Yes, you hear well, we are talking about DJI Phantom 3 Pro because Yuneec Typhoon H's price is now the same as Phantom 3 Pro, approximately $900 USD. This seems to be very good offer. They are the most popular drones & UAVs being used for crop management, land mapping and precision agriculture. GPS autopilot, range, design, ease of use, stability and durability, flight time, flexible camera/data acquisition options and reliability are important features. Of course, before we want to gain them to precision agriculture, we need to install drone software that support on Yuneec Typhoon H and DJI Phantom such as Pix4D, DroneDeploy, Parrot Sequoia, and NDVI camera. So, what is the truth about Yuneec Typhoon H? Is it worth buying? Let me tell you about my beginning with Yuneec Typhoon H.
BUILD QUALITY
Yuneec went a different way comparing with DJI. Designed Typhoon base on the bigger drone platforms. DJI made an idea, to design the drone with new designed of controlling system. Yuneec is bigger and heavier than Phantom. But, Yuneec's hexa is foldable. So, during transportation is not much bigger than Phantom. Build quality is superior, similar to Phantom 4 and 4 PRO. The main cover is built from ABS very esthetic, overall looks better than Phantom. Arms are made from carbon fiber, and looks great. An advantage of Yuneec over DJI is that it looks more professional what is important in business. What is more, people knows the shape of Phantom much better and they consider it as non-professional. Yuneec is bigger so it is potentially more troublesome in transportation. But for traveling, I advice DJI Mavic instead. Six props is a big advantage over quad-type Phantom, especially when you will lose one prop during flight. And as you can see, it is not just hypotetical issue Typhoon H, even if you lose one prop. It will still fly perfectly and safely.
Battery and charging is the biggest disadvantage of Yuneec Typhoon H especially compared to DJI Phantom. Flight time is around 18 mins comparable with Phantom. Unfortunately, it need to charge about double longer, 2 hours. What is more, battery is not intelligent. So, you can't check such parameters, as number of charges can't check charging level outside neither. It is my observation, that Yuneec's battery loses capacity faster during exploitation. Probably it is connected with lack of intelligent charging.
Good news here is you can buy good and cheap battery replacement from Ultrax (GensAce/Tattu). The price is just around $100 USD. Another disadvantage is, the controller can't show the percent of battery and what is the time of flight on current battery. It shows just battery voltage what required from drone's pilot better knowledge, about discharging parameters of the battery.
CONTROLLER
Big plus for Yuneec for the controller ST16 looks very nice, like the piece of expensive device subjectively, buttons and dials are organized better than in Phantom. They are like in the bigger platforms, and RC controllers such as Futaba or Graupner. But for Phantom users could be worse of course. Thanks Yuneec for good sunshade and laynyard. There are two dials on the left side for controlling the camera in tilt. On the right side, you can control the speed of the aircraft above. There is a dial for controlling camera's Gimbal pan.
Yuneec offers some modes of the Gimbal in pan and tilt all of you who flew on a bigger platforms will feel like at home here. Controller works on Android system software is unfortunately much more primitive than in DJI systems, not as intuitive. Another disadvantage is that you can't be connected to Internet during flying so you can't check your position on Google maps. so if you lose the drone froun our eyesight, you can't check on the map where our drone is hovering. But ST16 controller has a great advantages.
- We have to charge just 2 devices, instead of 3 in Phantom. we don't need a smartphone or tablet to flying
- No more cables! We don't have to check every time if we have a cable with us. For me personally, it is a huge advantage. I used to fly on bigger platform, where I have to check and connect several systems so for me it is very convenient
- We all know the problems of DJI controller with working with Android devices not always work well with them. We have no problem with that in Yuneec. What we have to do is just turn on the controller and drone, and fly! And no more problems with some weird DJI requirements like logging to dji account just before important flight. You will not face that kind of problems when use Yuneec.
AVIONICS
Yuneec Typhoon H is ready to fly after around 2 minutes from turning it. On DJI Phantom, much less around 1 minute. But, before you fly with Phantom, you have to put your smartphone to the controller connect cable, which also take some time. We prefer to wait a little longer on Yuneec than every time put the smartphone to the DJI controller. Maximum speed for Yuneec Typhoon H is 18 m/s. It is not the best speed on the market. Most of the DJI drones can fly faster. Maximum range is around 1 km with new controller (2 antennas) around 1,6 km. New drones from DJI are better in that, 4 km for Phantom 4 Pro or 7 km for DJI Mavic. But, most of us will fly according to VLOS requirements flying in sight. So, 1 km of the range is absolutely good. But for BVLOS pilots can fly above the sight flying.
Yuneec Typhoon is worse than DJI. Yuneec's avionics works different than Phantom's. Phantom works perfectly. Yuneec Typhoon H gives more fun from flying. Yuneec Typhoon H gives a feeling of freedom in the sky 360 degrees camera. It is big plus for Yuneec, a 360 degrees camera. It can rotate 360 degrees without limit. This system is unavailable in Phantom. DJI offers it only in a bigger and more expensive models like DJI Inspire 1 and 2, S1000, Matrice 600. Big advantage of 360 degree camera is that you can reach very interesting shots, even if you are not very skilled videographer. you can notice it easily, that they looks different than thousands of Youtube shots from Phantom.
STABILITY
One of the most popular myths about Yuneec Typhoon H is, that the drone is not stable. In the same time, DJI Phantom was very stable. It is a truth, that Phantom is more stable in good weather conditions and controls altitude better.
CAMERA
Yuneec Typhoon's camera, CGO3+ offers 4K quality in 25 or 30 FPS and 12 MP photos. The lens is F2,8 and 115 degrees Field of View (FOV). So it is very wide. At the beginning Yuneec Typhoon had a big problems with CGO3+. Although, the sensor was a good quality, they installed 85 degrees FOV lens. Old lens had some problems. Probably, most of the reviews tested typhoon with old lens that's why you can still find very negative comments about CGO3+. But at the time, they offered 115 degrees lens. All problems has gone. Subjectively, an advantage of CGO3+ camera over Phantom 3 Pro cameras is much better colors in bad light conditions. Yuneec offers more warm colors. Disadvantage for CGO3+ camera is, it is a bit too wide and it has slight distortion of course not as big as GoPro cameras.