Flight Experience

Flight Experience Welcome to a Camcorder Battery specialist of the Sharp Camcorder Battery

The Q500 powers on and connects with the remote fairly quickly. It won't take off until it achieves a GPS lock—you can manually override this requirement if you want to fly without the aid of GPS, but I don't recommend it. Indoor flight is certainly possible, but there's no positioning system like you'll find with the DJI Phantom 3 Professional or the Inspire 1%displayPrice% at %seller%, so you'll have to take great care. Even a minor bump indoors can destroy a propeller. Two sets of props are included.

By default the left stick moves the Q500 forward and back and left and right. The right stick rotates it about its axis and changes its elevation. This is the opposite of DJI's default control scheme, which can be difficult to manage if you're used to flying with a different system with battery like sharp BT-H22 Battery, sharp VL-SW50 Battery, sharp BT-H32 Battery, sharp BT-H21 Battery, sharp BT-L445 Battery, sharp BT-L225 Battery, sharp VL-NZ80 Battery, sharp VR-BLN20 Battery, sharp BT-L221U Battery, sharp BT-L241 Battery, sharp BT-L441 Battery, sharp VL-WD650 Battery. The settings menu allows you to change the control scheme to any of four modes, but I couldn't get that feature to work with our review unit. Yuneec tech support prompted me to bind the copter to the remote to affect the changes—a process done by titling the drone forward 45 degrees until its bottom light blinks orange—but after several attempts, the Q500 remained in its default control mode.

There are three modes available for flight: Smart, Angle, and Home. Smart is recommended for beginning flyers, as it ensures the copter will always fly in the same direction that you push its control stick relative to your position, regardless of which direction its nose is pointing. More experienced pilots should switch to Angle, which orients controls relative to the Q500's nose. If you're interested in automated flight—options include Follow Me and Watch Me—you'll want to keep Smart mode enabled. Home, as it implies, causes the Q500 to fly back toward the remote control. There's no pre-planned waypoint mode available—the Phantom 3 Professional doesn't have that either, but DJI has promised to add support for flying pre-planned routes via a future firmware update.

Our test unit was a U.S. model, which is limited to flying at a maximum 400-foot altitude, keeping it in line with FAA regulations. In terms of operating distance, I managed to get about 1,200-feet away before the video signal started to cut out when flying in a rural, open area with very little wireless interference. In the suburbs I found that while my range was a bit more limited I was able to fly about 900 feet away from the remote before the signal cut out. That's not quite the range of the Phantom 3 Professional, which managed 2,500 feet without issue, but it's better than the 1,000 feet I got with the Phantom 3 Standard in open space and the 400 feet it managed in suburbia.

Flight was not without issue. During my first run I had some thick trees between me and the Q500, which caused it to lose signal more quickly than I expected. The Q500 didn't automatically return to home at that point, and the signal was too weak for the manual Home function to work. I was able to walk closer to the unit and regain control, but it was a scary moment in the air. Another tense moment came later in testing during an otherwise smooth flight. The craft lost GPS lock momentarily and started to fly erratically. It righted itself after a few seconds when the GPS lock was reacquired, but it didn't fill me with confidence.

Those incidents aside, the Q500 did well in test flights. It does wobble a bit in the air, which is somewhat disconcerting when compared with the absolute stillness of the Phantom 3 Professional, but the gimbal does a fine job stabilizing video. I was impressed by the Q500 in one particular area: It's very quiet. I'm used to drones that are audible even at distance, but the Q500 is almost silent at as little as 75 feet away.

There's no app-based automated takeoff and landing, but the single-button approach to start and stop the motors makes both processes simple. I usually land a copter manually by bringing it to within a few inches of the ground and cutting the motors—the Q500's struts provided a cushioned bounce upon landing when using this method.

Yuneec lists the Q500's top speed at just under 18mph. In my experience it flies a bit slower—about 15mph at full throttle. It's a big drone and the laws of physics certainly apply in terms of momentum. It's doesn't stop on a dime like the Phantom 3 Standard; instead the Q500 lumbers a bit forward after you cease forward momentum, and lurches a bit in the air if you want to quickly move from forward to backward motion. The smaller Phantom is quicker—I was flying at 22mph when working under the same weather conditions—and it's able to more quickly change direction.

I was able to fly for about 22 minutes on a single battery charge. Recharging an empty battery requires about 2 hours, and a cigarette lighter adapter is included so you can charge in your car if necessary. You should be careful when charging; the adapter has vents for cooling, but it still gets quite warm. If you inadvertently block a vent it becomes hot to the touch very quickly.