The Parrot MiniDrone Jumping Sumo is a nifty, two-wheeled drone/rcv with an onboard camera that lets you pilot it around an environment as far as Wi-Fi can take you. It can take photos and videos albeit not in high definition and battery life really needs a serious overhaul but if you look past that, the Sumo could be your next family tech toy to entertain the young ones safely.
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Love it or hate it, drones are here to stay. Realizing this could be a pretty novel market to enter into, Parrot’s come up with their own set of devices in a weird and whacky way that opened the market to a lesser than average price point but still high that puts Parrot’s drones are strictly on the hobbyist level and possibly the novice. Parrot’s Jumping Sumo is a ground based “Drone”, it’s more likely to be called a radio controlled vehicle but that’s oversimplifying it considering you can interface with it using an iOS or Android App. You can control the sumo and move it around environments, plan waypoints and do nifty tricks, this seems ideal to entertain children or the child in you, it’s pretty cool.
The Sumo navigates on the two wheels, it can also do 180’s with a zip. The Jumping in the Sumo comes with its compressed springs in the rear. Triggering it as is simple as tapping your screen retracting the rear leg and on release, launches the Sumo straight up and forward around 2 feet. This comes in handy as it can flip itself over if it falls accidentally, plus I reckon you can be pretty annoying to people around you if you do it to them randomly.
Controls and Piloting
The Sumo, like Parrot’s drone devices are controlled with their native app, the Freeflight 3.0 available on all platforms. We tested it with a HTC one m8 and a Sony Xperia T2 ultra. The Sumo connects via Wi-Fi and launching the app connects the minidrone immediately, but, the immediate sync was never consistent enough and it required rebooting the device and the app to get it back to working order again.
On connection you’ll get a view from the Sumo’s front camera in full perspective and the virtual controls allowing you to make quick 90 or 180 turns and movement controls via sliding. The wheels can be pushed for tighter navigation but you compromise on speed. There’s a host of tutorials to get you started so that you’re up to speed on controlling the Sumo. The camera is fairly decent to view but we wanted to push it and see if it’s functionally possible to use it at night and surprisingly we could see pretty clear though only with a short field of view.
You can snap 640×480 pixel shots and you also record video on the same resolution which isn’t really all that great to look at but fun if you want to share it on a mobile device regardless. Parrot’s internal memory can store around a 100 photos with relative ease but video requires a usb coupled with a micro usb adapter which will fit in the sumo.
Overall Conclusions
With a list of products on their roster, Parrot has come with up with some fun ways to encourage hobbyists and also create a small fan following in the drone market. The Rolling Spider, which I’ve previously spoken about in the past, also falls in their same product line, I definitely was concerned with making sure I don’t punish the Sumo too much as with all Parrot products they have a nasty reputation of falling apart by your own hand if you do something you’re not supposed to do. That being said, it’s ideal to play with it on your smart device but play time comes with a compromise as with all Parrot drone devices specifically. The micro usb slot in both drones can be used to charge the battery, they both use the same pack but you’ll be very likely to get around 15-20 minutes of runtime and that kind of juice takes over an hour to recharge, the battery life also gets shortened on recording video and taking snaps. An additional battery pack sets you back around AED 75 in the local market but if it’s still good tech for the kids to play with and it’s less likely to cause injury. Here’s hoping that Parrot comes with an updated version of this device that has stellar battery that could make it a surefire purchase.
