Speaking of the controller – you will need to do some initial setup with WiFi access. In general, the drone will find GPS and be ready to go well ahead of the controller. That does take about 30-45 seconds to complete. What doesn’t take a moment is the controller booting up. If you haven’t yet, you’ll go ahead and remove the drone and the remote control, following which you’ll unfold the four prop arms outwards. They are color coded to match the caps at the end of the arms, making them easy to differentiate when putting them on. The drone has two different props on it: Two black, and two silver. First up, you’ll have it chilling in its backpack, which enables you to keep all four props on during transit. So now that we’ve given it a proper weigh-in, let’s dive into using it. With Mavic, the props fold-up, no removal required. With Airdog you have to remove all props for transport, whereas with Karma you don’t have to remove any for use in the provided backpack (you can use the other GoPro Seeker backpack also, in which case you have to remove two props). Obviously, Mavic is smallest, and Airdog and Karma are kinda similar in size. Then to compare sizes, here’s the folded up sizes of the Karma and Mavic: It’s really the Karma controller that’s the beast. So as you can see above, the total weight of Mavic (1055g) is less than half that of the GoPro Karma (2529g).Įven Airdog with everything is less than Karma – at 2135g. To compare that to Mavic and Airdog, here’s how those look from a weight standpoint, each with one battery and the controller. Then we’ve got the controller’s weight (626g/1.38lbs): So how does it stand-up when it comes to size and weight? First up, here’s the weight of Karma, with a battery and camera/gimbal attached (1941g/4.27lbs): Then we’ve got the Karma Grip, which connects to the gimbal that you can remove from the drone:įinally, we’ve got a baggie of accessories, including the frame for the camera, the Karma ring, which attaches to the gimbal for use with the backpack (more on that in the Karma Gimbal/Grip section), and then some tethers:ĭon’t worry, I’ll go through all of this throughout the post in more detail. The clamshell controller, which gets about 4-5 flights worth of flying time before needing a recharge: The removable battery, which I’ve found takes about 75 minutes to charge from empty to full, and gets about 13-16 minutes of actual flying time: That said, in order to give those that don’t want to watch the video a look at what’s inside, let’s talk about the core pieces separately. Thus, instead of a full secondary set of photos for unboxing Karma, I’ve got one consolidated video: In this case, when I got my Karma drone, I decided to do an unboxing video. So not only do you get a drone, but everyone gets a backpack to go along with it. The Karma system is unique in that it comes not just in a box, but in an entire backpack. And of course, to see how it compares to DJI’s Mavic product, the nearest competitor. I bought a unit (actually, a bunch of units) and set out to find the good, the bad, and the ugly. So if we temporarily set aside (for just a few minutes) the DJI Mavic– how does Karma do as “so much more than a drone”? Is it worth your cash? Well, I put my cash on the line to find out. But is that really the case now, more than a month later with the Karma drone actually shipping? And until 7 days later when the DJI Mavic was announced, it did indeed seem that on the surface, that was the case. When Karma launched, CEO Nick Woodman proclaimed (or rather yelled) on stage that Karma was “so much more than a drone”. GoPro turned to 3DR for partnership, but that fizzled with Solo. But those days are long gone, with DJI moving to their own camera platform. You’d buy a GoPro and mount it to your DJI Phantom. It wasn’t too many years ago that DJI and GoPro worked effectively side by side. Of course, the drone game isn’t one owned by GoPro, but rather today owned by DJI. The drone’s arrival had been delayed at least once along its journey, and was in part responsible for investor concerns about GoPro. There were many guesses, and a handful of leaks – but by and large secrecy was kept intact. One must remember that prior to mid-September, relatively little was known about its features or capabilities. When it comes to products from major players in the sports technology landscape, there was probably no more widely hyped and awaited launch in the last few years than GoPro’s Karma drone. Said differently: Nothing in this review changes.) There is no difference between the pre and post-recall drones from a hardware or software features standpoint, except changes to the battery clip to prevent the earlier power failures. ( Update: Feb 1st, 2017: GoPro has resumed shipping of the Karma drone following it’s earlier recall.
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