Apparently GoPro has shipped about 2500 Karma's this year so far and one of them went to my house.
I ordered the Karma online when I realized that supply would be an issue. I normally wait for amazon and then use my 20% purse bitcoin discount. However this year I have a trip to the Galapagos planned over thanksgiving and needed a new GoPro for that. The Karma Grip (which is the gimbal from the drone on a stick) is something that I really want to bring along and it seemed the only way to get that in time was to buy the drone. The drone itself will be useless on vacation as they are illegal in the Galapagos and most other national parks.
But the Grip was finally a good excuse to present to my wife to get a drone, or so I thought :-)
Anyway I was lucky and got the drone, just before the re-call was announced. I charged up everything and went for small test fly.
The above video documents the experience. So far I would say about the Karma and the GoPro:
- The Karma is amazingly easy to fly. I was impressed how easy I could fly it without any experience whatsoever.
- The props confused me and I wish the instructions were better
- The camera quality is still very bad. I think a phone today has a better camera. The shots inside the car and at night are very bad and noisy. The improvement from my Hero3 is less than what I expected.
- The online service, with auto backup is useless, because files cannot be downloaded and are only stored in low quality. The idea to create a dumb interface vs an easy to use interface went wrong. Also I had issues with the camera auto updating. the online service is a nice idea I would love to pay for but it needs some work.
- In 4K the camera distortion is very high. I am not a fan. I must either fly with a distorted view or in low quality resolution.
- The Gimbal is awesome. It makes the GoPro much more useful as handheld camera.
- I really love the combination of camera, gimbal, drone and backpack. It is really nice to have such a comprehensive solution all in one.
Overall I was really impressed with the Karma and the integrated solution. The GoPro has become a little better, but overall the key thing about the GoPro which is picture quality has not improved.
In the end I really like the package GoPro has put together, because as a whole the gimbal action cam and drone together provide very good value and form factor.
Quality is an issue, we have a bad camera (which is still a market leader) and also a bad drone compared to DJI, but if I were to buy a drone and the DJI Osmo I would only have part of the solution GoPro offers and almost pay twice the price for it. And I would not be able to go into water, which is a must for me. So I think there is certainly a place for GoPro on the market, but I can see how people will go to GoPro for the action cam and then buy the drone someplace else.