Parrot MiniDrones Review: Hands-on

Parrot unveiled its five new MiniDrones for the first time during CES 2015, and they are new models of the MiniDrones series launched during CES 2014. Last week, Parrot officially announced the new products with the pricing for the US market, over a week after the European announcement, and you will have to wait until September to get them here, in case you cannot wait, you can travel to France where the MiniDrones will be available starting from end of July.

During my hands-on session with Parrot, I got brief demos of three MiniDrones, each dedicated to one element: air, land and sea. All models are priced between $99 to $179, and most are the updated versions of last year’s products.

The Parrot Hydrofoil drone is the brand new addition to the lineup, and it literally “flies on the water”.

Thanks to the drought in California, we could not go to the fountain nearby the Parrot’s office in the Financial district of San Francisco, however, I have seen it in action. All MiniDrones operates under Linux free SDK so developers will be able to create applications.

Read the full article to get a sense of how the new MiniDrones work.

Jumping

The Jumping is a terrestrial robot controlled from a smartphone over Wi-Fi 2.4 or 5 Ghz via the free FreeFlight 3 application.

The first version, Jumping Sumo, was unveiled at CES 2014, and Parrot just announced the US pricing of its latest models in that series on June 23rd. We did not have the time to play with them during CES 2015, so it was great to see briefly what they are capable of in the Parrot office in San Francisco.

What is New:

Jumping Night MiniDrone by Parrot

For its new Jumping MiniDrone, Parrot has strengthened the jumping, has enhanced autopilot for the road and has upgraded the memory to 4GB.
Just like the previous model, the Jumping Sumo, the new Jumping MiniDrone can record video in the integrated flash memory or streams live.
The Jumping Night version is equipped with two powerful LED with adjustable intensity controllable from your mobile device, so you can see it at night while it is turning or jumping. The previous model did not have that particular feature.
Additionally, you can get different design options for each model: the Buzz (mostly white), the Marshall, red and inspired from a firefighter truck, and the Diesel, dark blue and inspired from a military design.
Equipped with a more powerful engine, the Jumping Race speeds up to 8 mph, while its sibling is limited to 4 mph.
The Race’s wheels are larger and stronger than the Night model, to race on all kinds of terrains.
Thanks to the embedded microphone and speaker, both Night and Race provide the ability to talk to someone through or listen to it, just like a walkie-talkie.
Additionally, the robots themselves can produce sounds such as biiip, ziiip and more.

Specific features & Hardware

Jumping Race MiniDrone by Parrot

The main interest of this MiniDrone is the ability to perform automatic movements such as jump, turn fast on itself, roll upside down, push or hit an object, and race, for the Race version.

Thanks to its patented spring-mounted system, both Night and Race can jump vertically or horizontally up to 2.5 feet, and it is quite fun to get them go over or on obstacles.

Mobile application

All MiniDrones can be controlled over Wi-Fi 2.4 or 5 GHz via the free free-flight 3 application, from iOS or Android mobile devices.

User friendly & movements

The mobile application that controls the Parrot Jumping MiniDrones is easy to operate and quite responsive. It is easy to understand instantly how to jump on and from any obstacles.

Other movements available include turn and spinning, the latter is quite fun to try.

Speed control

You can control the speed of the application and the movements as well.

LED control

I have not tried it, however, it is possible to create various lighting signals with the LEDs on the Night version.

Road-Map

Just like for all the other two series, Airborne and Hydrofoil, you can pre-register a road map with a series of jumps and turns in the mobile application (see photo).

Battery Life

According to the manufacturer, the battery last for 20 minutes, even when recording video, and can be fully charged quite fast in 25 minutes with a 2.6 mph charger, which is not provided with the Jumping MiniDrone.

Pricing and availability

The Jumping MiniDrones Night and Race will retail for $189 and will be available in September in the U.S.

The Night will come in three flavors; Diesel (dark blue), Buzz (white) and Marshall (Red) and the Race will offer three different designs: Max, Tuk-Tuk and Jett (see the product page)

Airborne

Mastering the air is one of Parrot’s pioneering innovations, back in late 2009 (we saw it just before the CES 2010 launch), I saw their first drone toy under strict NDA a month before they unveiled the <parrot drone name> at CES 2010.

Today, numerous companies are developing flying drones for the toy industry, and the dronie will soon replace the “old school” selfie.

Unlike the Bebop and other Parrot’s larger flying drones, the tiny Airborne MiniDrone does not allow for video capture, but only for taking snapshots that are stored in the embedded 1 GB flash memory, allowing users to shoot aerial selfies.