YUNEEC TYPHOON Q500 4K Startup Version Drone

This is a quality piece of design and engineering from the ground up every flight I have had with this has been so amazing no issues the 4k camera records fantastic video and images. It is very stable in the air I have taken it up on a windy day and the satellite kept it stable. My only concern is the seller mine had a few sketches under the body and the Yuneec logo had the Y missing small things. would I recommend the Yuneec Typhoon Q500 four sure yes.

Hi,The drone is in fact a great product and I was highly satisfied with the handling as well as the video quality. However, on one flight the drone all of a sudden picked up a different radio signal and I lost all control. It, then, disappeared in the distance and, finally, dropped in the sea. I was quite lucky that nothing was nearby and nobody got injured given the complete loss of control.When I raised the issue to the customer support team, I initially didn't receive any feedback for several weeks. I, finally, rang them to find out what was going on. The really frustrating thing was that I had to follow up on numerous occasions as I didn't receive replies on my emails even after ringing them. In the end, after sending the telemetry data, I only received a short email saying that they "... don't deem this as warranty" without any further explanation on why this has happened.

Awesome piece of kit. Incredibly stable and easy to fly straight out of the box. The hare and tortoise modes work well. Picture quality fantastic too. What's not to like?UPDATE: Worked well for around 6 months then one day crashed for no apparent reason soon after taking off. Yuneec were helpful and said they would fix it if I paid for the postage. Unfortunately it then crashed again after it had been "fixed" but I have now had a full refund from Amazon. Shame it is unreliable as it was great when it worked. I don't know if we were just unlucky - you decide!

Not been able to use it yet as too much cloud cover to be able to get a GPS signal but certainly seems to be the real deal

Drones – love them, loathe them or couldn’t care less, they are here to stay. For aerial shots, they can get views that just aren’t possible with airplanes and helicopters. With companies like Yuneec, drones are mainstream and the competition is hotting up.The Yuneec Q500+ 4k starter kit doesn't feel like a starter kit when you look inside the box. The first thing that greets you are a selection of leaflets. One mentions CAA regulations, two user guides (one in English and the other in German), an LED status display leaflet (you need to laminate this and keep it with you as it provides invaluable information on the status of the drone). There the declaration of conformity to prove it has passed the necessary EU requirements.The starter kit comes with the Typhoon Q500 Aircraft, CGO3 4B Stabilised Camera, ST10+ Personal Ground Station and ProAction SteadyGrip. There are plenty of accessories including two sets of rotor blades (which are conveniently marked so you know where it needs to go on the drone), cables galore (covering USB charging, data transfer), balancing charger, screen sun shade, neck strap, rotor installation tool. There is a 16GB micro SD card but the videos are not tutorials – pretty pointless. It was quite depressing to see that the kit advertised on the video came with two batteries and a proper case as well. Oh well, one battery less and a cardboard box will have to do. The instruction manual is definitely worth a read though. Just wished there were videos about how you fly the drone.Assembling the drone is straightforward. Fix the rotors using the installation tool (look like a plastic laundry appliance). The rotors and the rotor motors are labelled either ‘A’ or ‘B’ as they are shaped differently. Charge up the batteries and you're almost ready to go. The charging unit for the main drone battery gets hot so be careful. To get a full charge, you need to charge the battery for approximately two hours. The status lights on the charger will tell you when it's completed or reports a problem with battery. There is a car charging lead too but I would recommend buying another battery. Before you go out, install the latest firmware using the utility software which you will need to download from Yuneec's web site. I have to mention at this point that the GUI complained that the relevant drivers were not installed. After about 5 minutes, Windows 7 eventually downloaded a set of drivers. Updating the firmware is straight forward. Using the provided USB data interface cable, it is a simple matter of plugging in the cable into the back of the drone battery compartment which contains a data port connection, switching it on and then performing the update from the utility program.It is worth updating the camera and ground station as well. For the camera, copy the firmware onto a micro SD card, insert in the camera and power up the drone. The LED light will flash purple indicating that an update is in progress. It will shut down once the update has been completed. The ground station is a little more involved. Copy all the firmware files to a micro SD card (funnily enough there is a 4GB sitting behind the battery in the ground station so use that). Fire up the ground station, select System Settings and complete the update. You'll see the familiar Android robot appear.Before you fly, familiarise yourself with the ground station as this is your link to the drone and being able to control it. The big standout feature is the 5.5 inch capacitive screen. You can perform a number of functions such as setting the video and photo parameters, system updates. There are two power switches - one for activating the ground station and the other is for starting up/switching off the drone. There are two toggle controllers that control the height of the drone and the other one pertains to direction. There is an interesting toggle switch with the words Smart, Angle and Home. Smart has a number of features enabling the drone to follow you and then watching you. You can view what it sees through the viewfinder. There is a small plastic hole for attaching the neck strap. On top of the unit are the photo and video buttons. It's just a simple matter of pushing the buttons. There is a slider lever on the left hand side of the ground station that allows you to point the camera up and down by 90 degrees. The slider lever to the right controls the speeds of the drone which is denoted by a tortoise and hare. The battery appears to take two hours in the remote and operational life is around an hour. There is the sun hood that you can attach to the screen to block out sun glare or bright light sources.The drone itself is made of plastic covered in LED status lights letting you know what the status of the drone is (this is also displayed on the ground station). Luckily these lights are quite bright so it shouldn’t be a problem seeing it in the distance but it won’t provide enough light when it’s dark so be careful. With the drone made of lightweight plastic, I suspect parts of it will break off easily with minor bumps. There is a simple on/off switch beneath the battery compartment. Make sure this is turned on first and turned off last as the ground station needs to establish a connection. Remember to insert a micro SD card into the card slot of the camera otherwise you won't be able to capture anything.So, it's time to fly. Check the rotor blades one last time (obviously before you switch on the drone). Check your immediate environment (you are solely responsible for finding a suitable location for flying). If you have chosen Smart mode, you need to stand at least 4 metres away from the drone otherwise it won't power up. The surface needs to be completely flat the both drone and camera will calibrate themselves. This is illustrated by the LED lights on the drone and the display shown on the ground station. Take off is a little shaky but once the drone is in the air, it moves smoothly (depending on whether you've got smart or angle enabled). Speed is limited to a paltry 15mph but that's average speed for riding a bike so having that whack you on the side of your head with almost 2kg can land you in hospital. The drone is pretty quiet in operation. We tested a vertical take-off to its 100 metre limit (the height level is locked in the firmware and it got to its maximum height in around 20 seconds). Using smart mode, you can't really go wrong with manoeuvring the drone. If you haven't flown an aircraft before, smart mode makes it a doddle. One thing to bear in mind is that this particular drone does not have proximity sensors (that's available on the Typhoon H which is the next model up the range) so it's essential you keep the drone in sight at all times. You can't avoid birds who will either ignore it, see it as a threat or crash into it. One disappointing omission is not being able to plot a course. This would be so handy but once again, that feature is available further up the range. The drone is a bit slow in responding to commands issued by the ground station which can be frustrating and sometimes dangerous if you get yourself into a pickle but the drone is stable in the air. If you let go of the toggle controls, the drone will remain stationary (until the battery runs down). Light wind doesn’t seem to affect the stability of the Q500 but you know it is time to bring it back home if you see it in trouble. The trickiest part in manoeuvring the drone is the landing. Using the Home smart mode, the craft will land within approximately 4 - 8 metres of your position so remember where you're standing and visualize where the drone will land. I was worried that the drone bounced a bit before it settled onto the ground. In angle mode (you could say freestyle mode), you can land it with more finesse and closer to you. There are four legs with rubber feet so there is some elementary level of protection. Flight time is limited by a combination of the rotors and on board camera consuming power. Yuneec say that 25 minutes is possibly but I would realistically say 20 at the most including take-off and landing time. I did notice during a diagnostic that one of the motors sounded a little underpowered compared to the rest so I'm keeping a close eye on it.So we come to the camera. It performs well beyond the expectations of what is essentially a glorified web cam. I've never seen 4K footage before but looking at the footage this camera captured excellent footage. I thought 1080p was sharp enough but 4k takes it to another level altogether. The colours are well represented although I've read some other people thought the colours were pale so it's a case of personal preference as to what you see. You can always alter the footage. There is a bit of softness at the edge of the picture but I've seen this in camera lenses costing more. There are plenty of options in recording the video format starting at 720p through to 4k. Frame rates start at 24 and go up to 120 frames per second on the 720 and 1080 settings. In 4k, it's 30 FPS, 2.7k at 30 and 2.5k at 30 fps. I'm going to try and post some footage after this review is published as I’m not sure what file size and format Amazon accept. You can take still photos as well at 12MP resolution. The camera supposedly has a field of view equal to 115 degrees. It's not apparently clear at first but the further up the drone goes, it becomes obvious it can capture a fairly large area. The built-in microphone isn't special. The sound of the rotor blades are off putting. In a lot of cases, people aren't bothered by the microphone unless you need to have it on. The other great feature about this camera is that it is self-contained on a 3 axis gimbal. What this means is that your footage and photos will have minimal camera shake. Additionally, you have control over the camera's vertical orientation along with ISO, white balance and shutter speeds. The Auto setting is pretty good for most photos and videos.Now we come to the steadigrip. This is intended to be a steadicam appliance for ground level photography and video smoothing out the wobbles. I inserted 8 AA batteries, downloaded the app and switched on the grip. Despite entering the password numerous times, the app would not connect to the steadigrip. I got the smartphone to forget my home Wifi and still no luck. I entered the code numerous times and it would not connect. I substituted zeros for the letter O and still not luck. The password is printed on the gimbal. I'm disappointed that this didn't work as I was really looking forward to testing it. A number of owners have encountered the same issue.Can I fly this anywhere and at any height and distance? The answer is no. The firmware ensures that you don't venture off into controlled airspace but it doesn't stop you from flying anywhere else so be careful where you fly the drone and respect the privacy of others. There are methods to overwrite the EU firmware but it is not recommended as the temptation to go higher and further means the drone will definitely be out of your line of sight. Your limits are 100 metres vertical height and approximately 400 metres in horizontal distance from your position.Is the kit good enough for commercial work? The lack of map routing and proximity sensors severely limit the drone's commercial appeal. The Q500 takes fantastic photos and captures splendid video footage but as a commercial tool, no. It is worth bearing in mind that if you intend to use this commercially, you'll need a licence from the CAA (I kid you not - if someone is doing this kind of work without a licence, the penalties can be severe). 20 minutes of power will also reflect badly when other professional drones can be up in the air for 40 minutes at a time.So, should you get one? If you have the money and love flying, this is a good kit to start with as it comes with potentially everything you need but I would personally think about stumping up the extra cash for the Typhoon H as it includes map routing and proximity sensors. Additionally you need to ask yourself can you find an area where it is safe to fly as spending £800 on a drone isn't a worthwhile investment if you can't fly it regularly.On the whole, I would give the Q500 4k four stars. It nearly does everything correctly - a great drone, camera and superb ground station but the lack of map routing, proximity sensors, a suspect motor and a steadigrip that doesn't connect to the dedicated Yuneec app spoils the package.