The Snap by Vantage Robotics is a new consumer drone that takes safety and ease of use to a whole new level. For a start, its four propellers are fully protected to prevent them from causing injury to people or from hitting hard surfaces. This is achieved by enclosing the propellers with circular prop guards and strong wire mesh at the top and bottom — an approach that is both effective and lightweight. With this design, you can actually wrap your hands around the Snap while it is flying and not worry about having the propellers slice into your skin.
To fly the Snap, you will need to install the Snap app in your Iphone or Android smartphone. The Snap app makes flying the drone a highly pleasant experience. For the controls, Vantage Robotics decided to ditch the conventional approach and use a more intuitive way. Tilt your phone to the right and the Snap will move to the right and vice versa. Flying it is really like playing a game on your smartphone making it a lot easier to fly than a conventional drone.
Although this more intuitive method of flying isn’t new — it has been featured recently in a number of consumer drones — it is good to see more models in the market featuring it.
The Snap also weighs about 1 lb, which means it is roughly a third the weight of a Phantom. This means the Snap will cause a less powerful impact if it crashes on people or other objects such as cars. To make it even safer, the drone was designed to break apart upon impact to further reduce the blow. Break apart? No worries. It can still be put back together after a hard crash as its main parts are held together by strong magnets.
To make it portable, the Snap was designed to be folded up, allowing it to be stored in most backpacks. Since its propellers are well protected, there is no need to remove them when storing it with other objects inside your backpack.
The Snap also comes with a gimbal-stabilized 4K camera and 20 minutes of flight time. The highly compact camera features a Sony Exmor sensor, can record 120fps video at 1080p and takes remarkably very little space at the front of the drone despite being gimbal-stabilized.
For those interested in getting their hands on one, the Snap is now available for pre-order at the official Vantage Robotics website for $895. After the pre-order period, it is expected to sell for $1295.