Review: Most consider Sony to be at the top of the list when it comes to quality, functional products. Sony’s first drone, the Sony Airpeak S1, however, is not going to be part of that list. In fact, it’s about as far away from the top as you can get.
The day they arrived, I was greeted with a large pelican case that contained everything for the S1 and a smaller case for the FX3 camera package. When I opened up the case for the S1, I was very happy to see how well the case was laid out and how well everything was packaged.
I downloaded the app — which has just a single five-star review as of the time of writing this, which seemed odd considering the drone is more than six months old at this point — created my Sony account, and logged in. The gimbals for each stick feel nice and smooth and don’t feel “sloppy,” and I actually preferred the feel of these over those of the DJI Inspire 2 controller. It feels very similar to the Futaba 14SG that I use with our FreeFly Systems ALTA X and ALTA 8.
It was responsive, however, and I never had the app crash on me outside of the initial setup, unlike my experience with DJI’s apps.As far as the drone is concerned, right out of the box I thought it was off to a promising start. The drone looks great and is solid, nothing felt flimsy or cheap, and the retractable landing legs attach quickly without the need of any tools and they are keyed so they stay straight.
As mentioned, for this review the camera I used was the Sony FX3 and the 24mm lens. Once both are attached to the gimbal, you need to configure the camera settings to be able to let the S1 communicate with it via a USB-C to USB-C cable that is included with the kit.After everything was configured properly, I turned it all on and that’s where things went from mildly frustrating to just plain disappointing.
With that in mind, I cancelled the plans for doing a mock “shoot” with the drone since I couldn’t really see enough to even make a shoot happen. It was off to a local park/flying field to see how the S1 actually flew. At this stage, I didn’t feel anything warm and fuzzy about flying the Airpeak S1 with this controller. I pulled the second controller out and paired it with the drone, which again took about five tries and two restarts. After it paired, I played with the gimbal controls for a good five to seven minutes and it was still responding, so I decided to arm the drone and see how the first flight would go.
For those who are familiar with the Inspire 2, that will do 50 to 55 miles per hour with a camera, and our ALTA X from FreeFly has hit 60 miles per hour with a full-blown RED Gemini, cinema lens, and follow-focus system hanging under it, and I still had a quarter stick left for making it go faster. After recreating this situation a few more times, I determined that the S1 was most likely detecting the ground during these quick banking maneuvers. You can see why this would be an issue, especially if you are lower to the ground than the 30 feet I was currently flying. As a further test of my theory, I lowered down to 15 feet and tried the same thing again and this time the drone came to a full stop. I couldn’t control the drone until I naturalized the sticks and let it settle.
Think about this scenario for a minute: You are out on a lake chasing another boat with your Airpeak S1, which you have launched from a boat. Your have now flown close to three miles away from where you took off and now your batteries are overheating. You can’t cancel the RTH sequence and now the drone tries to fly back to where it took off but there isn’t anyone there and it lands in the water.
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