Everyone loves a drone – they can be tons of fun to fly around, and when you’ve got a camera-drone you can ever see the world from that ultra-high perspective and get a glimpse of a bird’s eye view. This Hubsan Star Pro WiFi Drone is one of the coolest we’ve had here at the office, and we’re thrilled to bring it to you.
To fly this drone you’ll need to download the free Hubsan app, but connecting to the Star Pro via its built-in WiFi couldn’t be simpler. Once you’re all set up with the easy to follow instructions, you can start flying the drone around. Right away you’ll notice how responsive it is, and how quickly the on-screen joysticks become like second nature. We've found that the Star Pro is definitely at its best outside with a good GPS signal despite its diminutive size - with a bit of satellite assistance it's super stable even in a breeze. We wouldn't recommend flying it in high winds though, as with any drone.
Once you've got your GPS locked and got the hang of whizzing around with your virtual controls you'll want to try some of the Star Pro's cleverer features - and this is where the REALLY cool stuff happens. For starters, tap the Follow Me button on your screen and walk away from the drone. Like magic (or like an faithful floating hound) it'll follow you, maintaining a constant distance between itself and the controller. Run and it'll speed up to follow you. It will even orient itself to face towards you, meaning that you can take amazing selfie videos of yourself from the air!
Follow Me is normally a feature of much more expensive drones, and to be honest we'd have been impressed if the features had ended there - but Follow Me is just the start! Orbit mode works in a similar way, with the drone tracking the movement of your phone, but instead of just maintaining a static distance this mode will see it performing circles around you, still always pointing the camera at you. Be careful though, we tried this in the car park and ended up falling over dizzy from trying to keep an eye on the Star Pro as it whizzed around!
If you're not into the current selfie trend (and if you're not we think you're a fibber) then you might be more excited by the Waypoint mode. This is some serious high tech business and will make you feel a bit like you're in Mission Impossible. Again using your phone you can set a route using Google Maps then send your drone flying off into the distance all on its own, completely independently. it'll complete its circuit then come back to land obediently at your feet. The video and photographers in the office are super excited about trying this mode out, as you can plan incredibly elaborate camera movements without having to worry about controlling the drone yourself... Or you can just use it to make people think you're controlling it telepathically.
With all these incredible features we feel a bit like the Return to Home button might get forgotten - but actually it's a super handy feature. If your flight isn't quite going to plan and all you want to do is land safely just tap the Return to Home button and it will magically rise to a preset height, fly back to where you took off from and gently lower itself to the ground, ready for you to pick it up. Just bear in mind that it's not quite as clever as you are, and if there are any obstacles between where it is now and where it took off from (like trees, buses or giraffes, for example) it might well fly into them.
It goes without saying that you can capture all the action on a Full HD 1080p camera, and that it comes supplied with both blade protectors and a spare set of propellors. You'll get up to 9 minutes of flight on a full charge (less if it's windy or you're getting a bit throttle happy we're afraid) and you can recharge the 550mAh battery in around 200 minutes.
We get to fly a lot of drones in the offices (or in the car park) here, and nowadays most of them are pretty darn good. The Star Pro takes things to a new level though - once you've got used to flying with virtual joysticks on your phone screen it's a fast, responsive drone packed with features that you'll struggle to find on anything else at this price.
Flying drones is subject to CAA guidelines; please click here.
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