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P3P or 3DR Solo? What's the main difference?
- Thread starter nickyb
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I currently own a P3P and was one of the first to pre-order a Solo back in April. I returned the Solo and got a refund about a month ago. I decided to return the Solo using their fantastic refund policy after two hardware failures. My reason for doing so was because of the hardware failures and 3DRs repeated delays to ship the gimbal. It just did not appear to me that the "new" 3DR with investors, etc was capable of turning the Solo into the UAV it was marketed to be before the hardware was old technology.
Here it is 5 months later and its still not working as advertised.
To add to my decision to return I fly a lot of long distance flights in the country across rivers and lakes. The Phantom will hands down spank the Solo when it comes to distance. It is truly no contest in this area. I was also intrigued by the fact the Solo would fly 55 mph. As it turns out it will fly 55 as long as you do it in manual mode. And at speeds above approx 35 mph it loses altitude so quickly you can fly it into the ground after several seconds of full forward stick.
The Solo is an interesting bird and SHOULD do things this generation of phantom won't. The whole concept of Solo is awesome. They just haven't made it happen yet.
Actually its closer to $590 difference. Solo w/gimbal is under $1,400. Add a Hero 4 black for $450 and you are at $1850 total price. I think the P3P is currently $1260.
However it could be argued that you need to add another $100-150 to the price of Solo/GoPro combo to get a lens without fish-eye or you have to remove it in post.
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I agree with you on all of the above you said, but don't understand why you stated you would call the P3 a toy over the Solo. P3 clearly spanks the Solo today on performance, features and software integration, so I was just wondering how you can label the P3 a toy over the Solo which clearly has some catching up to do.
I want to buy a Solo when it's ready, but it seems at least a year away. The expandable interface is of key interest. I'd like to have a drop latch capability to haul and drop things from my P3. The Solo is setup for this kind of aftermarket product, which someday will exist. Things I'd like to drop are cellphones in search an rescue, string for rope leaders across raging rivers in rescue scenarios, medicine in catastrophe scenarios, not to mention less serious applications like drone golf and other games. Solo has planned for these things, so that's one of the main attractions. That said, it would also need an equivalent to Lightbridge before I'd buy. I really think 3DR needs to partner with Connex to catch up with Lightbridge2 coming around the corner.
I really don't consider the P3 a toy and I really enjoy mine. It's the best I have had so far. But its basically a throw away device as a small crash and its history. Compare that to the Solo which has proven to be much more rugged and rebuild-able in the event of a crash.
The Pixhawk has lots of potential where the P3 is pretty much maxed out on what it can do from a processor standpoint. Course rumor has it the next Phantom release is going to be quite powerful.
I am not beating on DJI as its my choice if bird right now. But I know if I have an issue and want to continue to fly I better be willing to buy another one while I get the first problem resolved as DJI takes months to fix anything. 3DR on the other hand is about 2 weeks and the SOLO is easy to work on. Burn up an ESC in the Solo and you can swap the motor pod/ESC in 5 minutes. With the Phantom its a major tear down and you can't replace the ESC as its integrated with the main-board.
That said we really can't even compare them as the Solo still does not do what they said it will. Next year when all that happens we might have something to talk about.
If you check out Arducopter and the tower app you will find it is way more powerful than anything else on the market.
The Solo is a joke. $999 and you get a drone with no camera, no gimbal and HORRIBLE range. If you want to get a Solo to perform as well as P3A/P, you're gonna spend the money on the obvious (camera, gimbal) but if you also want good range thats another few hundred right there buying and installing all the extra crap you need to get decent range out of it.
Screw that headache.
Oh but the solo has 2 x 1ghz linux computers! So you know...if you wanna run an apache web server or something.
Im not a DJI fanboy either. As a hardcore DIYer I used to hate on Phantom owners because I thought they were idiotic noobs and gave the hobby a bad name. I really really really wanted a Solo before they came out, until I learned about the cost and then the problems. Hell, I work in Berkeley and I have friends and acquaintances who work at 3DR and got to see the thing first hand when they were testing it. I was super excited about the Solo...and when that excitement died I went and bought a P3P.
Screw that headache.
Oh but the solo has 2 x 1ghz linux computers! So you know...if you wanna run an apache web server or something.
Im not a DJI fanboy either. As a hardcore DIYer I used to hate on Phantom owners because I thought they were idiotic noobs and gave the hobby a bad name. I really really really wanted a Solo before they came out, until I learned about the cost and then the problems. Hell, I work in Berkeley and I have friends and acquaintances who work at 3DR and got to see the thing first hand when they were testing it. I was super excited about the Solo...and when that excitement died I went and bought a P3P.
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LOL
I think you are going to find it is more important than you think. From what I am told the Phantom is maxed out as far as resources and the 3rd party developers are at their limits as far as what they can do with missions, etc.
Not to mention the controller on the Solo is a lot more complex than the Phantom in the fact you can adjust tilt limits and presets right from the controller and watch it on a color display. Or have a problem with a flight.. Click a button to send the logs straight to 3DR.
The fact DJIs next model is supposed to up the game in this area tells me their must be value it it.
Besides Linux computers are everyone throughout households nowadays. They are cheap !
The Solo would be worth the money to me IF it would work as marketed. It just doesn't do that yet.
So I will continue to fly the white ones
I just about l bought a cheerson cx20 APM for a fraction of the solo.. Now that's a fun toy that won't piss me off if it goes nuts
This sums it up. Until they don't use a GoPro there is no comparison. You can also go watch some videos on Youtube from their user's. The video is shaky and looks like it came from a Bebop drone.
A Phantom will beat a Solo any day of the week. I owned a Solo for about 2 weeks back in June, returned it to Best Buy because of all the issues I had
I've flown my stock p3 3 miles away, full signal. It's incredible.
Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
Any news then on what the next generation Phantom will be? Any URLs to have a taster?LOL
I think you are going to find it is more important than you think. From what I am told the Phantom is maxed out as far as resources and the 3rd party developers are at their limits as far as what they can do with missions, etc.
Not to mention the controller on the Solo is a lot more complex than the Phantom in the fact you can adjust tilt limits and presets right from the controller and watch it on a color display. Or have a problem with a flight.. Click a button to send the logs straight to 3DR.
The fact DJIs next model is supposed to up the game in this area tells me their must be value it it.
Besides Linux computers are everyone throughout households nowadays. They are cheap !
The Solo would be worth the money to me IF it would work as marketed. It just doesn't do that yet.
So I will continue to fly the white ones
I really don't have any good info. Just heard that the new DJI flight system will out power the Pixhawk used in the Solo by 2 or 4 times.
The difference in noise between the P3 has to do with the fact that the props on the inspire have a lower RPM and also a lower pitch. Im no aerodynamics expert but I think this equates to less turbulence across the props?...something like that.
Yeah, for some reason they can make larger craft quieter. My Yuneec Q500+, which is a 500mm sized craft, similar in size to the Inspire, it's about half as loud as my P3P, and it's also half as fast, max speed 15mph. But the hush of the Q500 is sweet.
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