The ULTIMATE Beginner Drone | HOVERAir X1 Review

This right here, surprisingly, is a drone. It's a pocket-sized foldable drone that literally could not be easier to use. You just hold it, press the button, and the drone just flies itself and also lands itself. This drone launched on Indiegogo not too long ago and absolutely blew up. They raised almost $2 million and are completely backordered. Side note, at the end of this video, I'm gonna be giving away a brand new one of these, so make sure you stick around until then. But it just goes to show that there is a huge market for drones that people can just pick up and fly right away without having to spend a ton of time learning how to fly them. I think the fact that it is just a little bit intimidating to learn how to fly drones keeps a lot of people away from actually buying one. And if you're one of those people, this drone is for you. But even if you enjoy flying drones, this drone is also perfect if you're someone who's just trying to film themselves. This video is a little bit different for me because I usually review drones that you do fly, whether it's FPV drones or just classic DJI drones. I'm always actually flying the drones. But I'm honestly super stoked to review this one. So in this video, I'm gonna take this thing out, do a bunch of different tests, kinda just show you an overview of what this thing can do. And the goal by the end of this video is to give you a really good idea of whether or not you should buy one. First off, I wanna talk about some quick specs of this drone before we go out and fly. This thing weighs like almost nothing at only 125 grams. And it folds into a really tiny package that you can pretty much put anywhere, shove in a backpack, put in your pocket, and you can just carry it wherever you go. The motors are caged, so it's super safe. Like, you literally take off and land this drone in your hand. And I've never gotten hit by any of the propellers, so it is super safe. And then up here, you can kinda see the camera in the front. It's not the craziest camera in the world. It's a pretty small sensor. But it does shoot 2.7K 30 and 1080 HDR videos. It also shoots photos, so you can do all of the same movements and just shoot photos instead of video. There's also an optional charging dock that they have that you can charge two batteries at once. Right up front, you can see the main control panel. And literally, you control the entire drone just with this. You basically just pick whatever mode you want and then hit the button and it flies. Although it doesn't have a controller, it does have an app. So I'm gonna quickly open up the app and just kinda show you all the different controls and things you can change on the app. So first off, turn the drone on by holding this main button. Boom, you got the green light. So once you download the app, all you gotta do is open it up, hit activate, connect, connect to your drone. And then you have a couple different options here. So you'll notice the top one is sound recording. That basically just means when you're flying the drone, you can actually have an option to record audio from your phone. So if you're running or hiking or something, you can just have your phone right here and it'll record all those sounds and it won't record the buzzing of the drone. Next up is just linking your account. So you can just link your account to this drone. Next up, I'm gonna cover the settings. So here you have all the different modes of the drone. So you have hover, zoom out, follow, orbit, bird's eye and custom. And this is just really where you can change all the settings. For example, if you're orbiting around yourself, you can change how far away that circle is. You can go up to 20 feet. So you can do five feet right up around you or 20 feet. And all of these different flight modes have just customizable settings. Again, sound recording, it's right there. Firmware update, voice, IMU calibration, everything looks normal. So you don't really need to worry about any more of that stuff. Next up is just the album. And this is just where you can access your albums and you have to join the Hover's Wi-Fi network to access that. But that's just a super easy way to instantly take videos, put them on your phone right away and then share them. So here's the video that I just took. And it's a low res preview, but you can download the high res. Okay, so now we have that out of the way. I'm just gonna go out and show you each individual feature and just kind of talk about different scenarios that you can use them on. Cue cinematic sequence. So the first one that I tested is the hover mode, which is actually the one that I tested at the beginning of this video, where it just kind of took off. And essentially that means it just takes off, hovers and you can set it to track yourself. You can set it to not track yourself, but in this test, I did the tracking feature. And in this test, you can just see that it just follows me around wherever I go. But like I said, you can also have this as a stagnant shot where you just set the scene and then walk by it. You can just set the drone up and basically it'll take a photo or video for you. And when it's on photo mode, it just shoots a burst of photos every few seconds. Moving on to the next one, we're getting into the zoom out feature. This is definitely one of my favorite features, which if you end up winning the giveaway or just buying this drone, I definitely highly recommend checking this one out. But it's essentially where the drone just hovers in front of you for a second and then goes backwards kind of revealing the scene. Just definitely make sure there's not something behind the drone for it to run into because it doesn't have a sensor in the back. After that, I tried out follow mode, which I think honestly is probably my favorite mode out of all of them. You basically just select it on the menu, select the distance that you would like, and the drone will just follow you around. The camera uses active stabilization, so it's not super jittery when it is following you. But yeah, you can just set it, go do a hike, go run down a trail or something like that, and it'll just follow you the whole way. This is useful for people running, skateboarding, hiking, or just really doing anything with movement. After that is orbit mode, which is super nice if you're just trying to get a big 360 view of your environment. You can set the distance on the app. So like I said before, you can set it between like either five feet or you can set it up to 20 feet away. I would mostly use this for hiking, but I've seen other people use it. Like this one dude used it because he was out in the middle of a field playing a violin or something. So you can kind of get creative with it. If you were like dancing in a cool location, orbit would be a really good feature to use as well. Now, the last one to get into before we get to the custom mode is bird's eye, which is just that classic top-down drone movement. I really like this one, and it just gives you a perspective of your environment that you really can't get any other way. I'd recommend using this anytime you're in an environment with cool textures. So like in a forest where you can look at trees top-down or on a beach, for example. You just hit the button and the drone does the rest. The last mode that I want to cover is custom mode, where you can either do a dolly track or a snapshot. Dolly track just essentially follows you either from the front or the side. So it's just kind of like a tracking mode that's a little bit different from follow. And then snapshot is where it just takes off, flies away, and then takes photos and videos of you. All right, so that covers all of the modes. Now let's talk about what you do after you shoot. So there's two ways to get footage off this drone. One is just by taking the app and downloading it directly to your phone and sharing it. But another way is using this USB-C port. So you just plug this into your computer, and then you can download the videos directly to your hard drive. As you've probably realized so far, the footage isn't amazing. It's not like a professional cinema drone or anything. It's just a small sensor, and it's really not made for that. But for what it is, a tiny self-flying drone that you can bring pretty much anywhere, I think it's definitely good enough. What I think most people would use this drone for is just capturing their life to share with friends and family. And on Instagram and Facebook, 2.7K looks pretty good. Overall, I really just love this drone because it takes the barrier to entry to get into drones and brings it way down. I think if you're looking for a drone to give a kid to, this is a great option because it's super safe. It would be genuinely somewhat difficult to get injured by this thing, and it just does everything for you. So now anyone can just get a drone and super easily take awesome shots of themselves and share them with the world. Now we're finally getting to the part of the video that I know a lot of you are waiting for, which is the giveaway. This is actually the exact drone that I'm gonna be giving out. This is a white version of the drone that I tested in this video. It comes with the dual charger and everything, and it's valued at $469. To enter, it's super simple. Number one, just hit the like button and make sure you're subscribed to my channel. Secondly, just drop a comment down below. And lastly, just follow me on Instagram. I'll put my handle right here. Good luck with the giveaway, and I just wanna say thank you for always constantly watching my videos and supporting me. I couldn't make these videos without you. I'll see you on the next one. Peace.