Hover Passport Camera Drone Review

Introduction

Hov­er Pass­port Cam­era Drone is a small portable drone focused on tak­ing pho­tos and videos in self­ie for­mat. Extreme­ly easy to use, able to rec­og­nize faces and track objects for shoot­ing. Com­pact, folds up to the size of a small book. Pass­port is one of the best alter­na­tives to banal self­ie sticks today.

About the product

First of all, it is worth not­ing the com­pact­ness of the Hov­er Pass­port Cam­era Drone. When fold­ed, its dimen­sions are 17.8 × 12.7 × 2.54 cm. Next is the pow­er plant, which is made up of four brush­less motors enclosed in pro­tec­tive fold­ing frames. Most of the body is occu­pied by a remov­able bat­tery. The basis of the body is also built-in, a cam­era with a vari­able angle of incli­na­tion, a flash and a set of posi­tion­ing sen­sors (1 × ultra­son­ic; 1 × opti­cal).

The drone is turned on with a sin­gle but­ton locat­ed in the upper part of the body above the “HOVER CAMERA” logo. Dou­ble tap acti­vates the Pass­port and starts the motors, then release the drone and it will hov­er wait­ing for com­mands from your smart­phone. Switch­ing off is pos­si­ble in two con­ve­nient ways: by press­ing a but­ton, or by sim­ply fold­ing the pro­tec­tive frames to each oth­er, like a book. The body of the drone is main­ly made of car­bon fiber. Includ­ing the bat­tery, its weight is only 240 grams.

Equipment

The Hov­er Pass­port Cam­era Drone reach­es the con­sumer in high-qual­i­ty pack­ag­ing at the Apple lev­el. All ele­ments are boxed and signed.

Includ­ed

• Hov­er Pass­port Cam­era Drone
• 2 × recharge­able bat­ter­ies
• 4 × spare rotors
• Charg­er (charges 2 bat­ter­ies at once)
• Mains cable for charg­er
• USB cable
• Case for car­ry­ing the drone and two bat­ter­ies
• Case strap
• Soft car­ry case for drone
• Tool
• Quick start instruc­tions and illus­tra­tions

Specification

Drone

Brand:

Hov­er

Mod­el:

Pass­port Cam­era Drone

Col­or:

Black

Height hold:

Ultra­son­ic + Opti­cal sen­sors

Sta­bi­liza­tion:

6 axis gyro­scope

Con­trol Fre­quen­cy:

2.4GHz over WiFi

Video trans­mis­sion fre­quen­cy:

5GHz over WiFi

Motors:

Brush­less type

Max. hor­i­zon­tal flight speed:

up to 27km/h

Max. prac­ti­cal ceil­ing above sea lev­el:

2000m

Bat­tery capac­i­ty:

2S 7.6V 1360mAh 10.34Wh LiPo

Flight time:

up to 10 min­utes

Range of flight:

up to 20 meters

Fly­ing envi­ron­ment:

Indoor/Outdoor

Work­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

5–35°C

Charg­ing time:

from 40–60 min­utes

Mem­o­ry:

Built-in 32GB

Mate­r­i­al:

The car­bon fiber

Dimen­sions:

17.8×12.7×2.54cm

Weight includ­ing bat­tery:

242gr

Age lim­it:

14+

Camera

Matrix:

1/3.06″ (CMOS); num­ber of effec­tive pix­els: 13M

Lens:

FOV 78.4°; 28mm (equiv­a­lent to 35mm); F/2.0; Depth of focus: 1.2–6.7m

ISO range:

100‑3200

Cam­era Angle Range:

-90° to +30°

Max. image size:

4208×3120

Video record­ing modes:

4K: 3840 × 2160 at 30 fps
1080P: 1920 × 1080 @ 30 fps (EIS)
720P: 1280 × 720 @ 30 fps (EIS)

Pho­to / video for­mat:

JPEG/MP4

Appearance

Application

Hov­er Pass­port does not have con­trol equip­ment as such. Its role will be played by your smart­phone (Android / IOS) on which you will first need to install the appli­ca­tion. Since the drone was orig­i­nal­ly focused on self­ies, the manufacturer’s refusal from phys­i­cal equip­ment is com­plete­ly under­stand­able, every­thing is reduced to sim­ple oper­a­tion with­out prob­lems. But still, in the future, the appear­ance of a con­troller for the Pass­port on sale is quite real­is­tic.

After you have launched the appli­ca­tion, the real-time image trans­mit­ted from the drone’s cam­era and vir­tu­al con­trol sticks are dis­played on the dis­play (there are three options to choose from). As men­tioned above, the cam­era has an angle adjust­ment. To change the angle of incli­na­tion, the user sim­ply swipes up or down the mid­dle of the screen.

On the left side of the dis­play there is an indi­ca­tor of the drone’s bat­tery lev­el, timer and flash icons, “Panora­ma shoot­ing” and “Orbit” flight modes, thanks to the lat­ter, the quadro­copter can per­form a cir­cu­lar flight around the tracked object. The drone does not have sen­sors that pro­vide recog­ni­tion and avoid­ance of obsta­cles, this should be tak­en into account when pilot­ing.

Hov­er received face and ges­ture recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy. For exam­ple, thanks to the “Own­er” mode (own­er), the user can reg­is­ter his face and the next time the drone starts, it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly detect it and auto­mat­i­cal­ly track any move­ment.

Gesture control

Ges­ture con­trol is imple­ment­ed as fol­lows, to take a pho­to, raise your hand up, the drone will count down 5 sec­onds and take a pho­to. Make an OK ges­ture and the Pass­port will make a soft land­ing. In prac­tice, the drone worked out all these fea­tures with­out any com­plaints. For a prod­uct that was only recent­ly unveiled at CES2017, this is very sig­nif­i­cant.

Face and object recognition

You can focus Hov­er Pass­port not only on your­self, but also on any oth­er object and it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly track it. If an object dis­ap­pears from the air­craft’s field of view or the object moves too quick­ly, the air­craft will stop and send a warn­ing mes­sage about the object lost to the paired smart­phone.

The drone in the process of fol­low­ing will always keep a safe dis­tance in rela­tion to the object of atten­tion (about 8 meters), this should be tak­en into account.

Camera

On board the drone is a 13MP cam­era capa­ble of cap­tur­ing video in up to 4K qual­i­ty at 30 frames per sec­ond. The qual­i­ty of shoot­ing deserves respect, good detail and rich col­or repro­duc­tion. The only thing that over­shad­ows the over­all per­for­mance of the cam­era is elec­tron­ic image sta­bi­liza­tion (EIS), but with­out it, noth­ing at all. Note that sta­bi­liza­tion is active only for HD and FHD video modes. The 4K mode is not elec­tron­i­cal­ly sta­bi­lized. The drone does not write sound, and it is unlike­ly that you will want to lis­ten to the buzz of motors when watch­ing a record­ed video.

Food

The Hov­er Pass­port Cam­era Drone is equipped with a two-cell 1360mAh Li-poly­mer bat­tery. Weight 71 grams. Accord­ing to the spec­i­fi­ca­tion, it pro­vides a flight time of up to 10 min­utes. In prac­tice, it has been found that, in gen­er­al, this is the case if the weath­er is calm. The drone comes with two bat­ter­ies at once, which is very com­mend­able. The includ­ed charg­er allows you to charge two bat­ter­ies at once. Charg­ing time is 40 to 60 min­utes.

The flight time is reduced in pro­por­tion to the strength of the wind, the stronger the wind, the more ener­gy is spent on main­tain­ing a sta­ble flight.

flight qualities

In gen­er­al, the self­ie drone is very sta­ble, allow­ing for pre­cise maneu­ver­ing with­out much dif­fi­cul­ty. The max­i­mum speed that the drone can devel­op is about 27 km / h. He does not like the wind, as the low weight of the drone affects, but the elec­tron­ics cope well with its pres­ence. Dif­fi­cul­ties may also arise in the oper­a­tion of ultra­son­ic and opti­cal sen­sors used to deter­mine the dis­tance to the sur­face (locat­ed on the low­er part of the UAV body). For exam­ple, when the sur­face (floor/ground) is white. In this case, the sen­sors may not work cor­rect­ly, which may adverse­ly affect the posi­tion­ing accu­ra­cy.

Memory

The Pass­port has 32GB of built-in mem­o­ry, and there are no expand­able options. The user can trans­fer all record­ed pho­to and video mate­r­i­al via Wi-Fi or via the USB port on the drone itself.

maintainability

As already not­ed, the main mate­r­i­al of the drone is car­bon fiber, which simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­vides light weight and suf­fi­cient strength. Frames in which B / C motors of a col­lapsi­ble type are built in and if some­thing gets into them, the user can eas­i­ly remove it with the help of the tool that comes with the kit.

Price

The mod­el has been dis­con­tin­ued and is not offi­cial­ly sold. On var­i­ous mar­ket­places Hov­er Pass­port is sold at a price of 250$. We rec­om­mend turn­ing your atten­tion to the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of the Hov­er 2 self­ie drone.

Conclusion

Hov­er Cam­era Pass­port from $250

Func­tion­al­i­ty

8/10

Flight time

5/10

flight qual­i­ties

8/10

com­pact­ness

8/10

Equip­ment

10/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

8/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Qual­i­ty (impact resis­tant mate­r­i­al)
• Design
• Safe
• Offline fea­tures
• Rec­og­nizes faces and objects
• 4K cam­era (for self­ie drone)
• Pho­to qual­i­ty
• Adapt­ed for inter­ac­tion with social net­works
• Trans­port case
• Does not require reg­is­tra­tion

Minuses

• When shoot­ing in 4K, elec­tron­ic sta­bi­liza­tion does not work
• Flight time
• Built-in mem­o­ry (not expand­able)

Hov­er Pass­port is a styl­ish, com­pact, sta­ble, safe, well-made and intu­itive drone, a great alter­na­tive to a self­ie stick. If, when choos­ing a self­ie drone, the price is of sec­ondary impor­tance for you and you are demand­ing, first of all, in terms of qual­i­ty and prac­ti­cal­i­ty, then this drone is def­i­nite­ly worth pay­ing atten­tion to.

A photo

Pho­to with the Hov­er Pass­port Cam­era Drone.

Video

Video with quad­copter Hov­er Pass­port Cam­era Drone.