(Rhythmic clapping hands)
(upbeat music)
- The first question you probably have is, why?
Why is Snap making a drone,
or as they wanna call it, a flying camera?
It's a good question.
I've been following Snap's interest
in making something like this for several years,
it's been something they've wanted to do for a while.
Snap calls itself a camera company,
and yeah, it is kind of out of left field,
but that's really the history of Snap if we think about it.
Dating back to renaming from Snapchat to Snap,
and releasing spectacles in those yellow vending machines.
Now they have AR spectacles on the hardware side,
but those aren't really a thing yet,
you can't even buy them.
This is something I could see people
who have never been into drones getting into
just because of how easy it is to use.
It's affordable, it's approachable,
there's a low barrier of entry to getting it running,
editing, sharing it with friends.
I think that this thing actually
has a shot at being successful.
I could see it being good for parties,
I could see it just being something you wanna take
when you're going on a hike.
The four main flight patterns are,
hover, reveal, follow, and orbit.
There's also a Favorite mode
where you can tweak something like say,
have reveal be 20 feet instead of 30 feet,
and set that on the device itself.
All the footage is saved on device
with a 16 gigabytes of hard drive.
And then you can sync it either over USB
or wirelessly to the Snapchat app
where it lives in the memory section of Snap.
After that, you can export it anywhere.
The editing tools are fun and easy to use,
you can add music, special lenses,
which are AR effects that Snap makes.
And also do a cool auto cropping feature,
that just automatically makes it vertical on you,
the person that it's tracking.
The way that this thing tracks is interesting
because it really is focused on a person,
it can't track a dog, it can't track a car.
You have to look at it, hold it up,
and then let it go out from there.
That's an interesting choice,
it makes it really centered on people
and what you're doing with other people.
Snap tells me that it's not great at tracking
multiple people in the same shot,
but we were doing shots throughout the day
with multiple people in frame and it tracked me just fine.
It's definitely not going to follow you,
or do any crazy moves
like some of the higher-end drones out there
that have AI technology.
But, you know, at this price point, it's the best I've seen.
The battery is a limitation, but it's not something
that is necessarily gonna break the experience for you.
They sell these little extra battery packs
that are easy to pop in and out.
And each pack, they say gives 5 to 10 flights of power,
they won't say exactly what the battery life is,
frustratingly, but it's good enough.
And the device itself is very light but sturdy,
we dropped it a couple times and it's fine.
(suspenseful music)
- [Vjeran] It bumped. - Yeah, it bumped the ceiling.
Oh, no!
(drone bouncing off metal bar)
- [Vjeran] It's kind of, it's durable.
- I didn't set the length appropriately.
I would say the thing that impressed me the most
about this is just the fact
that it reliably landed back in my hands every time, really.
And I think that element gives it this whimsical,
just kind of like fun vibe that you don't really see
from a lot of devices especially at this price point.
So, all in all, this is a solid little camera,
and the fact that it can do these orbits
and all these different flight patterns on its own,
makes it just really easy to use.
I'm not sure that this is going to be
a revolutionary device for Snap,
or really change how people think of the company.
But I think it has a really good shot
at being something that people wanna buy.
If you've never used a drone before,
you're gonna have no problem
picking this thing up and using it,
it's just really approachable.
I'm not so much of a specs guy myself
but the guy behind the camera there, V, on our team is,
so V, why don't you take it away
and get into the nitty gritty of this thing.
- Sure, let's talk specs because I guess I'm the specs guy.
Alex mentioned some of the hardware details
but let me expand on that a little bit,
this drone weighs 101 grams
which is to say that it is very light.
It is almost too light,
meaning it's not going to handle wind very well,
you really should be mindful of that
before launching it into the air.
There is a Landing button on the app
that will force landing
if you think you're about to lose control of the drone.
There are no obstacle-avoidance censor on the body,
not that it really needs it,
it's kind of like a nice to have.
It's not really meant to squeeze in the tight spaces,
avoid things and follow you around, we tried.
The only extra camera is the one
that you find at the bottom of the drone
which kind of helps to recognize hands
when it's coming in for a landing.
Also, you will not find a gimbal here,
it is a fixed camera on the body of the drone,
and that makes the footage look a little bit shaky at times
but that'll depend on your flight and wind conditions.
And honestly, that's okay,
this is a very different drone from what I'm used to using.
It's not the drone that you bring with you
to capture the best possible quality
of mesmerizing sunsets and landscapes.
It's more just about giving you a new different, you know,
drone-like perspective to your Snap videos,
and it's also more about you, the user.
One thing that did surprise me is that Pixy
records video in 16:9 landscape orientation.
I just assumed that a Snap drone
would be making vertical videos
for Snapchat but... I was wrong.
The 2.7K video is saved internally onto the drone,
and then can be edited on the Snap app
so you can take advantage of the auto cropping tool
to turn that footage into vertical videos.
And that footage, it looks... okay.
We took the Pixy outside during a sunny day in LA,
and we brought it indoors surrounded by neon lights.
Looking at the footage on a bigger screen, like my laptop,
you can really see some of the shortcomings.
Lots of pixelation and visible image noise indoors,
but it still performed better than I expected it to.
Even when taken outdoors,
it was able to balance highlights and shadows fairly well.
It's not impressive by any means
but it really is just good enough.
I know I mentioned looking at the footage
on your laptop but let's be real,
the likelihood of you looking at this footage
on your laptop is very low.
The footage will live and will be viewed on your phone,
and on that smaller screen,
it actually exceeded my expectations.
Also, we're going to introduce a third host for this video.
So Owen, who's editing this video right now,
has a few impression that he wants to share,
so Owen, take it away buddy.
- What's up y'all.
One unexpected side effect of using this drone
is that unless you edit out the tail end of your clips,
you're going to wind up with a lot of extra footage.
Specifically, footage of you looking
like you're trying to hold the drone's hand.
And I just don't know what to do with all those extra clips,
except... edit them into a romantic montage.
(romantic classical music)
(upbeat music)
- I think the main thing Snap cracked here
is just approachability.
I've tried a handful of other drones
ranging from the lower ends to the very high end,
and they're all just not something a normal person
would easily be able to understand and use confidently.
This is the opposite, this thing is just as safe
and easy to use as you could imagine.
Everything down to the way that it's designed,
where you literally can't even really
have your fingers touched by the propellers.
It's so light, it just comes up from your hand.
I mean, that alone makes it way more approachable
than any kind of drone flying camera I've seen.
I think that's gonna be
the main selling point of this thing,
it's just how easy it is, a kid could use it.
A reaction we heard when someone saw it
for the first time was, "Oh, that's cute!"
Which you don't hear about a lot
of consumer electronic devices.
And while all these other big tech companies
are talking in grandiose terms
about the metaverse or content moderation,
Snap is like, "We're just gonna release a flying camera."
And they're not really saying they have huge hopes for it,
they're gonna sell it just online to start.
But I don't think it's gonna light the world on fire,
I don't think they're necessarily
gonna sell millions of them.
And I think that's okay, I think what we need
is just more kind of whimsical, fun, easy-to-use tech.
And that's what this is,
it's not revolutionary but... it's fun.
Thank you so much to Valley Relics Museum
for letting us film in their awesome space.
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and check out theverge.com for more on all things tech.