SONY has announced that it will end production of its Airpeak S1 drone in 2025, hinting at its exit from the drone circuit. Due to the strength of DJI, it is difficult to see Airpeak S1 in China, let alone experience this drone, but Petapixel deeply analyzed the reasons for SONY's drone failure.
The Airpeak S1's short endurance - 22 minutes without load, only 12 minutes with the pith and camera - is believed to be known by many people. But its disadvantages go far beyond its short range. Although the S1 boasts extremely fast flight speeds, modular camera support, and extreme wind resistance, the flight experience is very poor.
Petapixel said that SONY did not make an out-of-the-box and complete drone, SONY only produced the drone body and the accompanying camera, the head is produced by Gremsy, users spend $9,000 can only buy the drone body and remote control. You'll also have to buy an iPad (to use as a screen), a SONY camera, and a $2,200 head.
After the assembly, the user will find that the S1 flight experience is quite bad - "every two seconds will be (camera) power off once, each time lasting three to five seconds", "if you can press the video button at this time and start recording, the camera real-time picture will be interrupted for about 30 seconds before recovery, and return to the state of interruption once in two seconds." In addition to being difficult to shoot, there are problems with S1 calibration, which makes it difficult for the head to work properly; When in the sky, the sensors misjudge the distance of the drone to the ground, causing the battery to overheat and accelerate the power consumption - only 7.5 minutes of flight, 33% of the power consumption (which is in line with the nominal battery life).
SONY has since released three accessories to address these issues - a Real-time Motion (RTK) kit for improved navigation and positioning reliability, a lightweight head and an enhanced battery that promises up to 20 minutes of battery life under load. However, these accessories are priced at $4,000, $4,000, and $400 respectively, and to get the best S1 experience, it costs nearly $20,000, not counting the cost of the camera. In addition, due to poor battery life, a $2,900 charging case is also necessary. And SONY launched these near two years after the drone launch event, paying such a high price is just to bring the experience a little closer to DJI.
From Petapixel's evaluation, it can be known that the Airpeak S1 has many problems such as poor battery life, positioning errors, and poor reliability, and the experience is far less than DJI, and the price is extremely high - even without the camera, the cost of new accessories such as the PTZ, enhanced battery, and charging box exceeds $20,000. Ultimately, it went the way of the GoPro Karma.
