not just wobbly but what small drone enthusiasts call "jello", significantly lower video quality than like a $399 dji mini 2 it is cheap and non gimbal stabilized, so can't expect much more
I mean yeah, it's about half the price of a DJI Mini 2 ($449 v $230). You'd expect it to perform worse. It seems totally reasonable for people who just want to take some shots for their snapchat story but aren't really interested in having a real drone.
drones make unwanted noise and ruin the atmosphere of natural settings. does the world need your boring selfies from an aerial perspective? No. absolutely not. Only worse than these snapchat plastic teeny drones would a V2 with built-in flood light, for added light-pollution. Let's spoil star-gazing, too! I feel the sudden urge to pick up a book about falconry...
Drones are banned in National Parks and State Parks (in CA) anyways. So this sounds like a strawman.
Is it enforced in National Parks?
N=1. There are signs everywhere at the Grand Canyon, but the guy flying his drone over literally hundreds of people at sunset a mere 50 meters from a visitors' center and rangers told me, "Oh, sorry, bro. I didn't know."
This product is illegal right next to Snapchat's HQ in Venice Beach. You can't use drones on the beach in the state of California due to rich people being concerned about the paparazzi spying on them
Privacy concerns are for everyone, not just rich people. Please don't bring culture wars into this.
I don't think he was justifying or approving it, he was merely stating the reason.
> If you mandate silence, you're forcing that silence on others just as much as them playing music is forcing that sound on you. Except that personal audio sources are much more feasible than personal noise suppression, especially if you also want to be able to carry a conversation.
That is very true and a reason why an individual listening to music alone should bias towards a personal audio source to internal his sound externality. That is because there is virtually no additional benefit to the individual to play music loudly than to play it in headphones when it is just for his benefit. But you are ignoring that a substantial percentage (if not majority) of music enjoyment situations are simul…
> Silent discos result in a total inability to talk to one another.
This largely depends on the headphones used. I can listen to ambient music on my bone conduction headphones while holding a conversation just fine. I might have to lower the volume to hear people around me well, but at least I can lower the volume.
I’m surprised that after all this time there isn’t really a standard for synchronizing music playback between a large number of nearby smartphones.
The Mini SE requires the use of a controller. It's small and folds up. I didn't look into it enough to see if Snap's offering requires a controller or just uses a cell phone.
All of snaps marketing suggests no controller. That’s the part that I actually care about - I’m willing to have lower video quality and smaller battery if it’s easy to use in a regular social moment.
Update: reading a review there is no controller. All of the controls are simple on the device itself. This is exactly what I want - I’m not trying to capture amazing drone footage for the sake of it, I’m trying to capture a moment in life without exiting it. I ordered one.. at this price point will be fun to try.
People saying that this can’t compete with DJI are missing the point. This product knows its target market (hint, not the people who browse HN) and, based on my initial first impressions, I think it’s nailed it. Forgive me for a slightly contrived analogy, but if a DJI Mavic is a DSLR, and a DJI Mini is a portable point-and-shoot camera, then Pixy is a Polaroid. It’s certainly not got the highest picture quality, doe…
Yeah, the use case is pretty clear. It allows non-technical people to easily & quickly take a selfie video.
I'm disappointed in the video quality, but I'm looking forward to the extreme ease of use. Press 1 button and watch it go.
That is nice, but there is still intentionally misleading marketing fluff like this: >Each rechargeable battery allows you to capture content for 5-8 flights, depending on the flight mode(s) selected. Rechargeable batteries can be swapped for easy use... Why phrase it like that? That gives zero impression of what the actual battery life is because I have no idea what a "flight" means as a unit of measurement. Just te…
I fly FPV drones, I have one very similar to that size. running a 1s 300mah lihv I get about 3 to 5 minutes. 5 minutes damages the battery. but the tiny lihv never liv long enough anyways. I'd expect it to get close to that time, but it has so much more plastic around it. but then again it's not transmitting video.
Refreshingly honest about the video quality you should expect in the main promo video. Typical problems like dynamic range, color profile, light bleed and tracking problems with the top of the head being cut off at one point. Pretty typical unless you spend more money on your drone or camera equipment. There are so many companies that fake the footage or pick much easier shooting locations.
I think this is going to be one of those things where we learn that nobody actually cares about any of that outside these forums. MP3s were garbage, early camera phones were garbage, Snap picture quality generally is garbage, bluetooth headphones suck, all of these things were and are decried by the tech community, and it turns out that people just don't care, because even at garbage quality it's still cool to have a…
Except that mp3s sucked until the iPod, and camera phones sucked until the iPhone. The idea that product quality, ease of use, UX/UI, or polish doesn't matter is just wrong. This thing is absolutely going to bomb (reminds me of GoPro's Karma) and I'd bet money on it, but SNAP stock is already in dire straits, so their incompetence is probably priced in.