Today’s review is about the Xiro Xplorer G Drone, a quadcopter from Chinese company Xiro. We’ve been flying the Xiro Drone for a few months now and will give it the twice over and let you decide if this drone is a winner or is just completely shite.
Firstly, this is our first drone, we’re not into RC aircraft and really only purchased it for aerial video. Deciding on what drone to buy depends somewhat on what you’re going to use it for. There are three versions of the Xiro Drone, the Xiro Drone “normal”, the Xiro Explorer V, and the Xiro Explorer G drone. We’re reviewing the Xiro Xplorer G, which is the one that has a gimble you can attach a GoPro to. The Xplorer V comes with a camera, but shooting just 720p it’s not really up with the times with most of the better drones today capable of shooting 4K.
Looks
The Xiro Xplorer G Drone is probably one of the best looking drones we’ve seen, it’s sleek, streamlined and the green on black makes it our favourite looking drone by quite a long way. It’s got a very low profile which also makes it look kinda cool, the legs are moveable, so you can fly it without a camera and put the legs up, or if you’re using the camera you’ll need to attach the slightly cumbersome gimble which holds the gopro. Like Jessica Alba, even with the legs down and gimble attached, it still looks good. The propellers are black and again, it just looks good. If you take the propellers off, you can hand carry the Xiro Xplorer G Drone with ease (the battery is removeable). We’ve hiked for around 45 mins hand carrying this drone with no problems (not including wind – more on that later).
Performance/Ease of Use
The Xiro Xplorer G Drone is very easy to fly unless you have no coordination, in which case no drone is going to be easy to fly. With absolutely no experience, our first time was made even easier by the comfortable remote controller and the simple setup. Under normal conditions, the Xiro Xplorer G Drone pretty much does what it’s told. Where the problems arise is with connectivity. We’ve crashed the Xiro Xplorer G Drone three times, twice due to just losing connection between the remote and the drone. Unfortunately, it crashed into concrete walls on two occasions but on a postive not, it survived both crashes, but not without some repairs.
The lose of connection is a real worry, and when they say always fly the Xiro Xplorer G Drone in open areas, take that seriously because you don’t want to lose control of the Xiro Xplorer G Drone in a crowd of people (unless it’s full of Donald Trumps). Common sense says that applies to all drones, but we haven’t heard too may reports of other drones losing connection and the drone wandering off wherever it sees fit. The more famous DJI Phantom 3 Professional has addresses this issue and Xiro needs to also address this issue very quicky.
The Camera Experience
Yes, the Xiro Xplorer G Drone can accommodate a GoPro, but other than tilt up and down, you won’t be able to control it. Any video will need to be turned on prior to take off, and photos are out of the question. The Xiro Xplorer G Drone is NOT a photographers drone or a videographers drone. Basically you’re flying blind and perhaps the biggest letdown of the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is that the propellers will fill up to half your video capture if you leave it in the upright (horizontal) position. To get the propellers out of the video, you need to tilt it down, which cuts out most of the sky, so what you end seeing is a lot of ground. The GoPro can point all the way down, but even then you can see the legs of Xiro Xplorer G Drone when it gets a bit windy. So if you’re looking for a great drone for video/photos, again, the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is definitely not the drone for you.
The Gimble is quite easy to attach, but getting the GoPro in is not an easy task, and getting it out is downright difficult. Annoyingly, you will inevitably find yourself turning the GoPro on, and the video on and off trying to get the little sucker out. The last time we removed it from the Gimble, the GoPro had new names beginning with F, C and A. It can also make marks on the GoPro. We don’t care about this, but those looking to keep their GoPro in the best of condition will need to worry about this.
To test the Xiro Xplorer G Drone in varied conditions we took it up Dragon’s Back. In what we would call windy conditions, it faired okay, but in strong winds, it gets blown about and makes any kind of video impossible, as well as the landing extremely difficult (we crashed it trying to land it in high winds on top of a small mountain). The manual says not to use it in winds above Cat 4, but unless you have a very vast open, flat area to land, we don’t recommend using it. Upon crash landing, the Xiro Xplorer G Drone was still useable but now has a bit of a dent in it and the propellers are looking a bit sad. The Xiro Xplorer G Drone comes with a spare set of propellers, but as the beat up propellers don’t seem to affect the flight, we’re saving those for a big crash.
If you do crash the Xiro Xplorer G Drone some of the cables may come lose and you’ll need to do some repairs, not that easy, but not that difficult either. We must mention again it’s survived three crashes so the durability of the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is pretty good, but the reasons for the crashes are the main concern. Unless you are particularly incompetent and or stupid, it’s difficult to crash the drone when you’re connected to it. Once you lose connection, the Xiro Xplorer G Drone has a mind of it’s own and will wander off like a lost dog anywhere it feels like, with you behind the control looking like a complete slapper if anybody happens to be watching. And if there’s people around, they will watch, almost like you’re having a shag in public, except with a drone they’re not afraid to get up close and even cop a feel. But I digress.
Battery life on the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is below average, they state up to 25 minutes, but we get about 13 minutes average, sometimes as low as 8 minutes and rarely higher than 15. There are some quite strict lipo battery rules you’re supposed to adhere to, and which we’ve followed, but driving any distance to fly the Xiro Xplorer G Drone and getting 10 minutes fly time is a little ridiculous.
The cost is RMB3,999, about USD$6,030, that’s about half the cost of the DJI Phantom 3 Professional, but there’s a big caveat. The support of the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is basically non-existent. Repeated emails go unanswered and as Xiro is a new company, it’s not going to get better anytime soon. It’s also based in China with very little documentation in English and if these guys are going to compete with the big boys, they need to get their act together and fast. Perhaps they are just targeting the mainland, which is fine, but they’ve gone to the effort of having their website in English and made some instructional videos in English, but they won’t last long if they’re not willing to reply or engage customers. That’s a shame, because this drone has potential but people aren’t going to buy it if they know they won’t get any support after they buy it.
Conclusion
As other reviews of the Xiro Xplorer G Drone have stated, this is a good “first drone”. It’s easy to fly and if not for the numerous lost connections, would be even easier. If you’re just wanting to experiment with a drone and aren’t too concerned with taking high quality unimpeded video and can live with the fact you won’t be able to take any photos, then this is the drone for you. However, if you’re into Photography and looking to take some cinematic-esque video then the Xiro Xplorer G Drone is not the right drone. The next drone we buy won’t be a Xiro Xplorer G Drone, or the Xiro Xplorer V Drone or anything from Xiro as their customer support is non-existent.
We’ve tried getting in touch with Xiro to see if they wanted to address some of our comments, but no surprises, they ignored us. UPDATE: As of today, there website is down. Not a good sign.
Coming soon we’ll have another drone from China we’ll be reviewing and hopeully that’ll be more positive.
We’ll also give the DJI Phantom 3 a whirl and have the review up as soon as we’ve had a chance to test.
