Skye+ Orbit Kickstarter Review

The Skye+ Orbit was a Kickstarter campaign that was created to allow people to document their adventures and easily be able to share them online for others to see. The Orbit Is a drone that unlike others simplifies filming yourself by the Patented SGIT tracking system that allows the orbit to precisely follow you to allow you free your hands and able you to have fun and not have to worry if you are in the camera.

Our Review of the Orbit

When flying the drone it handles and feels very simple to fly as the drone has a GPS mode you can let go of the sticks and the drone will stay in the same place until the user either moves the sticks or chooses the follow me mode, The GPS lock was good however rating it against a DJI phantom it wasn’t as stable in the air as I hoped it was going to be, we did fly in a breeze however it looked like it was struggling to fight against the wind however flying with little to no wind I’m sure this wouldn’t have been a problem . Another problem that we had when flying is that when we let go of the sticks the Orbit would jolt before it self-levelled which was kind of off putting however it was okay once I had got used to it.

Testing the Orbit

In our tests, we took the Orit to a local playing field to test using both a bike and walking around using the different modes and found that because the orbit only has a gimbal of a pitch range of -80° ~-30° we did find that if you went too close to the drone or went under it, it would lose tracking as it is mainly tracked via colour recognition this is a downside as the user being tracked will have to stay at least 5 meters or more away for the tracking work without any hiccups (which is the minimum that the Orbit will get to the user being tracked) therefore having the drone follow you in a straight like or without quick turns it was perfect keeping the target in the shot with it mainly being centred.  

Orbit's camera tracking

The Orbits main feature is the Auto tracking and following modes that make the orbit a great done for action sports or other events that mean that you need to use both hands this is great for when you want to get a professional drone shot as it means you don’t have to constantly look at your mobile device to check if you are in the shot or control the drone itself as it is done for you. We tested both modes to see how well the orbit was at keeping the user in frame and how well it did at tracking the user with the included tracker. The tracking mode is where the drone is stationary and it just rotates to follow the user is great for situations where the drone doesn’t need to move to be able to track the user like in a skate park or a football field as well as places that you would like to have a drone shot however there are obstacles like trees or streetlamps as the drone just stays stationary.

Our Conclusion of the Orbit

In conclusion the Orbit is a good starter drone if you just want just wants it for simple recordings or the tracking mode. The obit also has the benefit of being cheaper than other drones like the DJI phantom's or new DJI Mavic however with the camera only being 1080p with the phantoms having the 3 gimbals and the 4K quality for slightly more in price they are the better option to go with as they are more user friendly with support for both android and Iphone as well as a lot more help online with forums etc. We got given the chance to review the Orbit as it is a new product on the market which we got our hands on to see if we could possibly stock later in the future.