Heads up! The big Garmin annual spring sale has started, with $200 off the Fenix 8 (first sale to date!), $100 off the Edge 1050, Forerunner 965 at $499, the Forerunner 265, the new Instinct 3, and countless other Garmin products including inReach Mini 2. Plus the Apple Watch Ultra 2 Black Titanium is on sale, and some Suunto & Wahoo product deals too. Full list & thoughts here!
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Wanna save some cash and support the site? These companies help support the site! With Backcountry.com or Competitive Cyclist with either the coupon code DCRAINMAKER for first time users saving 15% on applicable products.
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5 Easy Steps To The Site
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In Depth Product Reviews
You probably stumbled upon here looking for a review of a sports gadget. If you’re trying to decide which unit to buy – check out my in-depth reviews section. Some reviews are over 60 pages long when printed out, with hundreds of photos! I aim to leave no stone unturned.
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Read My Sports Gadget Recommendations.
Here’s my most recent GPS watch guide here, and cycling GPS computers here. Plus there are smart trainers here, all in these guides cover almost every category of sports gadgets out there. Looking for the equipment I use day-to-day? I also just put together my complete ‘Gear I Use’ equipment list, from swim to bike to run and everything in between (plus a few extra things). And to compliment that, here’s The Girl’s (my wife’s) list. Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!
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Have some fun in the travel section.
I travel a fair bit, both for work and for fun. Here’s a bunch of random trip reports and daily trip-logs that I’ve put together and posted. I’ve sorted it all by world geography, in an attempt to make it easy to figure out where I’ve been.
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My Photography Gear: The Cameras/Drones/Action Cams I Use Daily
The most common question I receive outside of the “what’s the best GPS watch for me” variant, are photography-esq based. So in efforts to combat the amount of emails I need to sort through on a daily basis, I’ve complied this “My Photography Gear” post for your curious minds (including drones & action cams!)! It’s a nice break from the day-to-day sports-tech talk, and I hope you get something out of it!
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The Swim/Bike/Run Gear I Use List
Many readers stumble into my website in search of information on the latest and greatest sports tech products. But at the end of the day, you might just be wondering “What does Ray use when not testing new products?”. So here is the most up to date list of products I like and fit the bill for me and my training needs best! DC Rainmaker 2024 swim, bike, run, and general gear list. But wait, are you a female and feel like these things might not apply to you? If that’s the case (but certainly not saying my choices aren’t good for women), and you just want to see a different gear junkies “picks”, check out The Girl’s Gear Guide too.
It’s interesting to see that the better obstacle avoidance drones get, the more cautious they become. Not even in terms of going into tight spaces, but doing predefined maneuvers in the open as well.
And regarding the part where the drone flies around the tree and picks up in via active track again – is it a sheer coincidence or can it really leverage the remote for ActiveTrack? If not, looks like a missed opportunity for DJI, given the stable and fast wireless connection between the drone and the remote as well as GPS on both devices.
It’s hard to say. I agree, it could be sheer coincidence, but in none of my other ActiveTrack tests did it do that. But I agree, it continues to be silly how they handle it.
I’ve gotta believe at this point it’s because they thought the RC Track would have released last fall, and thus been the proper upsell for these scenarios. But alas, not yet.
Thanks for reviewing the 4 Pro and look forward to additional testing. It’s on my short list of tools after owning the 2 Pro for many years for use in getting cool event footage, and other photo/video shooting for my business.
The type of tracking you did in this test seems like the wrong tool for the job, but glad you put it through its paces…for science. For something this costly, I’m glad it protected itself well and seemed to do as well as some of the smaller drones you use more often for your cycling footage.
I find this drone to be more of a flying camera than something more quick/agile that’s used for sports, high speed flying, etc. With the zoom, updated controller software, and other goodies, it looks like a winner! I’ll have to look up the spec, but does it have a higher top speed than it’s predecessors based on its body design?
Great video! I appreciate these gauntlet videos, because they tell us a lot about how these things will handle obstacles, in a real world setting. I’ve ordered on in the US, but have a feeling I’ll be waiting a while!
PS: Any inkling of when your Roam3/etc. review will pop? Thanks!
What a huge device !
So did they finally beat obstacle avoidance capabilities of the Skydio R1?
Chinese products will never beat western supremacist ones.
I’d argue at this point DJI & Hover are beating Skydio in the consumer tracking market. As always, we humans have rose-tinted glasses about things in the past, Skydio included. Skydio was hardly perfect, I killed a few of them, including hitting trees it shouldn’t have.
But more importantly, Skydio’s consumer products were limited to a 1-meter bubble around the drone (in all directions), making it very tough to do anything like we saw in this video, or with DJI’s yolo-drones like the NEO & Flip, which don’t care about obstacle avoidance in ActiveTrack. And to that extent, the NEO/FLIP follow objects tracks *FAR* better than Skydio’s consumer products did. Like, not even same realm close.
And that’s all before we talk about the camera side, which Skydio’s consumer products were not awesome, especially in color/lighting (let alone the dodge/weave). At the time though, I always noted how it was a tradeoff between a drone that tracked awesome (for it’s time), versus a good camera.
Ironically, we still have that tradeoff, it’s just that Hover and the DJI NEO/Flip have largely replaced the Skydio for tracking, yet have crap cameras.