Wingsland s6 review

[Flora]

WHY
I was picked by Gens ace & Tattu to give the Wingsland S6 a try. I have 10+ years of drone experience but in all my years I have never owned a pocket drone or a selfie drone. SO I accepted the review! The capabilities promised in the drone seemed to good to be true in such a small package, but that's why you do a review SO here we go let's test the unit!

Wingsland S6 Description:
Brand: Wingsland
Type: Quadcopter
Model: S6
Product weight: 230g (included battery)
Product size: 138mm x 79mm x 26.8mm
Colors: Camouflage, Green Blood, Metallic Silver, Banana, Fresh Orange
Features: Controlled By Phone,GPS,WiFi FPV
Motor Type: Brushless Motor
Built-in Gyro: 6 Axis Gyro
Level: Advanced Level
Remote Control: WiFi Remote Control
Detailed Control Distance: About 120m
Battery: 7.6V 1400mAh 10.64Wh ( 2S LiPo )
Flying Time: Approx. 10 Mins (vary depending on environmental conditions and usage patterns)
Camera Pixels: 13MP
Video Resolution: 4K
Operating Temperature: 0-40℃
Max Flying Speed: 8m/s
Max Flying Altitude: 100m
Max Transmission Distance: 100m
Charging Port Micro: USB (support portable power bank)
Charging Input: 5V/1A-2A (self-adapted)
Charging Output: 8.7V/0.5A-1A (self-adapted)

Wingsland S6 Package includes:

1 x Drone
1 x Battery
2 x Additional Batteries(promotional offer only, worth $57 each, limited quantity)
1 x Charger
8 x Spare Propeller
1 x Screwdriver
1 x Carrying case
1 x 16GB Memory card (promotional offer only, limited quantity)
1 x USB cable



PACKAGING
The S6 comes in a box. It's Apple-esq. It's fancy. It works well to get it to you in one piece with no damage.
Better tan the box is the small plastic clam shell case you get with the drone. This will be useful, keep it. Great to store your drone in when you toss it into your back pack or pocket. (Yes the S6 is THAT SMALL!)
 

Apple-esq packaging.
   

 

Look how small the S6 is! 9Volt for reference!
  

USB Style Charger
 

The 1400mAh Batt (2S)
  

Controller = Your Phone!

I left the program unconnected for this picture so you could get a good idea of what the controller layout is like. As a person who has been flying RC with real radios for years I was a bit skeptical on how I would be able to fly the S6 using my phone. But In all honesty after a flight or two you can almost "feel" the sticks. It's weird, but the system works for this size of drone.

You will also notice that on the left are all your camera settings and on the right are all your drone settings including POI and Follow me (The robot head)

These are the claimed Wingsland S6 Intelligent Functions:

Automatically Following, Camera control , Forward/backward, FPV, Gravity Sense Control, Low-voltage Protection, One Key Automatic Return, One Key Landing, One Key Taking Off, Point of Interest, Selfie, Turn left/right, Up/down, Voice control, WiFi Connection.

NOTE: to access most settings you need to hide the gimbal screen by tapping the little radio signal. Kind of weird to not have sticks available as the drone is flying when you want to change a setting. But You get used to that as well!

Let's go over all the functions.

Turn left/right, Up/down - This works well. The drone flys very nice. In fact the GPS hold and flying characteristics are quite impressive.

FPV - You can technically fly the S6 FPV style, but that would be looking at the screen underneath your thumbs as you try to fly, so I'm going to say this is more of a "claim" than a reality.

Gravity Sense Control - I think this means the sensors on the bottom of the S6. If so, they work great! The S6 definatly knows where it is in relation to the earth. Quite impressive.

One Key Taking Off,One Key Landing - works as described!

One Key Automatic Return (Return to Home) - Works extremely well. During my test the drone landed about 6 inches from where it took off!

Camera control - You have the ability to change camera settings while flying. Turn on and off EIS and change frame rates, white balance etc. Works well. (EIS not so much) More on EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization). You must have 1080p 30 fps selected. And on the ground it seems to work, but in the air, if you have anything but perfectly smooth air and are able to fly VERY smoothly, the video footage is basically useless. It shows every bobble and bounce the S6 makes. That being said, the camera's quality is very nice, and still pics are quite the treat.

Point of Interest - This function works extremely well. When you enter POI, the drone starts to circle the spot you identified as your POI. You can still control height and if you pull back on the "stick" the S6 will make the circle bigger. This is probably the most useful feature as you could enter POI let the drone circle you and just snap stills and get an awesome group of stills that could be used to make a 360 pano shot.

Automatically Following - I never got "Follow me" to work. And I tried many times. I told Wingsland this and they suggested that I make sure I had the latest APP version. I did and still it would not work. It would enter the follow me mode and say "connecting" and then return a screen that said "Conditions not right to enter mode". I live near the city and it is very wifi dense so I thought that may be the reason. Then I took the S6 to a park in a more rural area, and got the same message. I may have done something wrong, but I simply could not get this feature to work.

Low-voltage Protection - This sounds like a great idea, and the S6 did let me know when it was at 20% battery life. Unfortunately at 10% batt life, the drone started to auto descend from about 30 feet, and when it got to around 12 feet, it just shut off and dropped to the ground. Granted it was COLD. Like 20 deg F cold. And it dropped into the snow which left the drone in perfect condition, but still. Be aware that 10% batt in cold weather means LAND NOW.

Flight Time - I had seen the claims of 8 - 10 minute flight times. I know I was flying in cold weather but I was only able to achieve 4 - 5 minute flights with most averaging 4.5 minutes. Cold can accommodate for a 15-20% loss in a lipo pack, and this batt is small, so I expect the flight time in warm weather to be around 6 minutes.

Course Lock and Home Lock Modes:
I hate these modes and think if you can't actually fly a drone you shouldn't so yes they work, but I hate them. (Honesty it hurts some times)


Video - The actual camera in the S6 is pretty nice! Very "GoPro-ish" in color saturation and sharpness. With 4K video and 13 MP still capabilities the drone promises nice images! And for Stills I say YES! But again for video, even with the EIS turned on, the results were disappointing. The ONLY way I think you could make the video better is if you used the S6 as a floating tripod, and had run the video as the s^ stays stationary. This I am sure would produce decent results.
(See examples in my re-cap video below)

Stills - At first no matter how I tried I could not get the s6 to take a still shot. I would hit the button and nothing happened. Then after I updated the App on my iPhone, it allowed me to take shots. And they were pretty good! Plan on taking 3 stills to get one awesome one as if the S6 gets tossed by the wind the pic will be blurred!

  
 

Gadgets: I did not receive the gadgets, but apparently you can add a search light, a small ball gun or an emoji broadcaster. My thought son these... NO.. for the love of all things drone.. NO. Do not sell these or promote them. THANKS!


PROS/CONS

PRO:
TINY!
FLYS GREAT
GPS HOLD IS AMAZING
POI WORKS GREAT
STILL PICS ARE NICE

CONS:
VIDEO IS ALMOST USELESS
FLIGHTTIME IS SHORT
FOLLOW ME DID NOT WORK
SOME FUNCTIONS ARE STILL LOCKED OFF (FIRMWARE UPDATE?)

FINAL THOUGHTS
As a professional Aerial Videographer the Wingsland S6 is not for me. It's a fun toy, but I could not find usefulness in my normal life. The compact nature of the unit is pretty bad ass though. If they could step up the camera to include a tiny gimbal I might like this a whole lot more. That being said for the price ($399 us) I think you get a lot for your money. And when Wingsland updates the firmware, removes a few bugs, this could be a fun toy drone that will open the world of drones up to many people!

Here's the video re-cap! Enjoy!


For more information and to purchase a Wingsland S6 just $130 go ------> here

Edited June 23, 2018 by Flora