 With how fast the quadcopter and drone market is developing, we might have to get used to hearing this, but the 3D Robotics Solo is the most advanced flying machine we've yet piloted, and is going to make a lot of enthusiasts happy. Just like the personal rig update 2015 project that I'll be kicking off this weekend. Drop a like if you're interested in seeing what kind of harebrained scheme I come up with this time. Corsair delivers real mech or nothing with their new Strafe Mechanical keyboard, featuring genuine German-made Cherry MX keyswitches. Click on this spot right here to learn more. We're going to start with a tour of the remote, actually. Much like the pair at Bebop, 3DR has opted for a controller with an onboard computer that acts as a communications hub. So your phone or 7-inch class tablet fits in the spring-loaded mount at the top, and connects via Wi-Fi to the SoloLink Wi-Fi network that is broadcasted by this. Then using a pair of antennas on the back of the unit, it maintains a shockingly crisp and responsive video feed from the GoPro camera that is mounted to the front of the drone. Now, of course, physics is a thing, and out at 250 feet or so, the adaptive quality of the feed does go down, and you will see some hitching. But at that kind of range, you probably shouldn't be piloting first-person view through the trees, speeder bike style anyway, and it's definitely good enough to give you some idea of what the camera is seeing up there. Also back at the back of the remote is the micro HDMI output that can be hooked up to a head-mounted display or anything with an HDMI input, and pan and tilt controls for the GoPro-compatible 3-axis gimbal mount that's coming very soon, and boy, are we ever excited about that. On the left is a plug for the included controller charger, then we get to the business end here. The sticks do the usual things, left for yaw and elevation, and right for forward-backward and strafing, but then there's some cool stuff here too. The A and B buttons can be bound through the app to various flight modes, so we'll cover those later. Return Home has a dedicated button that puts the drone at about 40 feet, then slowly and very stably brings it back to where it took off. Pause Solo acts as a virtual e-brake. Power is pretty self-explanatory, and Fly handles automatic takeoff and landing. The app, which I just mentioned, is pretty straightforward, and other than some flakiness with the live video feed that we think we've resolved by connecting to Wi-Fi first, then launching the app on the phone, seems to be stable on both iOS and Android right out of the gate. Unusual and impressive. It allows you to see your GPS location overlaid on a map, update the firmware, record the videos transmitted from the Solo to your phone directly to your camera roll, adjust in-flight responsiveness anywhere from, you know, the drone barely moves when you push the sticks, to, whoa, it's a little fast for me, and I'm gonna turn it back down to medium, and even allows you to enable advanced flight modes that don't lean on the drone's onboard GPS to keep it where it's supposed to be. But one of the things I actually like most about both the app and the display in the middle of the controller is that you can find all the information you need, like controller and Solo battery life, altitude, airspeed, distance between the two units, oh, and on top of that, it talks to you when something bad happens, like if the battery is low. Absolutely fantastic. Alright, so I haven't actually left much time to talk about the Solo itself, have I? Let's go quick then. Inside the really cool box that could easily act as a carry case, you'll find the Solo, six propellers, so you'll have one extra of each of the two types in case you crash, the massive 5200 milliamp hour battery that keeps this puppy in flight for over 20 minutes, a charger for that, and the GoPro mount. But to find the coolest things about the Solo, we have to look a little closer than the shiny and matte black top that I personally think looks great, not that that matters when it's supposed to be flying above you anyway. And check out the bottom. Each propeller arm has colored LEDs for orientation assistance, the landing gear is strong but flexible, so it shouldn't snap very easily, and there's not one but two mounts here for extra stuff. One gimbal mount and one accessory mount, which 3DR is encouraging developers to create products for. Some of the stuff in the queue is an LED flashlight and a parachute for safely flying over people. Sick! Alright, so let's talk about flight now then. She handles, as well as 3DR says, no flyaways, no unexpected behavior, the most stable descents I've yet encountered, even in what I would describe as very noticeable but not unpleasant gusts of wind, and in spite of the weight of this puppy, just generally very good behavior in the air, as long as you don't do anything dumb, like forget that you're set to the slowest possible turning speed, or set it to orbit you when there's an obstacle in the default 20 meter radius. It managed to be effortless enough that Brandon, having never flown an RC airborne vehicle before, was able to watch 20 minutes of 3DR's Flight Academy videos, which I recommend by the way, and operate it out of the box, while also not being boring for someone like me, who, while I'm anything but an expert, has logged dozens of hours in the air with quads and planes. But let's talk about pre-programmed flight patterns, one of the big selling points of the Solo, along with the F word, which I never recommend counting on. So here's what it does today. A couple of the modes, Selfie and Cablecam, could be performed by a good drone operator in his or her sleep. Both are activated in the air. Selfie allows both an A and B point to be set, with the default at 50 meters, so you activate it with the button and the drone flies away backwards away from you, then swoops back in towards you at a predetermined speed for a really dramatic looking shot. And Cablecam pretty much just goes from one point to another, as though the drone was operating on a cable. You can control Yaw, and if you had one, you'd be able to control the Gimbal. But that's it. Two of the other modes would be difficult, too impossible to do well for any but the most skilled drone operators, Orbit and Follow. Both of these are also activated in flight and rely on the target being orbited or followed to carry the controller and the mobile device that's connected to it. Orbit worked as expected, goes around you and keeps the camera pointed at you. Follow seems to have a three to four second delay when the target changes direction, and some shakiness that would definitely benefit from stabilization, but it's a very good start. And on that stabilization note, I guess we can make our way into the conclusion for this video, where I will have to address the glaring omission in the rest of everything that I've said. Quality of the in-flight recorded video. Well, thanks to the close partnership with GoPro, even without a Gimbal, our Hero 3 Plus Black Edition delivered IMO better than that horrible bundled camera on the 360QX3, in spite of the fact that that one had a Gimbal. But that doesn't mean it's great or even really usable for anything other than real-time monitoring, or hey, that's some cool footage. Thanks to its weight and advanced on-board electronics, Solo is shockingly stable in flight, but it's still in flight. And the $400 Gimbal is, in my mind, a required accessory if you want to get the most out of flight modes, like follow-in orbit, or if you're using the Solo for anything other than going out and flying for fun. So expect to see a follow-up video once that's available, where we discuss its performance and whether 3DR has managed to deliver on the F-word promise, through the development of first and third-party accessories, and even perhaps through the availability of things like mounts for Blackmagic's new super tiny camera, which it's rumored might be light enough to be pulled by this puppy. As it stands now, the Solo is impressive in almost every way. Flight time, performance, build quality, GoPro compatibility, and the fact that you can get a live feed from the GoPro instead of some goofy camera, but of course that comes at a cost, and with the Gimbal, this puppy is going to set you back well over a thousand US dollars. But what won't cost a thousand US dollars is Crunchyroll, the site created by anime fans for anime fans. They offer the most current episodes of new shows straight from Japan, like Kuroko's Basketball 3 and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and a large collection of the most popular anime series like Naruto and One Piece, and all the content on their site is professionally subtitled. So head over to crunchyroll.com slash Linus and sign up for a 30-day trial. Yes, 30 days. You heard it here first, folks. Actually, you heard it here many times before, because this isn't the first time I've talked about Crunchyroll. Yeah, a 30-day free trial. Our link gives you a whole month of anime completely ad-free. You get 1080p streaming, new episodes of shows straight from Japan within an hour of their premiere, and you can stream anywhere, like on your phone, tablet, game console, or whatever else the case may be. If you like premium membership after the 30 days, it's only seven bucks a month to continue. So it's crunchyroll.com slash Linus, and check it out. Thanks for watching, guys. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit the like button. It helps us out a lot. Or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon, buying a cool t-shirt like this one, or with a direct monthly contribution through the community forum. Now that you've done all those things, you're probably wondering what to watch next. So click that little button in the top right corner to check out the video where I take G-Sync and FreeSync and test them with a high-speed camera to see which one delivers the best responsiveness in gaming.