Claiming the ar drone has battery life of 30-45 minutes. No way on earth this can be true. http://toucharcade.com/2010/09/06/parrot-ar-drone-review-the-coolest-rc-toy-ive-played-with/
Calling it a fake review for cash is a bit strong, don't you think? Battery life if always subjective, and even if you disagree, alleging someone got paid for their review will likely illicit a strong response either way.
Do you think that battery life estimate is low or high? Keep in mind, this was a pre-release unit which quite obviously was not the same as the final production model that shipped out to Brookstone stores. It's entirely possible they either upped the capacity of the batteries, decreased them to save cost, or a million other things that would result in whatever you think the battery life of the AR.Drone should be differing from my review.
then still that review says way to much battery life. Im not attacking toucharcade. but i cant believe even the demo model had this kind of battery life. thats why i think you got money from parrot to make this review sound towards the good side. Why else would someone tell this if it simply cannot be true? with a normal battery people report 7~12 minutes of run time and with the largest and most expensive battery there is, people say it can reach a maximum of 20 minutes. with 30-45 minutes of battery life, the thing wouldnt even come off the ground so heavy the battery must be.
iLounge who had a similar pre-production unit reported even better results, with closer to 60 minutes of flight time: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/reviews/entry/parrot-ar.drone-wi-fi-quadricopter-for-iphone-ipod-touch-ipad/
Why would Parrot pay TA to exaggerate about the battery life when they themselves state "When fully charged, the Parrot AR.Drone's battery allows for 15 minutes of uninterrupted flight time"? ...aaand I was just about to paste the quote Hodapp posted too
haha borg. let me guess.. you don't believe in the moonlanding either? not everything is a conspiracy.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the AR.Drone is capable of having its firmware updated. While I'm not entirely sure what version the AR.Drone was running when I tested it, it's entirely possible that their engineers tweaked the power output of the WiFi, the RPM of the engines, added some additional logic to make the AR.Drone more stable in flight or tons of other things via a simple firmware update before the device was launched. Heck, it's even possible that the power management logic they were using was entirely premature and draining batteries to unsafe levels. Like I said earlier, there's a million things that could have changed between the pre-release demo unit I had and the demo units being sold in stores with a device that complicated. That's the battery life I got though, and it's confirmed by iLounge.
you guys really should watch youtube reviews, see batteries with more capacity on ebay, about what the battery life is. never heard more then 20 minutes of life - wich was with a double as big battery as the standard one, and upgraded bearrings.
Then it's either changed or the conditions it's being used under have changed. No need to get your panties in a twist. Is this even about the AR.Drone or are you just desperately trying to uncover some secret TA bribery documents?
Keep in mind that since we had a pre-production unit we posted our review before there were YouTube user reviews or aftermarket batteries and bearings for the device... So including things like that in the review wouldn't have been possible. All it comes down to is that I reviewed the product that Parrot sent me. That's me in the videos in that review, and the battery life I got out of it is what I stated. Please stop posting in this forum, it's for people to leave feedback from site admins not get snide comments from the peanut gallery.
ah so you made it. the review well did you measure it completly? with a stopwatch? or did you let it land and leave it there some seconds, and repeated this alot? ofcource i believe the battery or something else changed so the battery life could be different. but in the RC flying toys on electricity.....such a big difference is really impossible.
im trying to find out why the hell toucharcade and ilounge reported this battery life. i also want a AR drone, but i just cant believe the battery life has such a big difference. ive seen photos, and its desame battery toucharcade, ilounge, and every other user has. even the biggest and best capacity batteries that users made and bought do not get to the life toucharcade and ilounge reported.
I reported that battery life because that's what we got out of it. I wasn't super scientific about it, and just looked at my watch when I started playing with it, then again when it died. I was doing all kinds of things with it, but mostly playing with it like you see in the video. I'm not sure specifically how many times I let it land. If you're thinking about getting one, I'd really think long and hard about the lasting appeal of something like the AR.Drone. Admittedly the novelty value of flying around a quadracopter controlled by my iPhone is incredibly cool... But if I had bought one instead of just had a week with a preview unit I almost guarantee the thing would just be a box in my basement now collecting dust.
the lasting appeal will be upgrading and modding it im planning to use a router to get the range up to 500meters and upgrading the battery life to 15 minutes with a large battery....
