If you have been following drone news a couple of years ago then you probably remember this:

This is a Hover “Passport” Camera, a drone developed by Zero Zero Robotics a couple of years ago.

This drone was a huge leap forward for the company, and it’s successor, the upgraded version Hover 2 reached over 1 million dollars from Kickstarter crowdfunding at the end of last year (2018), and Zero Zero happily announced that they now shipped the first batch of drones to the Beta program backers.

But this isn’t what you are here for.

Zero Zero Robotics developed a completely redesigned drone. It’s been in the works for about 2 years and now they finally announced it.

It’s called the V-Coptr Falcon.

About the V-Coptr Falcon

As you can see it only has 2 motors as opposed to regular 4 motor quadcopters that we all got used to.

The foldable arms form a V shape when they are unfolded, and the drone looks like a bird when it’s flying in the sky.

The V-Coptr (I guess they forgot the “e”) Falcon features a 3-axis mechanical gimbal that will help smooth out the footage. A 3-axis gimbal has become an essential feature for any camera drone these days, so it is good to see that they implemented it.

Drones have always had the issue of short battery life. We always want more and we need more, and most consumer drones can give us about 30 minutes of flight on average. Well, it is announced that the V-Coptr Falcon drone will have 50 minutes of flight time.

Other Important Features

It has a 1/2.3″ CMOS sensor with a pretty narrow lens that gives you only 77° FOV (field of view). You will not be able to capture wide landscape shots, like with DJI Phantom 4 with 94° FOV for example, but in the right conditions, it can give you really nice cinematic footage.

The drone weighs 730g, which is almost 3 times heavier than DJI Mavic Mini (249g) that was released not so long ago, but almost the same weight as the DJI Mavic Pro (734g).

The V-Coptr Falcon has an obstacle avoidance system. The advanced VIO (Visual Inertial Odometry) allows it to map all of the surroundings and then avoid collisions with obstacles in real-time.

The BlastOff Controller, which by the way is an awesome name, gives you a control distance of 7 km. That’s the same distance as DJI Mavic 2 Pro has.

What Is Missing?

Top speed

Zero Zero failed to give us the top speed of the drone. We only have information about max wind resistance which says “Grade 5”.

Assuming that’s Beaufort’s Wind Scale, grade 5 is a fresh breeze with a speed of 17-21 knots. That’s 31-38 Km/h or 19-24 mph.

To put that into perspective, DJI Mavic 2 Pro drone also has that same Grade 5 wind resistance, so we could assume that the V-Coptr Falcon has a top speed of 40 mph or 65 Km/h.

Stability and Handling

There is also an issue of stability. The drone is “hanging” from only 2 points, and that will prevent you from doing sharp maneuvers. You can compare it to sitting on a chair with four legs, and then leaning back until you have the chair only on 2 legs.

It’s not the most stable way of using the chair, is it?

Don’t get me wrong, the drone can most definitely fly nicely, there is no denying that, but what I’m implying is that if you go forward (for example at full speed) and you decide to stop, the whole drone will swing around those 2 points of lift.

Gimbal can’t look up

Another thing that bothers me is that the gimbal pitch angle is said to be from -90° to 0°. If the gimbal can’t look up, unlike Mavic Mini that can go up 30°, does this mean that the camera will be forced to look at the ground every time you want to accelerate forward as we can see in the picture below?

For a drone that should start shipping in 2 months from now (February 2020), there is a lot of information missing about this UAV.

V-Coptr Falcon Is On Presale

Zero Zero Robotics put it up on a presale on their website for a limited time.

So if you would like to preorder it, make sure you do that before New Year’s Eve.

If we have any more info in the next days, I will be sure to update this article. Stay tuned by subscribing to our newsletter. We only send one email each Sunday, so I promise, you won’t be spammed.

Have a great day!

Read also: DJI Mavic Mini vs. DJI Spark Comparison