WowWee's FlyTech Dragonfly reviewed

We've already seen some first impressions of WowWee's newly-launched FlyTech Dragonfly "toy," but PC Magazine has now thankfully provided a slightly more in-depth review for those of us more curious about the little critter's capabilities. As you might expect, they found it to be "loads of fun," with easy to use controls and a surprisingly durable design, which helped the unit withstand a number of head-on collisions with the walls and floor. The unit's downsides are also about what you'd expect, with a wide open space with no wind pretty much required to fly it. They also found that it took a bit of effort to extract the charging cable from the Dragonfly's body, which you'll have to do fairly frequently as you'll only get about seven minutes of flying time on each charge. We somehow doubt that'll be a deal-breaker for most, however, especially given that it only costs fifty bucks.

[CowboyGA @ Feb 14th 2007 3:28PM]

It's an excellent concept toy and I love the price, but the 16" wingspan and 50' range mean that you'll run out of room to play fairly quickly.

[Yan @ Feb 14th 2007 3:48PM]

I would love to see if they could engineer this to hover. This looks impossible with their current design, but a twin pair of wings and a method of changing wing pitch of the rear wings could make this possible, just very difficult. But hey, the picco-z works, and I thought I'd never see a heli of that size actually stable, so anything's possible.

[ASTROBOT @ Feb 14th 2007 3:55PM]

Wow Wow Wee Waa! I like!

[ASTROBOT @ Feb 14th 2007 4:00PM]

I wondered how this will perform outside on a windy days.

[Lee Gibson @ Feb 14th 2007 7:43PM]

It will perform very, very poorly outside on windy days. So will any lightweight remote control aircraft, unless you spend a whole hell of a lot of money on on-board brains.

(lightweight means "too small to carry a person".)

[mike @ Feb 14th 2007 4:27PM]

The picture of the remote really looks a lot like Rosie the robot from the Jetsons.

[T-Will @ Feb 14th 2007 5:22PM]

You don't need a big room or a lot of open space to fly it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY5yOJ_-Z3s

[one1082 @ Feb 14th 2007 5:25PM]

that would be supreme if it could get a beer out of the fridge

[Randy Stewart @ Feb 14th 2007 6:28PM]

Man... I can't wait to get one of these things. Anyone have any experience flying this thing indoors? How good are the controls?

Randy Stewart
[e-mail]

[sxt173 @ Feb 14th 2007 6:54PM]

It would be even more supreme if it weren't toally sold out!!!

A Radio Shack store employee (the sole retailer carrying this) said "there have been dozens of people calling about this, our warehouse system says we are totally out with no news of new deliveries"

Somehow reminds me of a PS3 without the getting shot factor..

[murata @ Feb 14th 2007 7:35PM]

i got one, tons of fun. It looks so cheap, the renderings online are hardly what it is in person, but it actually works. The manual states you need a 16ft x 16ft room but I would recommend something bigger.

[Beowulf @ Feb 14th 2007 9:21PM]

Thanks for the YouTube video ... but wowwee ... that dragonfly is WAY too loud for office use.
Let me know when it's smaller & quieter.
Bummer.

[Jiggs @ Feb 14th 2007 10:57PM]

Save yourself $20 and get the picoo-z/havoc heli. Those things are pretty much a radio-controlled VertiBird.

[Nick @ Feb 14th 2007 11:52PM]

I picked up one of these at Radio Shack today. They are fairly difficult to fly--after dozens of trials, I've only been able to keep it in the air for 5-10 seconds at a time. Flying indoors is nearly impossible as it crashes into things often. This thing flies best in a straight line, so outdoors might be more promising. It charges by hooking into the controller (like those little RC cars), and takes about 10 minutes to recharge for 5 minutes of wing flapping. Seems pretty fun--I mostly bought it to annoy my cat, and it does do a good job of that (but you have to keep pets from trying to eat it).

[Jerry Norbury @ Feb 15th 2007 1:22AM]

But where can you buy them outside the US?

[Albert van Breemen @ Feb 15th 2007 3:39AM]

I want one with stealth mode and a camera!

albert

- - -
http://www.personalrobotics.nl

[J-Tall @ Feb 16th 2007 2:34AM]

That thing doesn't really seem to be flying so much as not directly falling out of the sky. While this is pretty impressive in terms of cost and performance for an RC ornithopter, I still say the Havok/Picco is cooler.