Parrot Bebop 2

A drone that – for a little extra – will make you think you can fly.

The Parrot Bebop 2 is a smartphone-controlled drone with a 14-megapixel camera, which offers 1080p video recording. The successor to the original Parrot Bebop model, it features a fisheye lens which allows for surprisingly judder-free footage and even boasts user-serviceable rotors.

The USP of the Bebop 2 is the optional FPV pack, which includes a headset and professional-style flight controller, complete with sticks and buttons. Using this setup it’s possible to get a first-person view of what the drone is seeing – a surprisingly immersive experience.

The catch is that, when you add the cost of the FPV pack to the price of the Bebop 2 itself, you rapidly approach the kind of money you’d expect to spend on a more capable drone. The Bebop 2 is available for £439.99 ($549.99) on its own. Or for £599.99 ($699.99) with the additional Parrot Controller 2 and Parrot Cockpitglasses headset.

Design and handling

You’d be forgiven for thinking the Bebop 2 is modest upgrade over the original Bebop, purely because they look so similar. Thankfully, Parrot hasn’t been that lazy; the Bebop 2 boasts a more robust design and a larger-capacity battery, addressing two of the big problems with the first model.

The bodywork is almost entirely plastic, save for some deformable polystyrene-type material around the camera. Each rotor has three blades, and these can be removed when the drone isn’t in use. The massive 2700mAh battery slots onto the back of the unit itself, and has to be detached for charging

The Bebop 2’s design is unique in that it’s not a single solid unit, but two main elements which are connected via a series of shock absorbing rubber balls. The main body – which houses the camera and electronics, and onto which the battery clips – sits on top of these balls, and they reduce the impact of vibration on the camera itself.