Drones have come a long way since I first started talking about them back at NCIX.
You know, there's big ones now. You need the certification. You need to go train and go to school for five years
just to fly them near an airport. You're not supposed to fly them.
But Hover sponsored this video to prove to all of you
that it doesn't have to be that complicated. This is the Hover Camera X1.
It is a very light drone. It's 125 grams, which means that it's under
the 250 gram threshold that requires you
in the U.S. and Canada to get certification,
to fly a drone. Do I need to look at the quick start guide? No, I don't.
It's supposed to be easy to use. I don't need to read the quick start guide, but I probably should look at at least this card.
It seems useful. Yeah, this is, I'm excited about this one.
You're just supposed to hold it horizontally in the palm of your hand.
And then I believe that you press the button and there's a three second take off.
And that's gonna be exciting. I wanna see that. Disclaimer and safety instructions.
I'll have my people read that. Okay, what else we got? Oh, we got a little box here with some treats.
Ooh, ooh, a nice bag. There's nothing in the bag,
because I think that's to hold the actual drone itself.
A charging cable? USB-C to USB-A?
Okay, that's everything in the box.
Let's take a look at the drone itself. Man, it is a very small boy, hey?
There have been of course many small drones over the years,
but this is interesting to see this foldable design.
And presumably it fits in that bag I looked at earlier.
Let's take a look at what is on the outside. So on the top here, we've got the power and take off button.
There's the mode button, which switches modes.
I'm not sure what the modes are right now, but I know that there are five flight paths
that you can switch between on the fly.
And then there are five LED indicators surrounding that,
which I guess will give you a visual representation of what mode you're in when you're not using the app.
On this side, we have what looks like the USB-C charging port.
On the other side, not much, but I did also not mention this is the battery here,
which is directly replaceable. We have the charging hub here with an extra battery,
and oh, and there's two slots for that. And each one of these batteries
will give you 11 minutes of flight time. Thankfully, you got two batteries here.
You can swap them out and keep going for another 11 minutes.
And the fun times keep on flying. I just want to do this all day.
This is just fun. It looks like it's clapping for me.
Good job, Riley. We've got the gimbal camera here with some,
ooh, some jiggly stabilizing mechanisms there.
It can shoot 2.7K at 30 FPS or 1080p at 60
or 1080p at HDR. So we'll take a look at what that looks like.
And on the bottom, we've got our downward-facing sensor array.
This drone actually has a time-of-flight laser positioning
system here, as well as VIO technology,
which means that it uses a camera and deep learning technology to see where it's going,
just with a visual system, instead of relying on a bunch of sensors and GPS.
So that's interesting. We'll see how well that plays out.
Okay, let's pair it with the app, and then take it outside.
Let's have some fun. Whoa, we've picked up a signal on the radar,
on the sonar, captain. Should I hail them?
Press and hold the power button on the hover until the status indicator turns solid green.
Ooh, I like this display. Ooh, oh! Current mode, hover.
Done, it's connected. Before starting your flight,
pick up hover and follow me. Please complete eight tasks.
Are you ready? Please confirm that the status light turns green.
Hover is ready to fly. Oh, I didn't see this warning the first time.
Do not fly in the following environments. Low light situation.
The ground texture is not clear.
And it has a picture of like a smooth floor. So if your floors are too clean,
water surface, don't fly it over water,
and large height variants. And it shows buildings.
Please hold hover in your palm horizontally and align the camera to your face.
Hi. Use the other hand to short press the power button.
I'm holding my phone with the other hand. Short press, not long press.
Continue, snapshot.
Oh, I didn't, okay. I didn't think it was gonna go right away.
The red light indicates filming is in progress. I didn't give you permission, but okay.
Strike a pose. Once you've been still for three seconds, hover will take a photo of you.
Did you take the photo? Oh, okay, it did. After shooting, place your palm directly under the hover
and wait for the hover to land.
It feels safe with me. I've already bonded.
After the propeller shut off, the flight is officially completed,
and we can all go home. But now there's also, now there's these other icons in the app.
Sound recording, link account, hover's album. Oh, I can see the picture.
Got it, okay. Here's the, oh wow, it took a bunch of,
it took a bunch of photos. So that was cool. But now I wanna see what it's capable of.
All right, now I understand. There are six icons on the top
because there are five of those are the flight paths
that you can switch between. And then the sixth one is custom.
I guess you can make a custom one, which I'm not going to do.
You can also change modes in the app as well. I mean, it says here, hover, zoom out, follow, orbit,
bird's eye. Oh, and then there's extra ones.
But those are, there's the basic ones, and then there's the skilled ones.
Snapshot, dolly track, manual control.
The cartoon character in this app is hilarious.
What is it? He's got his legs up behind his head.
What? So let's go through the flight modes then.
Let's start with whatever this one is, hover.
Oh, it tells you what, zoom out, follow, follow, orbit,
bird's eye. Bird's eye.
Yeah, so it follows me around my mansion,
but it doesn't follow, it'll stay there because it knows its place.
And then if you just stick your hand out, it just comes right down. Man, I feel like I've known this little guy for years.
Okay, let's switch to zoom out.
Whoa. Now, is it recording right now?
Come back to me.
There's nothing for you out there in the world. You belong with me.
It'll always come back. The prodigal drone, okay.
Oh, okay, and then if you wanna actually watch the video, you have to download it.
That's interesting. It would be really nice if the process to see the file
that you just, the video that you just recorded, was a bit quicker.
Right now it's downloading from the drone onto the phone.
It has to download and process before you can just watch it. So that could be a bit quicker.
It was only a five second video. Okay, so there are settings in the app
for changing like how long it's gonna zoom out
and come back or how long it's gonna record for. All right, let's try the next mode, follow.
Just like we practiced little buddy, you can do it.
Come on, don't look at them this way.
Yes, yes.
You're doing great. You're doing it, Peter.
I've called him Peter. Marcus, have you ever seen such an amazing thing in your life?
Yeah, now it's yours. He's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's
he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's
he's on you now. Okay, just go, just go.
You're free now.
Go. Don't you get it?
I can't stay with me. Go. Okay, we're in orbit now.
Let's go over here. I may be orbit me.
It listened.
Okay, now what if, what if I don't go get it?
It's coming. It's like, daddy, daddy, pick me up.
What if I don't? What's it going to do? Oh, it just, it just has like a breakdown.
It's just like, I don't know what to do.
I see. That was like, I felt cruel there making it hover.
The last one of the five modes.
Bird eye. Okay, what do you, I don't know what you're going to do.
This is going to be a surprise.
Wait. No, I'm not ready.
Oh, okay. Wow.
It's going. Is it going to stop and come back?
Oh, it's already, it's already coming back.
I got to say, there's a part of me that's like, ah, it's a bit gimmicky, but there's a,
maybe a bigger part that's like, this is really cool.
It's like, it's cool how intuitive it is. I just held my hand out and it's just like, yes, father.
And I'm like, I already have a son. Let's just calm down. Oh, okay.
So you can set it to record for 30 seconds or 60 seconds
or five minutes or just continue, which I guess means that like,
keep recording until I tell you to shut up. You should be able to tell that the audio
is actually coming from the phone and not the drone.
The phone and not the drone. And that's because if the microphone was on the drone,
you wouldn't, you'd just hear a buzz.
So look at it. Oh, it's far away. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you see what I'm doing?
If you switch to vertical video mode, you're limited to 1080p 30 FPS,
but the option is there if you like want to post a social or something, I guess.
Oh, you think you can follow me? We'll have to see.
Come on. No.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
You've done well. Okay, we're back inside.
I want to take a look at some of this footage because you know, that was very exciting out there.
It was a challenging situation as David points out with the lighting, you know, it was basically
things were blown out with the sun in the background and there was harsh shadows,
but it seems to be doing a really good job. I mean, like obviously the sky is blown out,
but the color and the detail are pretty impressive
for, you know, a tiny little drone camera.
It did a really fun like edit, adding music
and taking screenshots during the video
so I can always forever remember the setup process
for the drone. I'm gonna put that right beside my kids' photos.
This is interesting. For some of the modes, I couldn't tell this while I was actually using the drone,
but now I can see it records for like the first bit
of the motion and then it stops and then records again
as it comes back. It did that for the bird's eye mode
and for the zoom out mode. So, I mean, you might be able to change that in settings,
because they did have some settings for like changing specific settings of different modes.
I gotta say, as I'm watching these, I'm reminded of the time when we were just outside
two seconds ago and it was my impression
of this drone overall, pretty good. Like there's not a ton that I have to complain about here
other than they, you know, oh, I wanna see the things that I just recorded.
I have to download them off the drone and have them downloaded and processed
and then they're available to watch. But like, you wouldn't expect a small drone like this
to have the type of Wi-Fi equipment that you could like stream high quality video
to your phone directly from it. So, you know, I kind of forgive that
because the rest of the experience using it was, I didn't have, I mean, I didn't have any complaints.
When I was done with it, I just put my hand out and it landed immediately.
So, if the Hover Camera X1 is something you're interested in,
they actually have a combo right now that's on sale. You get the drone and the battery charger
and an extra battery for 445, but it's on sale for 399.
So, if you're interested in that, check the link in the description and thanks to Hover for sponsoring this video.
Hey, thanks for watching. That was a ShortCircuit.
Appreciate you staying to the end so we can have this little moment.
Subscribe to the channel if you feel like it.
Make me happy, but.