Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me cut to the chase. If you have a hankering to buy a quad copter with GPS control and First Person Viewing (FPV) capability with a pretty decent gimbal/camera that is ready to fly out of the box and pretty much lives up to all the hype surrounding it, the Phantom 2 Vision fills the bill for around $1200. I have virtually no RC plane or much less helicopter experience and I was able to confidently fly this thing at least a dozen times without crashing it. It is rock-steady. Take your hands off the sticks and it just hovers there. It has a "failsafe" flight mode that automatically returns your Phantom to the point you took off from if it loses contact with your transmitter for any reason. I have not used this mode yet, but from what I've read it seems to work reasonably well. Hook up your iphone/Android phone to the built in WiFi system and you can literally fly from inside the quad and at the same time record video onboard the camera in 1080 P/or take 14 MPix stills. It also has 60 FPS slow motion, which combined with wide angle lens and gimbal system can give awesome results for a consumer grade product. The rest of this review is about all I've learned about the Phantom 2 Vision in the last week or so from personal experience and from the Phantompilots forum, which I highly recommend. Why I am returning it; Very simple. The camera/gimbal system on the vision 2 is good, but not as good (from what I've seen) as the Phantom 2, with the Zenmuse H3-3D gimbal system and a GoPro Hero 3 camera. The Zenmuse gimbal stabilizes the camera in two axis as opposed to the one axis the Vision 2 has giving better/smother video in windy conditions. While the non-Vision version with a Gopro prices out almost at the same, the non-Vision version does not have the FPV system and on-board instrumentation (what you see on your iPhone/Android) that shows compass, #of Satellites and control of the camera. Most of these features can be added back in later for another few hundred dollars and I may or may not want to do that after I figure out how to really fly this thing. A second reason I returned the Vision is that although it claims to be Macintosh compatible, it still requires a windows PC to update the firmware in the handheld transmitter with an app called "RC Assistant" (the app for updatging SW/Firmware to the Phantom itself is called "Assistant" and is ported to run on Mac OS up through Mavericks 10.9.1). Very deceptive if you ask me. Its easy to get around, but the sales material should be clearer. And while we're on this note of firmware, let me be clear that there are lots of issues with quad you'll find on the web referring to "fly aways" where you lose control of your $1000 toy and can only helplessly watch as it flies to parts unknown or crashes. DJI strongly recommends you keep the firmware/software of the system up to date to ensure "a positive flight experience". I read that to mean to ensure it does not fly away from you or crash for no apparent reason. Now for some observations and opinions people may be interested in. Feel free to ignore any of this since my expertise in this area is about 10 days old. DJI, the company. Currently, DJI seems to be in a bit of turmoil regarding its recently departed CEO Colin Guinn. I don't know the whole story, but apparently Mr Guinn (he can bee seen on many of the Phantom 2 videos on YouTube) has succefully obtained a temporary restraining order against DJI from importing new stock to many US distributors (No idea if Amazon is on the list). Until this situation is resolved, the supply of new products and spare parts is in doubt. I had no problem purchasing batteries and propellers this week, but things may be changing as the TRO was just issued in the last few days. DJI also does not have, how shall I put it, a great reputation for customer service and tech support. They expect you to first work with whoever you bought your product from to solve your issues, and only elevate to them if you cannot resolve things. I don't know about you, but as much as I love Amazon, I seriously doubt I'd get much in the way of tech support on this product from them. My only first hand experience with DJI tech support was sending email questions about Mac SW support (I mentioned earlier). It took 2-days for them to respond, and of course the response was that they do not have an application that can update the Transmitter firmware ported to Mac (yet). The other "horror stories" about DJI tech support were all over the map, and as far as I'm concerned could have been written about Apple, or HP or any of dozens of other companies. Since we're talking about a very sophisticated device that has more than enough opportunity for operator error to be the cause of a problem as it being a defective product issue, I have to take these complaints with a grain of salt. Do you know what you are getting into? Don't buy one of these unless you are willing to watch it crash or disappear without being traumatized. Like I said, this thing is very easy to fly and really rock solid. Take your fingers off the stick and it just hovers. But if you're like me, and have little or no experience with RC aircraft, it would be so easy to let your Phantom fly way out of control range, or out of your visual range. Once it becomes just a dot in the sky and you have no way of knowing which direction its pointed in, it is very easy to send the wrong commands to it making your situation worse. Proprietary batteries: The Phantom 2 uses DJI proprietary batteries which at least for the moment can only be bought from DJI and their distributors (see note above about the TRO on imports). These batteries have "smart" circuitry that the quad needs to recognize in order to work. They are pretty pricy at $160 and up. You'll probably want at least one spare. I don't see this as a deal buster. From what I've seen on the Phantom Forums these batteries are good for many charging cycles. The biggest complaint is that people claim that even though the battery reports plenty of charge left, a low battery alarm goes off and sometimes the Phantom initiates a automated landing or just falls out of the sky. I believe there are several SW upgrades related to this situation, and for all I know its been resolved. I personally got around 20 minutes of flight time out of my battery before the red blinking LEDs went off. There was probably another 5 minutes of flight time left, but I did not keep flying. Again, the bottom line is I do recommend the Phantom 2 Vision if it suits your needs and have a Windows computer available for updates. Windows/Mac issues aside, I just would prefer the version that has a 2-Axis gimbal and can carry a GoPro camera. Update 2/21/14: DJI has now added a Mac version of their RC Assistant Software to go along with the DJI assistant. This means you can update both your Transmitter and Phantom using Mac OC. Who knows, maybe in a few months their tech support people will be able to answer your email questions in 24 hours instead of a week. - Still recommend this product