I flew the Bebop 2 in three different locations: a park in New York City; a beach in Hammonasset, Connecticut; and a golf course in Fairfield, Connecticut. I made sure to test it on all the available Wi-Fi bands: 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, and a combination of the two. I have flown drones from DJI, Yuneec, 3D Robotics, and Blade at these same spots in the past without any troubles.

In every instance it was easy to connect, takeoff, and fly with the Bebop 2. But once it passed about 100 meters, the video feed began to get choppy, freezing up and pixelating. At 150 meters or more I frequently lost connection. If I walked to within 50 meters of the drone, I could sometimes reconnect. Most of the time it hovered in place for 60 seconds before rising to 30 meters and returning to the home point where it launched.

Disconnections were a constant

After a number of failures I decided to go all in and test a potential worst-case scenario. I flew the drone out over the East River, figuring that if it fell into the drink, that would make a great conclusion to my review. It got to 250 meters, the farthest I flew using just the phone as my remote. But when it disconnected, for whatever reason, it didn’t return home after 60 seconds. I watched helplessly as the drone hovered in place, battery dwindling. In desperation I hopped a fence, shimmied along a pier, and by getting a few dozen feet closer, managed to recover the Wi-Fi network, reboot the app, and hit the return home button, landing with just 9 percent of my battery to spare.

I did manage to get more range out of the Bebop 2 when using the optional $399 "SkyController," which is Parrot’s delightful name for its traditional two-stick remote control. That unit has a Wi-Fi range extender on top, which let me fly the Bebop 2 out to roughly 550 meters with full control and only small hiccups in my video feed. But past that range I experienced two disconnects, and with the amount of terrain in between, couldn’t move close enough to recover the signal before the drone returned home. And adding the SkyController makes the Bebop 2 as expensive and bulky as a DJI Phantom or Yuneec Typhoon.

Limited range is ok; Unreliable connectivity is not Here’s the thing: 300 meters is actually plenty for a beginner drone that costs under $600. If Parrot promised and delivered on that range reliably, I would view it as an attribute on a cheap drone that is trying to straddle the gap between a tool and a toy, a sensible trade-off between safety and capability. There is a sweet spot in the market right now for a unit that is small, lightweight, and low cost, as the barrage of gift requests I got this holiday season showed. I would even be okay with a drone that sensed when it was losing connection and warned me or stopped moving to keep itself in range. But when Parrot promises you can get to 300 meters and sells a drone that routinely disconnects at 150 meters, (or 600 meters instead of 2 kilometers with the SkyController) I’m loath to recommend the unit to anyone.

Photography by Amelia Krales

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