Keep Looking ByS. PotterVINE VOICEon May 9, 2017 Vine Customer...

Keep Looking
ByS. PotterVINE VOICEon May 9, 2017
Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )
The disappointment started with the battery. A 90 minute charge yields about 8-9 minutes of flying time. The ROVA comes with two batteries. That means 3 hours of charging will yield about 15 to 18 minutes of flying. That 15 to 18 minutes goes down when you take pictures or videos or make the drone move around instead of just having it hover.

The ROVA, in flight, continued the disappointment. It takes off and hovers quite nicely and easily. It goes higher than the 33 feet mentioned in the documentation. The trouble, though, is that the ROVA is difficult to control. I installed the ROVA app on my Android N phone. Despite the control interface being very simple, I found (and find) it almost impossible to precisely control the ROVA. After fiddling with it to get it in the proper position for a pic or a video, the app would almost inevitably begin to give a low battery warning.

As for the videos and pics, the ROVA did provide a fairly stable platform. The camera, though, is not adequate. Videos lack sharpness, the colors are drab.

Finally, the ROVA is finicky and not incredibly durable. Pairing the drone with the phone is frustrating. I frequently have to do a battery on the ROVA and/or shut off the phone's WiFi to pair the drone and the phone. Even when I am have connected, the software will sometimes fail to operate the drone. And that's with pressing the red button as described in the terrible instructions.

As of now, my ROVA is almost unusable. One fine afternoon, after 3 hours of battery charging I decided to fly it around. I went through the pairing procedure, etc. When I tapped my phone to begin the flight, the ROVA immediately went to full power and shot straight up approximately 60 feet, and headed towards a line of trees. The drone did not respond to my control inputs so I killed the power. It plummeted to the ground, striking a tree branch on the way down. Ever since that event, the motors don't run in unison. The motors pulse, the motors don't start in unison, and the ROVA is pretty much unflyable. And I was using the bumpers to protect it.

So my recommendation is to skip the ROVA. I like the idea of a light, compact, easy to fly selfie drone. The ROVA is not it, though.