3DR SOLO Review

I discussed purchasing a 3DR SOLO awhile back, and it’s now been about 4 months I believe since I bought it.  In short I haven’t had any issues, yet, and I enjoy how easy it is to fly.  Although unfortunately it did not meet my original expectations.

The largest factors that contributed to the drones short comings is the flight time and range.  3DR was disgustingly overzealous in defining this drones specs.  Stock with no gimbal or camera the drone could not fly longer than 20 minutes, where as the specs are defined at 25.  Once you attach a gimbal and camera your payload will increase and naturally shorten your flight time.  Well before you attach all that you were already at the time listed for all that extra weight.  The flight time with gimbal and camera is 20 minutes but in reality you’d be lucky to get more than 15 minutes worth of operation time.  Five minutes is a considerable amount of difference when you consider that of those 15
minutes it will take at least 3 minutes for startup procedures; mainly GPS lock and WiFi pairing.  I have been setting a timer on my phone for 10 minutes, that way I do not get distracted having fun and forget to look at the battery levels, even though the software does tell you at 10% remaining.  With 10% battery sometimes I may not be able to make it back to my current position; but with my timer I can normally get back before the 10% mark.

The next issue I have is with the range.  The location I choose to use as a test to compare this has no stray WiFi signals, as tested with a WiFi scanner.  There is a row of trees about 500 feet away from my point and the next closest house is over 1000 feet away.  Under my normal flying conditions I was never able to get past 1500 feet at about a 300 foot altitude.  The manufacturer claims 1000 meter range that’s 3000 feet, and I can get no where near this even with exceptional conditions.  If I stand on the roof of my house I am able to get to 2390 feet which would be acceptable as a normal operation range, but it’s not normal.  The controller uses standard RP-SMA antennas which is the same as the ones on my Amped Wireless N Router.  So I tried putting those on and gave it ago.  While standing on my roof still I was able to get 6081 feet out.  While standing on solid ground I was still able to get over 5000 feet.  That was a nice range and I could reach way out pass the lake near the house.  But, I didn’t like taking my router’s antenna on and off each time to fly.  I found some 6 dBi antenna off eBay for $0.99 for the pair, which had the same specs as the ones from the router.  With those I could only get to 3445 feet while on the roof.  I’m not sure why the signal strength is so different when the antenna would theoretically be the same.  I ordered another router and just use that as my permanent ones.

During my research in deciding if I was really going to go with this drone or not I seen many complaints about the drone’s top speed.  Many would complain that it would get no where near the 55 mph that 3DR claimed; most would cite 30-35 mph as their top speed.  Realistically I felt that was more than fast enough for me.  I mean even if you’re going 35 mph and if your video or controller hits a latency spike and you hit something because you couldn’t react fast enough would suck.  Either way now that I have been flying and playing with the settings I have to say I have easily surpassed the 55 mph mark multiple times.  In normal flight mode the top speed is severely reduced even at the highest settings.  Although in free flight mode you can easily reach the devices top speed.  Keep in mind though; when flying that fast the drone’s altitude drops  very quickly. 

Another thing that bothers me is the battery’s charge retention.  In short it’s terrible, a fully charged battery looses about 25% charge over the course of a week.  It’s not just one battery it’s pretty consistent across all 3 batteries and it’s pretty annoying.  So make sure you charge your batteries the night before you plan to fly.

The drone is very stable and incredibly easy to fly, and the adjustments for responsiveness are perfect.  I love how if you loose signal the drone will immediately return to the GPS’ home location.  That is the location that is recorded as the spot where you pressed the fly button on the controller.  It is also nice how the drone will automatically begin to descend once the battery is at 5%.  At 200 feet or lower that is enough power that the drone will safely land.  Any higher than that it may not have enough power to make it to the ground.  During testing auto land kicked in at about 300 feet altitude and power died about 30-40 feet off the ground.  Luckily I was above a sugar cane field and nothing was damaged, although there was some difficulty finding it.

The IOS software is great, I love how to can make performance adjustments on the fly without having to restart the drone or connect cables or anything of the like.  The GPS acquisition is pretty slow, but once it’s got a satisfactory signal it stays fairly constant.  Only once have I lost GPS signal while in the air, and at that point the drone just stopped.  After a few seconds it got the signal back. I’ve read many places about a fix with some cardboard, I haven’t tried it yet, but i do intend to in the future.

One of my main decisions points for getting the SOLO was 3DR’s claims at future expandability.  In theory that is great and all if people develop add-ons for the drone.  As of this writing there is only a GPS tracker and 3DR’s site scan software.  the SOLO has now been out for over a year and it pretty much sucks that this is the only two options for add-ons.  Let’s give it another year and see what happens; hopefully the idea takes off at some point.

Although I am not 100% satisfied with the drone I am still happy I got it.