Skydio R1 Review

By Jim Fisher

My Experience


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The Bottom Line

The Skydio R1 drone promises smooth, autonomous aerial footage of your outdoor adventures, but it doesn't fully deliver.

MSRP $1,999.00


  • Cool self-flying technology.
  • 4K video capture.
  • Automatic recording.
  • 64GB internal memory.
  • Works with Android, iOS, and watchOS.


  • Expensive.
  • Bulky.
  • Doesn't work with physical remote.
  • Lens shows barrel distortion.
  • Short battery life.
  • Makes weird decisions.
  • Doesn't work in dim light.
  • Doesn't track pets.
  • Anemic video options.

The Skydio R1 ($1,999) isn't like most other drones on the market. Instead of touting high-end video features like a flat video profile and a distortion-free lens, the R1 puts all of its eggs into the autonomy basket. It promises to track and follow you, while simultaneously avoiding obstacles and keeping you in frame. In reality, it falls a bit short. If you really want to spend two grand on a tech toy to amuse you and impress your friends, the R1 has some appeal. But for anyone serious about owning and flying a drone, spend your money on the DJI Mavic 2 Pro instead.

Not So Portable

The Skydio design team didn't get the memo that big drones are out and small drones are in. While the R1 omits landing struts, so it sits very low to the ground, it's got a big footprint. It measures 1.5 by 13.0 by 16.0 inches (HWD) and weighs 2.2 pounds. It's heavy enough to require FAA registration before use.

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Skydio R1

The bulky design commands attention, but not in a good way. I can pack the Mavic 2 Pro or Parrot Anafi into a small backpack easily, while still having room for a full-frame camera and a few lenses.

You'll need to schlep the R1 around in its retail packaging—which does include a handle—or protect it with its own case or backpack. It's an odd shape for most camera bags, so you may find the $129 R1 Backpack (available directly from Skydio) is the best container.

The drone is finished in matte black all over, so it will stand out against the sky, whether it be blue or overcast. Its power indicator lights are blue, matching the company logo.

Battery life is poor. Drones these days approach flight times of 30 minutes per charge, but the R1 only gets about 15 minutes in the air. It ships with one flight battery (early adopters received two, but also paid $2,499 for the drone); additional batteries cost $149 each. You need to recharge the battery via the included charger—so far we've only seen on-the-go USB charging in the entry-level DJI Spark.

There is no memory card slot. The R1 includes 64GB of internal storage, which is good for about 90 minutes of 4K footage or four and a half hours of 1080p video. The R1 doesn't capture photos. It starts recording video when it takes off and doesn't stop until it lands.

Audio is recorded as well, from your phone's microphone, but is stored in the drone's memory. If you edit outside the R1 app you'll need to sync the two tracks manually. If the video is stopped unexpectedly—say after a collision or crash—you may lose the audio portion of the clip (I did for one recording).

Because there's no memory card slot, you need to offload video via Wi-Fi (for editing on your Android or iOS device), or if you prefer using a desktop nonlinear editing application, via USB-C to your Mac or PC.

Skydio App

Skydio R1 : AppThe Skydio app experience is pretty slick. You connect the Skydio to your phone via Wi-Fi (the SSID and password are printed on a sticker inside the battery compartment) and then you can start flying immediately or go through a tutorial before. The app is also where you change settings and update firmware.

Once you're up in the air, the app draws boxes around subjects it recognizes, along with an icon to indicate if it's seeing a vehicle or a person. Double tapping on the subject will tag it for tracking, and you'll see a blue icon over it on the app screen.

Other on-screen controls allow you to change the way the drone follows you—from the front, from behind, from the side, or orbiting your person—and also adjust the height.

Skydio R1 : App

You'll see a 720p stream from the R1's main camera on your phone's screen, although the Wi-Fi connection means the video that's buffered to your phone automatically is riddled with artifacts. If you want to edit on your phone—there's a very basic clip editor built into the app—you'll need to sync the footage. Make sure you have plenty of free space available for 4K.

Skydio supports both Android and Apple devices, but its Apple support is more robust right now. In addition to the phone app, the R1 works with the Apple Watch. You still need to set it up and get it in the air using your phone, but after that you can use the app to identify and tracks subjects.

Skydio R1 : App

I did have a couple of moments of frustration with the app. I took the R1 out to do some additional testing with the Apple Watch and was told there was a firmware update, but the app wouldn't let me download the update over LTE. I later found out that I could have overridden the restriction by changing a setting, but it would have been great for the error message to indicate that.

The second problem was a cryptic error message. The app indicated Fault V17 during pre-flight checks, but that was it. Skydio support was very quick to identify the issue—a problem with flight log data—and suggest a solution—a factory reset. The reset worked, but it points to a potential issue with the R1's internal storage—a factory reset deletes everything you have saved in memory. What if you have to reset the drone, but you're on location and have critical footage saved that hasn't yet been offloaded?

All About Autonomy

Skydio doesn't want you to have to worry about flying the R1. There's no remote control included in the box, or even available as an add-on, and the Nvidia TX1 processor that powers the aircraft is the same used by many self-driving cars.

Yes, you can control the drone manually via on-screen controls in the smartphone app, but those are really only useful for rotating the camera to point toward the subject, or adjusting the altitude. Any sort of manual flight control is muddy and jerky due to the nature of on-screen controls.

Obstacle Cameras

The Skydio has a main, front-mounted 4K video camera to capture action, but it's the other 12 cameras—two facing up, two facing down, and two on each side of the drone—that constantly scan surroundings to map them and avoid obstacles.

How well does it work? It's a mixed bag. On one hand, I was amazed to watch the R1 zip around the sky, avoiding trees and other obstacles as if by magic. It's one of the coolest parlor tricks around.

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But then there were the times when the R1 didn't manage to avoid collision. I watched the drone's first crash happen in front of my eyes, seemingly in slow motion. I was driving through a wooded path and the R1 bumped into a small branch, which was enough to send it spinning out of control and tumbling to the ground. It landed in a soft spot and didn't suffer any serious damage, but the battery popped out, ending my recording abruptly.

Some small branches are too much for the R1 to deal with, and it doesn't stay far enough away from trees to avoid them. Upon reviewing my test footage, I noticed several instances where the drone hit a small branch, but managed to stay aloft. Skydio also warned against flying over water when the R1 was first released, but has since updated firmware to support flights over water.

Subject Tracking

Tracking is accomplished via machine learning—the camera recognizes the shapes and colors of certain objects—and is backed up by your phone's GPS system, combined with the R1's own GPS. It can't track every subject—pets aren't supported, sadly—but it does recognize vehicle and humans.

It's able to follow at up to 26mph, so skateboarders and dirt bikes are fine, but it's not going to keep up with a race car. Because its navigation system is visual it can only fly in daylight—if it's too dark the R1 won't take off.

I had a little trouble getting started with my first flight. The R1 identified and locked onto my vehicle (a John Deere tractor), but once I started to move, it found a parked car in the driveway to be a more interesting subject. I struggled with the phone app a bit, turning the drone around and moving it back toward me—but I kept worrying that it wasn't properly identifying or following.

That's the wrong way to use the R1. The right way to use the drone is to just let it fly and forget it's there. If you move away from it, it will figure things out and move back to follow you. It also makes whatever you're doing a little more fun—you shouldn't have to keep an eye on your phone to make sure the R1 is doing what it's supposed to do. Once I figured this out, I was able to forget about checking on the R1 and concentrate on driving.

Ideally you'll only use your phone to start the R1's engines and set its tracking target. If you own an iPhone and Apple Watch, you'll also be able to use the watch face to command the drone. It will identify subjects that are trackable on the watch face, in a similar way to which it does in the app, and you can tap the watch to get it going.

The Erratic Cinematographer

The R1's video feature set is very thin, especially when you consider that it costs two grand and its sole function is to record video. Its gimbal-stabilized camera records 4K video at 30fps and can roll 1080p at your choice of 30 or 60fps. And that's really all you can set. Videographers looking for serious features like adjustable color profiles, 24fps capture, and shutter speed control should look elsewhere.

If the R1's video was stunning, the lack of pro features could be forgiven. This is a device that's supposed to be fully automatic, so taking command of its own camera settings makes sense. And, while I think the footage shows plenty of detail, colors and contrast seem a little bit low out of the box (but not anything that a little bit of color grading can't take care of).

4K Camera

The lens shows fish-eye distortion—a modest amount, but it's there. The phone-based editing app can remove it during transfer (and add some additional digital stabilization), but it takes a long time—about 10 minutes for every minute of video. It's simply baffling that Skydio picked a camera and lens combination with visible distortion in the first place. Our test footage has no distortion removal or additional stabilization applied.

Dynamic range is also disappointing. Footage looks fine when a scene is evenly lit, but I noticed blown highlights in some shots, which is just unacceptable in 2019. The lens also shows some flare from time to time, and while I think the effect can add a bit of drama to a shot, you may not appreciate it.

And then there's the camerawork itself. The R1 makes some…interesting decisions. You can give it a bit of guidance—it has modes to follow you from behind or from the front, or even orbit around you as you move. But for every moment that made me go, "wow, that's a nice shot," there were a half dozen that left me scratching my head.

Skydio R1

There were times the R1 wandered a bit astray and ended up hovering in the trees. The drone will mix slow, steady tracking with erratic moves around objects, and while the gimbal keeps footage pretty steady, you may want to take advantage of the app's additional digital stabilization feature to improve it.

And then there's the orbit function, which started to circle me as soon as I turned it on…and kept circling around the same point, even after I moved well forward. The drone figured out that something was amiss and picked up following me again, but I was hoping that it would manage to circle me as I moved forward.

Impressive but Inessential

The Skydio R1 is incredibly cool, but entirely unpractical. It's something you'd expect to see in a mall kiosk that exists to sell fancy tech toys to people with entirely too much disposable income. That's not to say that things can't be cool for the sake of being cool and also be good products—the R1 just doesn't tick the second box.

It's too big, for one. You can buy a Mavic Air, which fits into a lunchbox, and get better 4K video, pretty decent subject tracking, and it can take pictures, too. Now, the Mavic Air isn't going to give you the same automated flight experience, but the Skydio R1 isn't something you can take with you on a whim to capture a spur-of-the-moment adventure—it's something you need to pack.

Skydio R1 5

And then there's the battery life—the R1 isn't that much heavier than a DJI Mavic 2 Pro, but it only gets about half the flight time. Couple that with video quality that is fairly middle of the road, and camerawork that is much more like a chaotic Michael Bay experience than the smooth, Kubrickian footage we're used to from drones, and you've got a flying video camera that has some room for improvement.

The R1 isn't going to get magically smaller, but I think there's some room for improvement in the camerawork and general tracking via software. We'll wait and see if that happens, but I'd still caution against the R1 given its other flaws. Unless, of course, you simply must have a whiz-bang new toy to show off to your friends.

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