Introduction
When asked what could be better than a selfie stick, today almost any person will immediately answer – a selfie drone. Selfie drones are rapidly gaining popularity at this point in time, generally due to their compact size and ease of use.
There are not many selfie drones available for sale today, the most popular are: Yuneec Breeze / Hover Passport Camera Drone / Zerotech Dobby / Xiro Xplorer Mini / Wingsland S6 / JJRC H37 Elfie. But we will only talk about 3 here: Yuneec Breeze, Hover Camera and Zerotech Dobby. All of these drones fall into the $300-$600 price range, so it’s fair to compare them to each other to help beginners and selfie lovers make the right and practical choice.
Appearance
Yuneec Breeze 4K
Hover Passport Camera Drone
Zerotech Dobby
Unboxing
All 3 drones reach the consumer in high-quality packaging and in a good configuration, which may include ND filters, spare rotors, rotor protection, as well as additional batteries. The best in terms of packaging is the Hover Passport Camera Drone. It comes in a compact soft case, and all drone accessories are packed into cardboard mini-boxes. I was pleasantly surprised by the presence of an ND filter included with Zerotech Dobby. Yuneec Breeze received a white compact case with a corporate logo in which, along with the drone itself, all the necessary accompanying elements fit.
Controls and flight modes
All three drones are controlled via a mobile application pre-installed on your smartphone or tablet. This approach excludes the use of classical equipment, again for the sake of compactness.
But on the other hand, your mobile device should always be fully charged, as the operation of the application with the drone significantly affects the battery life of your smartphone / tablet. Even when you are not using the drone, you should always make sure that the application is closed, because, just like in the background, it continues to waste the gadget’s battery due to the constant search for a signal from the drone.
The application interface for all three is extremely simple and intuitive even for a person who first picked up a UAV. In general, the functions are identical for all three: photo and video modes, several flight modes, some will have face recognition functions and even an object tracking mode. But we will have to warn you that, despite such a range of possibilities, you should not expect the potential of drones for shooting from these toys.
Image Comparison
For a selfie drone, all three models shoot well. But it’s worth immediately explaining that, for the sake of compactness, the drones were deprived of an analog suspension and electronics are responsible for image stabilization. As a result, the maximum image quality is achieved when the drone is hovering. It is also worth noting that when shooting in 4K, electronic stabilization is not active. Therefore, to get a more stable video, it is better to shoot in FHD.
Picture of Yuneec Breeze
Hover Passport Snapshot
Snapshot of Zerotech Dobby
Flight time
With selfie drones, this parameter is a significant drawback, because it is unlikely that any of you will be satisfied with a flight time of up to 10 minutes. Dobby in this regard was completely disappointing, with a flight time of 8 minutes, the manufacturer did not bother to put in the 2nd battery. Indoors, the Yuneec Breeze performed poorly in terms of stability. But the Hover Passport is really good for hovering, it seems that it was for this characteristic feature that he was given such a name – Hover.
Which to choose?
If you want to purchase a high-tech toy, for example, to stand out among friends, and you don’t mind spending $ 300-600 on it, then any of the presented ones will do for these purposes, it all depends on the budget. But if you need stable footage, precise control, something that will fly more than 50 meters and longer than 10 minutes, then you should not consider Yuneec Breeze, Hover Passport Camera Drone and Zerotech Dobby as a drone.
Remember, before deciding which drone to buy, you need to decide for what purpose you are buying it! And only then proceed to the priority choice. After all, in fact, it doesn’t matter at all how “cool” the product you bought, what matters is what emotions you got from ownership and if they are positive, then any of your choices was undoubtedly the right one.
*You may also be interested to know: 6 reasons not to buy a selfie drone.
Video
In the presented video, drone fans from the well-known YouTube channel WeTalkUAV conducted an exhaustive comparison of 3 selfie drones: Yuneec Breeze, Hover Passport Camera Drone and Zerotech Dobby, we look and make a decisive choice.