Thanks for tuning in today we're going to be reviewing
the HOVERAir X1 autonomous self-flying drone camera.
If you had to name two technologies that define the current era it would have to be AI and drones.
The new HOVERAir X1 drone combines the two into an impressive pocket sized drone that can fit in your
pocket and automatically track your motion with various built-in algorithms. Not only does this
fit in your pocket but you also launch it from the palm of your hand with autonomous flying modes and
a single button press. The packaging this comes in a little plastic mailing envelope and on the
inside you get this nice cardboard box with some basic branding printed on it. We have the combo so
you'll notice we have the camera two batteries and the charging hub. In terms of specs this is $439
if you just want the camera that's $389. We'll go ahead and take the camera out you can see really
slick packaging like nice glossy illustration of the drone and then the drone folded up this really
feels like a fancy cell phone box with a slide out sleeve design and really thick cardboard box. If
we open this up you can see it is a pocket sized drone that can be literally launched
from your hand and has autonomous flying with multiple modes built in. It has a robust tracking
algorithm with the five different modes that can do orbiting bird's eye view and other really cool
effects without any training or complicated remote controllers. You have a nice camera on here 2.7k
video capture with 30 frames per second as well as 1080 at 60 frames per second. There's a 32 gig
internal memory card in here with approximately 11 minutes of flight time for each battery. This
only has a max height of 15 M and a max speed of about 15 mph an hour. Instead of using GPS
you can also notice the bottom there's a little bit of camera here so it uses Visual Inertial
Odometry (VIO). It's camera based position algorithm which eliminates the need for GPS
signals or additional apps so you can really just launches within the matter of seconds. In terms of
what comes with it you can see we have the black variation very small literally fits in the palm of
your hand. You have a nice little quick start guide here that tells make sure you fly this outside and
gives you some basic instructions. Inside here we also have a USB type-c charging port a nice
fabric caring case which is pretty slick so you can see this will fit inside it. Again we have the
combination so this also comes with the charging hub and then additional battery so with only 11
minutes of runtime you definitely want to get the combo as the additional batteries will make sure
you can get the most out of the drone. So we pull this out you can see it's just another battery and
that goes right on top you can charge the battery directly on the device with the USB type-c port on
here or use the charging hub which can actually charge it at almost double the speed. Now let's
take a look at the weight of the drone so the drone with the battery attached that comes in at
only 127 grams. So really lightweight and very easy to carry beside of curiosity a single battery comes
in at 40 grams so quite light as well. The HOVERAir X1 is a revolutionary drone camera that combines
portability with a variety technology to make flying quick and easy. This is a drone that doesn't
require complicated controllers or training to learn to fly. Instead you simply launch it from
your palm of your hand and it'll automatically fly for you it's also ridiculously small. You
can see unfolded it's only 127 by 145 by 30 mm so very thin and the longest dimension is less than
6 inches so quite small. It also has this hinged body so you can see the propeller sides hinge inward
and then you can fold this up to make it even smaller. It'll fit in your pocket perfectly
with these rounded corners that actually match the shape of a pocket so pretty slick design and
it's amazing they've gotten this so small. You'll see that this has a standard quadcopter setup so
you have four propellers and they rotate in clockwise and counterclockwise rotations to
ensure nice stability and that means this drone can handle light wind pretty well. Because
this drone isn't designed for high speed or high heights it's only limited to 15 M hour and
50 ft altitude that means all the blades are also covered in this plastic shroud so on higher
end drones you'll never see this shroud but with this one it makes a lot of sense because I can
actually hold it in my hand and that means you can use this in crowded areas or places where a
normal drone could be really unsafe as this one is fully shrouded and doesn't present much of a
danger. It's a plastic design too so you can see quite flexible and should handle light falls
pretty well. There are two colors with this one we actually have the black one but they
also have an all white variation that's pretty slick looking as well. The main body of this is this
little rectangular centerpiece you can see the cutouts here for venting as well as the
bottom. You have that bottom facing camera that helps it locate itself the front camera the main
battery and then the user interface here. Starting with the battery it's a pretty simple removable
design so you can see the grooves here you pull up on it and there's two tabs on the front that
pull out. You can see this is a 1050 milliamp battery it's rechargeable and you can recharge
it on the device with the USB port here or I highly recommend getting that charging port
with the combo and this will actually charge in 35 minutes versus 55 minutes on the device. So with
this one you can actually put this in a power bank charge the other battery while you're flying the
other one and get a lot more flight time out of it. You can also press the power button once and
it'll actually show you the battery status which is really cool. So you have four LEDs and let you
quickly gauge how much flight time you have left. You can see the user interface is also very simple
you have two buttons here with this little ring of icons that show you the current mode. The power
buttons is the bottom and then the mode selections the top. I'll go ahead and turn this on so I
hold the power button and you get a lot of nice jingles and a nice British voice that tells you
which mode you're in. So if I press the mode button it tells you exactly
where you're on. You need to activate your device with the hover app so you need to use the QR code here to
actually connect the app to this to do the first flight but you can see I can switch modes
and you can hear the voice is very loud. There's actually
no volume control which would have been nice so you can't really be very stealthy about this if
you're in public you want to set up your mode before or you'll definitely get some stares as
this talks to you. To fly you'd simply press the button again to fly but I won't do that until I
actually connect the app. You have a nice LED on the front and that color of this actually
tells you what state it's in and whether it wants to land. As far as the camera you can
see an integrated single axis gimbal that can rotate up and down and help stabilize
the image as well as a little dampener built in so you can see that'll dampen out some of
the vibrations in flight. There's also electronic image stabilization that'll create really smooth
images so combining the gimbal with that EIS means you get very smooth images even if it's
light wind or you're running and the camera's going up and down so a pretty slick setup and
you can see this camera is capable of 2.7k at 30 frames per second or 1080 down to 60 frames
per second. It's not the highest spec camera on the market but for more most social media on YouTube
it should be more than enough especially. At this price point compared to higher end drones you're
not going to be be able to get commercial quality shots in 4k 5K but obviously you're paying the
price for the portability of this. [Music] Now let's go over to the main modes. You can simply
select it by clicking the button and then you'll hear the audio feedback. This is
a very loud drone so when once you do the next button press it turns on and you can hear the
motors so it's quite loud you couldn't really do this in a public place as they will hear you but
you can see there's quite a few modes. This is the hover mode so it acts as a tripod and with the
tracking on it'll actually track your position as it holds its position so a really nice feature and
it almost replaces the need for a tripod and you get a nice smooth shot whether you want a video
or just an image. As you can see here it lands as soon as you put your hand underneath it so
very simple. You can see the color changes me so zoom out will actually move away
from you and you can adjust the settings using the app to really fine tune things it captures
two video clips so you can see as it goes away from me I'll capture one image or one video
then once it reaches the max distance it'll then Zoom back in so you get a second clip. It would
have been nice if it was one clip or with this one you could stitch them together if you wanted to.
Again put your hand underneath it and it land so very cool you don't really need the app at
all. We'll show you follow later. Orbit will actually spin around you so really simple
again you can adjust the settings with the app so once you launch it you'll see it'll
adjust its position to the specified distance and then you will get the video as soon as it
starts rotating. So this one you get this nice rotational shot and this is a great
example of some of the obstacle avoidance as well. So as you can see here it follows
me around based on my initial position and I'll actually hit some of the branches here but then
itself corrects itself adjusts the position and continues with the orbit at a slightly higher
position then once it finishes that rotation it actually come back and
then you can land it by putting your hand underneath it. So very
simple and this is all autonomous so you simply press that button and it starts
flying. There also is the bird's eye mode and again that voice is very loud so if you want
to do this in public you do have to be careful as it's quite loud so between the motors and
the audio prompts they'll definitely notice you. So with bird's eye just actually go up and
then back down so you can see it's tracking me and then going into position so it's a
great shot if you want to capture redwood or the unique settings where you're lying on the ground.
So again it does two clips one going out then it'll end the clip there and then start descending.
Now take a look at the app, HOVER has done a really nice job making this app easy to use. You
have four tabs on the bottom you need to connect it once to activate the app and after that you
can use it to customize the modes. This will also let you unlock some of the other modes so it has
a nice little tile setup where you can try each mode and then it'll unlock lock some of the other
features. They're constantly changing this app as well so you can see each mode has different
settings and as I said they will add more settings as people ask for it. So you can see zoom out has
a really nice animation of what it does you can set the distance altitude video quality vertical
mode all independently for each mode separately so really nice and you can customize it. Some of
the other ones like follow again you can change the duration distance and the altitude as well as
well as the follow mode so whether it's in front of you or behind you so really cool options and
you can really customize things exactly what you want to capture and again very easy to use which
is impressive given it that it's a relatively small company. All the UI is simply designed
there's no mispelling or odd translation instead everything's very intuitive and you can really
just customize it as you want or just leave it in the basic mode custom. Also lets you change
it between the dolly track mode which goes in front of you and we'll show an example that a
little bit later or the snapshot mode which just acts as a photo taking mode. The dolly track is
one our favorite actually gets very unique shots as it follows from in front of you. You can access
all the captured video by just clicking the album which will connect to the hover Wi-Fi we found a
lot easier just to connect our USB and then do a mass download. You can also do the manual mode so
using the app you can actually manually fly this which is really cool. So you can see here it does
a live pre review of the video nice high quality you can start capturing video and then you can do
the takeoff directly from here so from this you can see you can do left, right, forward, backward
and you can adjust the camera gimbal as well. So you can rotate the camera up and down so all
really nice features and using the manual mode you can capture some of those traditional drone
shots like the cinematic rising shots or some of the landscape shots of the drone moving forward.
Using just the phone it is a little bit harder to use as you don't have joysticks you can connect
a remote control but just using the phone you can capture the basic up down rotational shots so you
can see we have a nice ocean view here and I can zoom in and out or do those nice cinematic shots
so really cool and again it's nice that hovers added this feature for most people just using
autonomous mode works but with this one you can really capture some unique shots so if you want to
get a group gathering and you can see manual mode to adjust it exactly where you want and you have a
live preview to stage everything properly. When you want to land it again you just bring it back and
the app also has a land option so if you end up in a hairy situation where it's too high for you to
put your hand underneath you can press the button here and have it land directly so overall really
easy to use and you can customize everything to your exact preferences. [Music] Now let's take a
look at some shots using the follow mode and Dolly track features this is a great example of the
follow mode so you can see it actually keeps me centered in The View and I'll actually avoid all
the trees even as I dive in and out of them which is really impressive just by using the camera it
can do that obstacle avoidance the only issue it has is with thin branches or if you do an orbit
where you can't actually see the object if it does hit something it'll immediately land and then give
you a little scolding as well so great easy to use drone and again you can use this in a variety of
settings the follow mode also works very well you can see it tracks you no matter where you go and
you can actually adjust the height and distance the video quality on here is very nice as well
so you can see nice bright colors and very smooth image so the image stabilization has done really
well it doesn't work in low light condition sand or water so you do have to be careful that's one
of the limitations of this Vision based height detection so it can't really do things a GPS one
could but very impressive the dolly track features also another mode in the custom setting so this
will actually follow in front of you at an angle and you can see here you get these really unique
shots that you really couldn't get otherwise and you can actually adjust the angle Again
by just adjusting your own position so really impressive if you want to get content or just
capture some unique moments manual mode is also really interesting so you can use this to get
cinematic shots and just using your cell phone you can get these kind of rising or angled shots
to capture really cool settings so overall really nice drone and because it's so small you can take
those places you normally couldn't take a larger drone or big camera so really impressive and
portable and whether you're doing sports or you just want to capture an activity you can use this
for just about anything. [Music] Now let's go the pros and cons of the HOVERAir X1. What we like about
it is the compact form factor it literally fits in your pocket which is really impressive given the
image quality and the autonomous features. You also have that really impressive tracking and collision
avoidance so you can use this to track your position whether you're do it from the front or
rear. The drone does a very good job avoiding obstacle using just the camera. It also captured smooth
and unique video so you get 2.7k and the motion stabilization has done really well so
whether you're running hiking or if there's a light breeze the video seems to always come out
nice and smooth. The main negatives with the drone is the fact that you have loud motor buzzing it is
very loud. HOVER advertises this as a tourist style camera to replace your selfie stick
but it's so loud that you're not going to be able to use this in a tourist destination without being
thrown out so you do have to be careful. The audio prompts are also very loud and the volume cannot be
currently adjusted something other people have complained about and I'm sure they'll adjust in
the future. Finally the memory on this is 32 gigs and it's actually internal there's no
memory card to remove or expandable feature which is one downside but it is okay as you only have
11 minutes of runtime anyways. Taking everything into account but to give the HOVERAir X1 a 9.7
out of 10. It's a very portable and Powerful drone really impressed with all the autonomous features
and just how easy to use. Thanks for watching this review don't forget to like and subscribe.
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