the paces. Turns out, Vivitar makes a quality product, but it could use a bit of help in the app department.
Having never piloted one of the company’s quadcopters before, I was eager to try my first. And upon unboxing the drone I was immediately impressed. Vivitar packs everything you need in the box, down to a screwdriver for the battery compartment on the remote.
But what immediately leaped out at me was the drone itself. Both it and the remote control are coated in soft-touch plastic and it makes a nice impression. The device feels solid and well-built, and snapping on the camera and prop guards is a cinch. If you’ve flown similar devices before, chances are you’ll be up and flying within fifteen minutes (barring battery charging, which took a couple of hours).
The Follow Me Drone’s included 16.1 megapixel camera shoots at 1080p in normal, 360, and VR modes. It manages to capture decent images and video, despite suffering from a bit of shake. This isn’t a top-of-the-line device featuring an expensive gimbal or advanced vibration dampening system, but Vivitar manages to squeeze some performance out it anyway.
As far as the drone’s specs go, it’s a medium-sized quadcopter at 40 cm (16 in) across, and it’s packed with dual GPS and WiFi functionality. The remote is standard fare and features all the normal functionality you’d expect. If you’ve flown a quadcopter before you’ll be right at home with the manual controls. And if you haven’t, the remote has one-touch takeoff and landing.
It also has several advanced features that make it a lot of fun to play with. First up is the Follow Me mode that it was named after. As advertised, it works quite well. When placed in this mode the drone will maintain a distance of about 20 meters from you and the remote control. It’s a pretty cool feature that almost doubles as a party trick if you’re around someone…
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