Contixo F22 RC Foldable Quadcopter Drone

These days I only write reviews for products that I really like or really hate. Thankfully this review is about really, really liking the F22 drone. I purchased it mainly for the follow me function while mountain biking as well as an interesting selfie camera. I did not expect too much because of the price point (which is about 1/3 the cost of the nearest competitor with the same features) but figured that if it did half of what it says it can do I would be happy. So far I have tested all of the capabilities except waypoint navigation and I was very impressed, here is a breakdown: GPS GUIDENCE: Getting the drone connected to your phone through wifi and then connecting to satellites is a bit cumbersome but after a few times it became fairly quick and easy. Usually takes me about 2-3 minutes for the phone wifi to connect and then another minute for satellites to connect. Once that is accomplished (FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS) you are ready to fly. The drone will idle with props turning until you take off then it will hold a steady position until you tell it to do something else. ORBIT: I found this mode to be the most useful and most fun. Setting the distance and altitude takes about 5 seconds and the drone will fly in a circle (however large you set it) while keeping the camera trained on the center. Super cool for selfies or group photos and videos. FOLLOW ME: Mixed results. It will follow you but from what I can tell the drone needs to be fairly high in the air and wind will impact how well it keeps the camera trained on you. I was hoping to keep the drone close to me (about 20 feet away and 10 feet high) but it had trouble following me accurately. I am guessing that when it is higher it is much easier to follow an object because there is less flight adjustment TRACKING: This is the second most useful mode. It works wonderfully. After you have the drone in the air you can draw a square around the object you want to track and the drone will stay in a stationary position while keeping the camera pointed at whatever you drew a square around. Super cool and works beautifully. HEADLESS: If you want to fly the drone around and you are like me and have a nasty habit of crashing into things you want to enable the one touch Headless mode. That will make the drone go in whatever direction you move the joystick REGARDLESS OF WHICH WAY THE DRONE IS POINTING. It’s the only way to fly and just have fun. TAKE OFF / LANDING: This feature works perfectly although landing takes quite a while to get the drone on the ground. RETURN TO HOME: This enables the drone to automatically return to the place from which it took off. Works great to get the drone back to the general area but it takes forever for it to actually land. I usually hit the return button, let it get close then bring it down manually and hover it so that I can grab it and then hit the emergency stop and all props stop. CAMERA: I was impressed with the picture and video quality, again maybe because I wasn’t expecting much. It is a fisheye lens and is on a gimbal that you can move remotely up and down. You also get a real-time image of what the drone sees on your phone, which is really nice for framing shots. CAUTIONARY NOTE: Do not land or take off on sand. The sand gets into the motors instantly and will destroy them. Also be very careful not to crash the drone on its camera, which is very easy to scratch or break. Picture / Video: Super impressed with the video quality but then again I wasn’t expecting much. It will take pictures and video directly to your phone, which is awesome. At the same time it will save the same pictures and videos on to a micro SD card. I found that the media recorded directly to the SD card is of much higher quality than the same media recorded to the phone. GEEKS ONLY: The pictures recorded to the phone and SD card are jpg files and the SD card versions are about twice the size as the phone versions. The video however is saved on the phone as an mp4 file while on the SD card they are avi files. Again the files on the SD card are bigger and of higher quality. Conclusion: This is a relatively inexpensive drone that has all the capabilities of more expensive models and is a great way to get into drone photography and flight. After some familiarization it is fairly easy to use and the advanced features of the drone are also easy to initiate after you have played with it for a while. This drone delivered on every promise made and I could not be happier with this purchase. UPDATE: I finally figured out how to activate the follow me mode (or at least I think I did). You must first activate the tracking mode (which keeps the camera pointed at you ), THEN activate the follow me mode. I am guessing both need to be active so the tracking points the camera while the follow me mode follows the controller.