Best Drone for Biking? Honest Review of HOVERAir X1 PROMAX

What's up, internet? Let's talk about

the Hover Air X1 Pro Max.

This is a AI powered self-flying drone.

It's capable of shooting 1080p, 4K, and

even 8K footage, which is really

impressive considering the size. It is

itty bitty. It's going to fit in pretty

much every hip pack riding vest. And

honestly, it fits in riding pants or

short pockets pretty well. The batteries

are tiny. The drone folded up is very

small. a super lightweight sub 300 g for

the the whole thing. Replaceable ND

filters, so 86 32 64, so you can stop

down depending on the lighting

conditions. It has a max speed of like

38 mph, so able to keep up with you

pretty well. You don't need anything

other than your smartphone to pair it

and adjust flight modes and enter the

manual flight. If you want, you can get

a standalone remote for it. This acts as

a mic. If you want to do ride

commentary, you can mount this on your

handlebars. It just kind of locks right

in at the base here. You can also get

some accessories for this that turns

this into a more like an FPV drone

controller. Once you open up the app,

setup is surprisingly simple. There's a

few steps and hoops to jump through just

to unlock all the flight modes because

it it kind of locks those behind these

courses so that you can get familiar

with the drone and learn all the

features before you have everything

unlocked. And yeah, it's

impressive. What this is able to capture

is pretty gamechanging. And the footage

is super usable. really beautiful. You

can shoot stills with this. You can

enter that manual flight mode and frame

up shots, get some really cinematic

images and footage with this. You get

about 15 to 20 minutes of flight time

per battery, and the batteries are super

small and charge pretty quickly. Um, so

you can bring a couple of those with you

if you plan on using it a lot. It has a

lot of great use cases on hikes, on

gravel rides, and even mountain biking,

but from my experience, it is not

amazing for mountain biking,

unfortunately. I'm not saying it's

terrible, but it is it kind of pushes

the limitations of what this is able to

do in terms of the object tracking and

crash avoidance.

Those are kind of my biggest issues with

it. It's something to be aware of when

you're taking this on a ride and

planning on using it because 60% of the

time it is going to be a little bit

frustrating. 40% of the time it works

great. Um, you get the shot you're

looking for and it's super unique.

The other over half the time it's going

to crash. It's going to lose track of

you and enter kind of this like hover

safe mode. Usually that's within arms

reach. You can just grab it um shut it

down, restart the flight. Other times

it's going to be 15 20 feet above the

trail. So it's totally lost me

and this has happened. This is the third

time it's happened in this ride. If you,

like me, forget to pair your phone,

uh, that can result in you finding

sticks and rocks to throw at it to knock

it out of the air.

That's just kind of user error. So,

something to keep in mind. The other

issue is it crashing. It crashes

frequently on mountain bike rides,

honestly. And this is unit number two.

Unit number one took took a beating. Um,

multiple crashes and then one one big

one. I'm not sure if it was just a it

had weakened this point with the

previous crashes and then it was just

one too many. The straw that broke the

back. I guess um I broke a hinge on it

that is not replaceable. Hover air does

have replaceable parts for this. I just

happened to break a non-replaceable

part. Um, so this is this is the second

go at it and it's crashed quite a bit.

The frustrating part about the crashing

is usually it will eject the battery if

the impact is uh strong enough and once

the battery is out, you're unable to use

the app to locate it. That has resulted

in multiple instances of me having to

just set my bike down and hike up and

down a section of trail where I think

this might have crashed and try and find

it. And that

is kind of frustrating. I'll take it out

for an afterwork lap. I'm shooting for

hour, hour and a half before the sun

goes down. And that ride that normally

is an hour and an hour or an hour and a

half turns into a 2-hour ordeal or

longer because I'm I'm hunting for this

in a bush or on the side of the trail.

And because of its tendency to do that,

you end up riding pretty conservatively

and you are very frequently checking

over your shoulder to make sure it's

still there. Yeah, it's kind of like

babysitting. you want to make sure that

it's able to keep up with you because

it's fairly expensive and it's also

e-waste if you do happen to lose it. So,

yeah, it's it's a hard one to

bring on rides frequently and use as

much as you would want to use it for

that reason. For the shots where you you

know it's not going to crash, it's a

really wide open area and you know

you're not going to be riding at 100% or

80%. um you can get some really cool

shots. But as a pretty advanced rider,

somebody who likes to go fast, I want to

capture footage of me going and going

fast and doing cool stuff. And because

this tends to crash or lose track of

you, it is a bit limiting because you

are, like I said, always looking over

your shoulder, checking to make sure

it's it's with you. It is pretty loud.

like the prop. It makes it makes a

decent amount of noise when it's

running, but if you're moving fast, you

got wind whipping past your ears, you

don't always hear it. So, it's just

something to to take note of and and

realize. I learned pretty quickly on

that I can't ride at full speed with

this in every situation. If you're if

it's yeah, really wide open, there's not

a lot for this to crash into. you can be

on the gas, but if you're trying to ride

technical sections with lots of turns,

trees, bushes, stuff hanging over the

trail, it doesn't do an amazing job with

object detection and crash avoidance. It

does a pretty good job, but not an

amazing job. So, that is just something

that I always have in the back of my

mind when I'm using this. And then there

are the the outliers, the rare cases

where it just loses track of you. it

mistakes some shadow or something as the

subject and it'll just lose you and

you'll have to hike back up and find it.

Typically though, in that case, it's

just going to enter that safe mode and

find a place to hover and you'll be able

to hear it pretty dang easily. But yeah,

it's a lot of fun to use. You get a lot

of really cool footage out of it and you

get a lot of questions on the trail.

People are always really really keen to

ask me questions about it and and ask

how I like it. So, I definitely have

recommended this to to quite a few

people, especially those that are

looking to capture those very cinematic

shots, that unique third person footage

that you don't always get unless you

have somebody filming you or yeah, you

have a 360 cam on a pole sticking out of

your back or something. So, yeah, super

super unique. Overall, pretty impressed

with it. Pretty happy with it. But for

more advanced riders and people looking

to get that third person high-res

footage of them cooking trails,

this isn't this isn't it in every

instance. So over the the months that

I've been testing this, I have just come

to know its limitations and use it

appropriately. kind of the most fun that

you have with it is getting those cool

like big sweeping panorama shots or

using the manual mode to position it

where you want for this a specific shot.

Checking out cool features, getting

those cool like 100 foot bird eyee shots