I've been putting off making this video because part of me
really doesn't want to talk about this stuff anymore.
But I also feel like I have an ethical obligation
to cover it, and I also want to prove to myself
that I can still be objective
after all that I went through. So, here we go.
Drones.
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What is happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and today I want to tell you a little bit about
my experience with GoPro, the Karma,
and drones in general. If I would've made this video
when I first felt the urge to about a month ago,
I think it probably would've just been
a pretty angry rant, and I'm not so sure
that that would've done anybody any good.
So, now that hopefully cooler heads have prevailed,
rather than just complaining about my drone crash,
I'd like to share a few other ideas with you as well,
including a cognitive bias that we all share as humans.
So, here's the rundown for today's video.
I'm gonna give you a little bit of back story.
I'm gonna tell you how the drone actually crashed.
I'm gonna talk about how the situation was resolved,
something I learned about drones and drone pilots in general,
how the human Negativity Bias is involved,
and also now my feelings on GoPro--
now that the situation has been resolved
and kind of how I feel about them going forward,
including my hopefully objective mini review
of the GoPro HERO7 Black.
Oh, and I want to take a quick minute
to thank Camera Canada for providing me
with the GoPro HERO7 that I reviewed for this video.
Camera Canada has a wide array of GoPro devices,
and cameras and accessories,
including a rather formidable lineup of DJI drone
and accessories as well. So, if you're in the market
for an action camera or a drone, check out Camera Canada.
Their links will be in the description below.
alright, so, for a little bit of background information
on me, I've never really been that big into GoPros or drones.
Not that I'm suggesting that they're the same thing,
just those are two products that
I've always been kind of skeptical about.
And I understand the merit to both of them.
I mean, action cameras offer a portability
and a resiliency that you just can't get
on a conservative budget outside of them.
And drones can capture some mesmerizing footage
that you just really can't see in another way.
But at the same time, I've never really been much
of an action junkie, so I don't really do a lot of stuff
that I would consider to be GoPro-able.
And as far as drones go,
by the time that I was looking at getting one,
I felt that the market was already kind of oversaturated
and it seemed like everybody on YouTube
just had endless drone shots. I didn't really just wanna be
another guy taking drone shots. So, for me,
neither product really called out to me that much.
But then back in September,
if you remember when I did that video
on the Fuji X-T3 and I was invited to that,
uh, launch event, they had the-- some--
some stuff set up where we would be driving some,
you know, rare, exotic cars around on a racetrack.
And I thought, "OK, this is an opportunity where
a GoPro would probably get some shots
that would be useful and I don't think
I'd be able to get another way, of the track
and of the car and me driving it and everything."
So, I was like, "I think I'm gonna look up a GoPro."
And so, I was browsing around online
trying to find the best bang for the buck,
and I noticed that Best Buy was selling
a combo package for the Karma drone
and that grippy stabilizer thing,
and then, obviously, the GoPro HERO6
and all the accessories. And it was only $799 CAD,
which is only like $600 US.
And that's a crazy good deal if you were planning
on getting a Go-- that exact GoPro anyway.
Because in Canada at that time,
I think the GoPro HERO6 Black was around $500
and change, so it was really only
a couple hundred dollars more for the whole package.
And the stabilizer gimbal grip--
Karma Grip thing cost, like, CAD$350 all by itself.
So, it was kind of like the drone was just free,
if you bought that combo.
So, I picked that package up, brought it home,
read everything, all the details, the instructions,
everything, charged everything up,
updated the firmware on everything,
and then I even took the drone out for a spin.
And it worked, I think, exactly as intended.
It seemed flawless to me.
The whole flight was great, perfect, I liked it.
Everything was fine. From that point on,
we kinda just treated the drone like a recreational toy.
The GoPro HERO-- the action camera itself
was the, you know, the more important item,
and we used that quite a bit over the next few weeks.
But the drone, I think we took it out three times total.
And it worked well every single time.
So, no real complaints up to that point.
But we didn't use it a lot.
Then in the first week of October we decided
to take the drone out again because
it was a really nice day in a run of muggy,
rainy days, and we figured we'd give us
something to do. We took it to the exact same spot
that we flew it the three times before,
followed the exact same procedures, but this time,
a few seconds after taking off the drone plummeted
out of the sky, crashed to the ground,
and broke all of its bits.
Now, I've read a lot about drone crashes
on forums since then.
I've seen a lot of the comments on crash footage,
and I've completed several questionnaires
from GoPro when they were trying to figure out
exactly what went wrong. And I don't consider myself
an expert on drones by any means.
I don't have a lot of hours flying them.
But, I do consider myself to be a little bit
of an expert on technology and especially software.
And I can say pretty comfortably
that I am confident that this was the drone's fault
and not user error. But because I don't have
any footage of the crash, I'm gonna do my best
to tell you what happened. But there's not really
a lot to tell. Basically, we launched it
from the same location that I said we--
we did several times before. It's a--
it's a perfect little takeoff thing.
We used the auto takeoff procedure
and it went up fine. The-- there's--and the--
just so you know, there's nothing around this place.
There's no cars, no buildings, no poles, no trees, no metal.
It's nothing. It's an open field.
And it was a perfect day, perfect blue sky,
not a cloud, great temperature, no wind.
It literally was, like, the ideal situation
that you would probably want to go outside
and maybe fly a drone in. Everything started up fine,
good connection, no warnings.
My plan, and the reason why I hadn't
started recording yet, was I was going to take it up,
fly it out and up a little bit, spin it around,
and then start recording us while we did whatever
the hell we were going to do that day. Uh, and--
you know, that-- that went well as well.
The auto takeoff was fine and then I flew it up and out--
I wanna say it was about 50 feet away,
and about 30 to 40 feet up.
So, nothing crazy in either direction.
And then just as I was about to spin it around,
I was pressing the right stick, but I was noticing
on the screen that it wasn't panning.
I wasn't seeing the view pan across.
And as I was press-- I thought,
"This is weird. Why isn't it moving?"
And kind of just as I was processing that information,
Julie, who was standing beside me, I heard her gasp.
She was like-- [gasps] And then I looked up
-and the drone -[making sound effect]
--and just, like, crashed to the ground.
And what's funny about that-- I mean, I guess--
it wasn't really that funny at the time,
it was kind of traumatic, but it's kind of funny now--
is that just before it hit the ground the controller
started saying something about a compass error.
But it's already too late to do anything about it.
The drone's literally upside down and, you know,
most of the way to the earth already.
What do I care about a compass error at that point?
And then it gets funnier...
I'm trying to say it's funny so I don't--
so I keep my sanity. But after it hit the ground,
then the controller's like, we got a problem here,
initiating the auto-landing feature.
And I was like, "Oh, yeah, thanks for the update.
You're gonna auto-land that drone, eh?
After it already torpedoed into the ground.
Good luck with that." And then the whole rest
of the time that we were walking towards the wreck,
the controller kept giving, like, updates
on how the auto-landing was going.
You know, like, "Oh, auto-landing",
it had no idea what was going on with the drone.
And I love how much hope it had of,
like, how it was gonna recover the thing,
when I can physically start to see the drone now
as I get closer to it, that, you know, it's a mess.
And it was a mess. All the propellers were broken,
one of the arms was cracked, another one was pretty damaged
and was missing pieces on it. The stabilizer that
holds the GoPro and goes into the drone was cracked,
which is unfortunate, because that's a cool part,
because you can use it with the grip and stuff.
The housing was broken, and the GoPro itself
was badly scuffed and looked like it
might have started to have sort of
a screen defect on it. And I still don't even know
what happened. Like, I never got a sort of
final diagnosis on it. My theory is that it had
something to do with connectivity, because the--
the compass thing, that compass error,
never showed up on the screen during any part of the flight.
The compass and GPS stuff was supposed to be all good.
And because of the fact that I was trying to pan
and it didn't update, clearly there was
some kind of lag or disconnect between
what was happening with the drone
and what was happening with the controller.
So, I don't know if the drone lost power and,
you know, that just wasn't updated,
or if there was some sort of connection issue
and it didn't know how to handle
that loss of connection, so it just freaked out.
Just, like, the two entities did not know
what was going on with each other.
And the drone did not handle it well.
Oh, and for those that are wondering,
this is not one of the original Karmas,
this is a post-recall Karma, which was actually--
the recall was meant to address issues
that seem eerily similar to what happened to mine.
But I-- like I said, I got this in September.
This is definitely a post-recall Karma.
Anyway, I obviously submitted a warranty claim to GoPro,
and that was quite the experience.
I don't want to bore you with,
you know, customer support details.
I'm sure we've all been there before.
But just imagine, you know,
one of the worst customer support phone calls
you've ever had where you try to call up
about a phone bill or something like that,
and then imagine having to make that phone call
seven or eight times over the next two weeks,
explaining the same thing over and over and over again.
That's what my customer service experience was like
with GoPro. Anyway, I eventually escalated my case
up to some senior supervisor,
who after a lot of back and forth,
did offer me a remedy, and it was a replacement drone.
And this was not acceptable--
it's a reasonable solution, I accept that.
But it wasn't acceptable to me,
because when I started this claim,
I said right out the gate that I only wanted one of two things:
either a refund, or I would take a replacement
only after they provided a specific reasoning
for why it crashed and some kind of assurity
that it wouldn't happen again to the replacement.
Because for me, the bigger concern here
wasn't the money, it was that I now considered
this device to be dangerous. If you remember,
like I said, I didn't even start out wanting a drone,
it was to get the GoPro. I just got this thing for fun.
But now I'm thinking, "What happens if a kid came
out of nowhere or was flying the thing as it crashed
and it lands on the kid's head or something?"
You can't just be flying something around that can kill
somebody and then not take any accountability.
And it was during that last protest about saying that part
to the supervisor that I think he made a large error
in logic and-- and integrity, in a sense.
Because he said that-- he tried to reassure me, basically,
of what I just said to you guys, which is that,
"Oh, no, the replacement drone that we'll send you
will not have the same problem."
But this is just a couple sentences after he told me
that he still didn't know what had caused the crash.
So, obviously you guys can already put together
how that doesn't make any sense.
But then, I cited to him an e-mail
that I got from GoPro just a little while ago
before that, which said, "As the results of the tests,
our team found something with the test
and would need you to send the specific parts
for further testing. We will be replacing it
with a new parts for you to continue
using your drone." So, this is obviously--
that was their resolution.
"Yeah, there's something wrong with your drone."
So, that's good. It's not my fault,
which I knew it wasn't already.
But, "You need to send your drone to us
so that we can figure out exactly what went wrong.
And while we're doing that,
so that you're not down on your flight time,
we'll send you a replacement drone."
Now, do you see what's wrong with this here?
If they have my drone
and they're gonna send me another one,
but they haven't concluded all their analysis on it
to figure out exactly what's wrong,
then how can the supervisor I'm on the phone with
assure me that the one they're gonna send me
is gonna have the problem fixed? It's obviously not.
It's gonna be another drone off the shelf
that they're gonna send me while they work on this one.
And so I asked this to the supervisor directly. I said,
"Does this e-mail then indicate that you're gonna be sending me
a replacement drone before you've concluded
your analysis on my drone and determined
what caused the crash?" And he said, "Yes,
we'll get it out to you right away."
Almost as if he didn't even realize that this completely
contradicts what he said a minute ago about assuring me
that the drone was not gonna have the same problem.
And this made me furious, not only because it's kind of like
indirectly admitting that you don't really care
if your parts are potentially dangerous,
since you haven't finished your analysis yet,
but also for lying to me by suggesting
that this problem could be addressed,
because that's chronologically impossible.
The phone call ended shortly after because they said,
"Well, that's our best offer. We're not gonna give you
a refund. That's the best we can do." And that's when
I was first gonna make this video,
because I had all the information.
I had the conversations recorded and all the evidence
and the e-mails back and forth, and I just wanted to make, like,
a PSA video to warn you guys about how they were willing
to potentially endanger people. Only about an hour or two later,
I got a phone call back from the same person at GoPro,
who was now magically offering me a full refund.
They still wanted me to ship the item back
so they could complete their analysis
and finish the RMA or whatever,
but they wanted to assure me over and over again that this
was a one-time exception, and they don't usually do this,
So, obviously I took the refund and I sent the drone back,
and I hope that they will take it, and analyze it,
and learn something from it,
and that maybe that will fix some problems.
But, I can't help but be pretty cynical about it,
because the drone department of GoPro has been discontinued,
so I really don't think that they're gonna be rolling out
any changes to their existing stock.
I think they're probably just gonna try to unload
what they have. And I also don't think
it's gonna have any effect on places like Best Buy
selling these combos to try and, you know,
move their Karmas as well.
I think I just caught them in a web of bad logic and deceit
and they tried to make me happy and potentially shut me up
by giving me a full refund.
And while I'm satisfied by that ultimate resolution,
I'm quite dissatisfied with the service up to that point,
and am deeply troubled by the quality of the drone
and the way that this whole thing was handled.
So, here's my micro review of the GoPro Karma in 2018.
It's a great value package,
and it's terrific how well it integrates
with the rest of the GoPro system.
And I think it's really, really tempting
when you see one of these on sale at a store like Best Buy
for a price that's only a little bit more expensive
than the price of the GoPro itself.
But I cannot in good conscience recommend buying one of these,
or even flying one of these drones.
I don't think it's a reliable product.
In fact, I think it's downright dangerous.
And I don't think you're gonna get a great resolution
from support if something does go wrong,
unless you're willing to spend hours upon hours
fighting with them, and even then,
they made it very clear that my case was an exception.
So, that's my opinion today, and that was my opinion then.
Why did I wait until now to make a video
on this topic? Well, it comes down to some stuff
that I read on forums and the like from drone pilots
in general, not specific to the GoPro Karma.
It would seem that drones crash,
and that they crash at a surprisingly high rate.
Well, surprising to me at least.
One of the thoughts that kept going through my head
during this whole thing was, "Ugh, I should've bought
a DJI, this is just a GoPro problem."
But I was surprised by how many posts there were
from pilots from all different brands
who had a very similar story. The drone just went up,
and then for no reason at all, it crashed to the ground.
Sometimes the propeller flies off,
sometimes the controller goes bad,
sometimes the drone just takes off and flies away
and they never see it again. Or sometimes
a drone with a full battery just loses power
and plummets into the water. Now, I was hoping
to compile some kind of statistics
for you guys, but I just couldn't.
I couldn't find out how many drones were sold
during that period or precisely how many claims
there were. But I can say that over the course
of several days, I read literally hundreds of cases
that shared strong similarities.
Now, I realize that these hundreds of cases
could still only represent single-digit percentages
of the drones of a specific model,
but to the pilots that lost their drone
and their hard work and footage, it's still pretty devastating.
And there also seems to be a little bit of a consensus
among these communities that new drones
tend to have more of this problem. Almost as if--
like, a little bit of a break-in period,
like you would expect from a beta launch.
And even if your drone is not faulty,
there still seems to be a consensus
that everybody who's into drones
is gonna experience a crash at one point or another.
Whether it's that your propeller breaks off,
you get attacked by a bird, or you land on uneven ground.
And-- and these aren't the manufacturers' fault,
but I still felt like it was something that
was pretty understated when I was first researching drones.
And so this discovery made me want to refortify
my previous opinion on drones,
which was basically a who-needs-them attitude.
I figured, the market is completely saturated,
they're overused on YouTube,
and it's also pretty hard to fly them 100% legally,
based on a lot of the restrictions
that many countries have, including mine.
And now I learn that there's a pretty high rate
of them just falling into the water or flying off,
never to be seen of again, with all your footage
and hard work and $1,000 of your money.
And so, I should make a video on that, right?
An exposé on drones with all kinds of scary statistics.
But then I started thinking about Negativity Bias.
Negativity Bias, in broad strokes,
basically describes how we as people tend to put
more weight on the negative than on the positive.
And this can be used to explain why
there's higher ratings for news programs that show,
you know, disasters, and how the--
the negative feelings that are created from us,
say, losing $50, tend to be stronger
than the positive feelings we get from winning $50.
And I think this understanding could be used
to even out some of the feelings that I had
after reading all these posts about drones.
Not only is it easier to search and find
results about a drone crash
because it's a lot easier to search for,
but I think the people that would post there
would be a lot more passionate and a lot more likely to make
a convincing post if they had an unexplained crash
than if they didn't. In fact, I don't really think
that it would be likely to find a post from a user who
wasn't experiencing any problems at all.
It's not like someone's gonna get on there and be like,
"Just wanted to make a post today to let you know
my drone's working fine."
That's not something you see very often, right?
So, this basically means that when you're researching drones,
you'll find that a high percentage of those cases
end in failure. But this doesn't mean
that a high percentage of drones fail,
just that if somebody has had a drone fail,
they're more likely to be vocal about it
than somebody who hasn't.
And this is where you guys come in.
Now, while this won't be very scientific,
I really want to hear your drone experience.
If you fly a drone, have you had one crash?
And if so, was it your fault? If you've never had one crash,
make sure you leave that in the comments as well,
otherwise we're gonna create that same negative bias
in the comments section as there is on those forums.
So, we need to know, if your only story is like,
"I fly a drone, it works fine", leave that in the comments,
because that's the way we can create a balanced experience
for somebody reading through them.
And, if you don't fly drones and you have a specific reason why
let us know that in the comments as well.
So, before we move on to the last section of this video
which is the future of GoPro for me,
I want to give a quick recap of some of the things
that we talked about, because I feel like I've given
some opposing thoughts throughout this video.
I do think that drones crash. All drones from all brands.
I think that the smaller, more innovative ones
may possibly be more susceptible to this
because of the tech that they try to pack into them
that may not be as thoroughly bug-checked
as it probably should be. But none of this excuses anything
that I've said about the GoPro Karma,
which I think is exceptionally bad,
even in a category that has a higher fail rate
than I'm comfortable with.
I think that when we're talking about drones,
which can seriously hurt someone if it fell on them,
we should have an extremely low fail rate--
lower than it is now. But I also think
that a lot of minor drone crashes are just caused
by human error or because they're quite delicate.
It's not an inexpensive hobby by any means,
and I say hobby because I wasn't using it professionally.
And for somebody like me, I don't think
that I would really recommend drones as a hobby.
I think if you consider the restrictions
that your country may put on drones,
mixed with how short the fun time is,
which is obviously based on flight time
and some monetary considerations,
I don't really think that it's a great hobby
in terms of value. And I'm always trying to talk about
value on this channel. It's difficult to tell you
the value of a hobby, because it's so personal
and so subjective, and I can't possibly put a price
on how much joy you might personally get
out of flying a drone. All I can do is make sure
you know something that I didn't,
which is that drones fail a lot more than I thought they did,
and that even minor crashes can be quite expensive
and a huge hassle to receive satisfactory support on.
But again, I don't want this to be
some anti-drone scare tactics video,
so make sure you share your successes
in the comments below as well, because I'd love to know
how many satisfied drone pilots there are out there,
because you just don't see that in the forums
that much. And again, Negativity Bias is probably
to blame for that. Alright, lastly,
what about GoPro as a whole?
So, I started this journey out needing
an action camera, but I had to send my HERO6
back when I sent back the drone
because I bought it as a package,
so I had to return it as a package.
But between the time that this whole ordeal started
and I finally got my refund, GoPro released
a new camera, the HERO7. And I've been using it
for a few days now, thanks to Camera Canada,
and I want to give you my feelings on it.
And this is important to me because
I want to prove to myself
that I can still remain objective
despite how frustrated I am at GoPro right now,
because I think it's all too easy for us,
probably again due to Negativity Bias--
for us to unfairly evaluate a new offering
from a company that we kind of hold a grudge against.
So, with all that being said,
is the new HERO7 Black any good?
Yeah. Yeah, it's really good.
It's easily the best GoPro
and definitely worth the money based on
the other products and their pricing structure.
The new stabilization is fantastic.
It's not gimbal-level, despite what they claim,
but it's very, very good. And it is noticeably better
than the HERO6, and it works in 4K 60p,
which was absent on the HERO6.
So, that's a great feature as well.
I really like the new user interface,
I think it's a step up. I also really like that
stabilized video time lapse feature,
and I also think aesthetically it looks better, too. I--
I quite like the way that the HERO7 Black looks.
I would not recommend the Karma,
and I strongly advise against buying
any discounted Karma combo packages
that you might find at your local big box retailer.
No matter how tempting it is, just get the GoPro by itself.
That HERO7 is fantastic,
and it will still ultimately be cheaper
than any drone combo you're gonna find.
Plus, it has the added benefit of not falling out of the sky.
And also, if you don't fly drones
and you have a specific reason why-- [clears throat]
But that's gonna be it from me. I hope you found this video
helpful, or at least entertaining. And if you did,
make sure you leave it the old thumbs-up
and consider subscribing, if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful
or entertaining, feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright... I'm done.