Snap's Pixy Drone Camera Is Here to Elevate Your Snapchat Game
Tech
Speaker 1: First snap wanted to record video from your face. Now, snap is back with a brand new camera drone called the pixie that wants to record your life from the air.
Speaker 1: Why pick up your phone to take a selfie when you could have drone to do it for you. That's the idea behind Snap's newest social media accessory, a $230 camera drone called the pixie. It's a small quadcopter [00:00:30] designed to fly around you and shoot photos and videos to share on Snapchat snap CEO, Evans Beal announced the pixie at a virtual event focused on augmented reality lenses and AR shopping. But after all of that AR talk, there was one more thing. The pixie is less about AR and more about finding ways to use the snap camera. The four modes are controlled with a switch on the top of the pixie. Hover will pan the camera where you lead it. Reveal will send [00:01:00] the pixie flying higher lighter shots. Follow makes the drone follow you and orbit gives you a 360 degree view of your surroundings. There's also a fifth favorites mode that you can customize in the app.
Speaker 1: According to snap, the drone tracks the location of your head and body when it flies. So it knows where to fly to and where to come back to, to start a flying. You hold it in the Palm of your hand at eye level. And that's where it lands as well. Like the spectacles before it, the pixie isn't gonna replace your [00:01:30] DSLR. It shoots 12 megapixel photos at a resolution of 4,000 by 3000. And the default video shooting is 2.7 K there's 16 gigs of flash storage board with space for 1000 photos or a hundred videos. The battery will last for about five to eight flights in the default flight modes. And it'll take you 40 minutes for a full charge or 20 minutes to get it up to 80% with a quick charge. All the videos and images from your flights are wirelessly transferred to your phone and [00:02:00] saved in Snapchat memories.
Speaker 1: Then you can use the in-app editing tools to edit your clip, add filters and use snaps, smart edit shortcuts. Then you can share the video through Snapchat stories, spotlight, or chat, or you can share it through other platforms. There are some caveats on shooting with the pixie snap says it's not designed for low light shooting and it won't work well in high winds and it's not waterproof. And another thing the camera doesn't record sound. So [00:02:30] this is more about shooting fun, real life moments for social. The fact that the pixie is designed to follow you around will either impress you or creep you out depending on how you feel about cameras tracking your every move. But those kinds to privacy questions, aren't new for snap. We heard the same thing after the spectacles first launched in 2016. Yeah, you look cool, but is everyone happy with a camera on your face?
Speaker 1: Shooting them all the time? Still. This is a side of Snap's big ambitions for the snap camera. [00:03:00] The company announced a whole raft of partnerships at its event with everything from AR lenses that tell you the weather to shopping tie-ins with brands that let you virtually try on clothes before you buy this latest piece of hardware is just another way. Snap wants to bring its camera into every of your life. And hopefully keep users hooked into its platform and away from other rivals like TikTok. But the big question is how many people will buy the pixie. When spectacles [00:03:30] first launched, it was almost impossible to find a pair, but then the company later revealed that it lost 40 million on unsold glasses. The pixie drone is open for online. Pre-sale now in the us and France. You can buy a basic set with a pixie and one battery for $230 and a pixie flight pack with a dual battery charger is $250 based on our order. It looks like the shipping is currently set for July. We'll update you when we get our hands on the pixie to just [00:04:00] how it works, how good that footage is and how good it is at following you around to check out plenty more of our cool camera coverage on CNET. Make sure you like this video and subscribe. We've got plenty of awesome videos putting cameras through their paces.
