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Around a year and a half ago, Skydio blew my mind. The then-unknown company presented the R1 drone to the world, and it was quite special. Typically, follow features and obstacle avoidance aren’t very effective, or only work in certain modes (i.e. with compromises). Skydio’s R1 put these features front and center, and it did them incredibly well. But there were still caveats. The R1 was prohibitively expensive ($2,499 at launch), large, clunky and limited in what it could do beyond all that following and obstacle avoiding.
Enter the Skydio 2, the company’s second take on a drone. It’s cheaper, smaller and much more versatile. The hope is that it will be the much-needed DJI rival we deserve, and I’m excited about it enough to say right here that it is. But, and yes there are some buts, it still has some edges that need smoothing out. I’ll get to those in good time, but for now, let’s start with the positives.
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Want to move the Skydio 2 around in front of you? Simply “drag” it there with the Beacon. You can also adjust height, distance, fly modes and more. As a bonus, the Beacon has GPS in it, which bolsters the Skydio 2’s tracking capabilities. For example, if you’re cycling and some trees block the drone’s view of you, it’ll still track your location based on GPS. It’s fun, useful and also another $149 extra. But likely worth it if it fits your use case.
Now might be a good time to talk about the actual camera. As before, it shoots 4K video and 12-megapixel stills. Skydio tells me that, this time, it built its own camera from the ground up. Compared to the shooter on the Mavic 2 Pros, the manual exposure options are slightly limited. You can tweak white balance, shutter speed and ISO and there’s exposure compensation too — but this is enough for most people. You can also choose image mode (JPG/RAW) and set it to shoot in intervals. Personally, I preferred to pull stills from the video — something you can easily do in the app. It might not be a dedicated photo, but the quality was good enough for my needs.
One slight bummer is the lack of internal storage this time around. The R1 had a generous 64GB built-in, meaning you didn’t need a memory card. It made exporting videos a bit more convoluted, but it was a nice feature. I’d have liked to see maybe less storage, 16GB or so, with the option to expand via an SD card (it’s handy for those days you forget your memory card if nothing else), but alas it wasn’t to be. Now that it’s memory card only, at least exporting your video is a lot more straightforward. Another benefit is that the camera’s placed right up front, with nothing above it (unlike most DJI’s) which means the camera can also point upwards, handy for when you fly a little too low and want to quickly reframe.
Overall, the image quality of the Skydio 2 is solid. I didn’t notice any artifacts and performance was acceptable in lower light (or cloudy) conditions. I involuntarily tested this extensively, as the weather was overcast for the majority of my time with the drone. I did notice that the sky was sometimes blown out when the sun was behind light clouds (you can see this near the start of the video above). It soon rectified itself once the image had less competing light conditions (dark shadows and light sky etc). In better lighting, it obviously performed much better, which you can see towards the end of the sample footage.
The Skydio 2’s sensor is 1/2.3 inches, which puts it in the same category as the Mavic Air, rather than the Mavic 2 Pros (which sport 1-inch sensors), but for most situations with normal lighting conditions, the Skydio 2 delivers great results.
There are a couple of areas that the Skydio 2 could improve. The primary one is the WiFi range. When controlling the drone with just your phone, this is less of an issue, as you’ll be tracking yourself, and therefore want to keep the drone fairly close. Skydio claims a range of over 600 feet under ideal conditions, but I don’t imagine too many scenarios when you want to go that far out while tracking. When using the controller, though, you can (and should) take it out a little farther — and this is where things were a little more dicey.
On at least two occasions, I had the video feed drop out because the drone was evidently too far for the connection to hold. On one of those occasions, the drone lost radio connection too, so it automatically flew “home.” The distance was different on both days, and both well within Skydio’s claimed range of over two miles (the controller extends the WiFi range considerably). On the flight where it flew home, I was only 1,000 feet out (about 0.2 miles), so it should have been comfortably within range.
The net result was a temporary loss of video feed (but not video recording) during one flight, and a safe, if unwanted, “return to home” of the drone in the other. Ideally, these things wouldn’t happen when well within the claimed range. DJI’s OcuSync video feed has a claimed range of over four miles, by comparison, so now that the Skydio 2 is hoping to compete, this is definitely an area it can make up some ground.
Another inconvenience is how you charge the batteries. There’s no charging dock in the box, instead, you charge them while attached to the drone. This presents an obvious problem, in that you can’t fly while you charge batteries. In practice, it’s rare that you’d have enough time to charge a battery while you fly with another (flight time clocks in just over 20 minutes), but I would prefer the flexibility to charge cells without taking the drone out of action. There is a solution to this, but it’s another optional extra — a $129 dual charger accessory.
All in all, the Skydio 2 is a vast improvement on the R1. Even without the controllers, it’s smaller, lighter and better across the board. With the controller, it finally feels like a complete drone that can tackle almost anything you’d want to do. I love how easy it is to set up and get flying, and the stellar tracking and obstacle avoidance really do open up shots that, for me, would otherwise be impossible. For most people, this is a great allrounder that isn’t just easy to use but gets me excited about where I can take it (literally).
If you’re more concerned about the photography credentials, and less of the AI follow features, you probably want to go with whichever of the Mavics suits your budget. DJI’s camera chops are fairly well established at this point and the more fine-grained image controls will please photography purists.
For me, though, and I imagine many other casual fliers that enjoy weekend jaunts in the wild. The Skydio 2 is a very compelling package, especially if you pony up for the controller (and maybe a second battery). This configuration would cost you $1,250, which is still way cheaper than a Mavic 2 Pro and it can even do plenty that the DJI flagship cannot.
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