FLY AWAY

If You Want Professional-Quality Vids and Photos When You Travel, You Need This Drone

The Holy Stone HS720 Drone is great for travel because it not only has the premium features you’d expect with more expensive models, but it’s also super lightweight and compact.

With the world opening up to travel again, I was ready to start trying to find cameras that would show the wonders I’d be seeing to their best advantage, despite my poor photography skills. For me, that meant a new phone and— finally—a drone. The trick was going to be finding both devices that could deliver the quality I deemed acceptable within my budget.

Purchasing the drone was particularly challenging because it not only had to be capable of excellent quality footage, but it also needed to be able to travel well. Drones tend to be a bit delicate, yet also fairly large, and even the lighter-weight ones at about two pounds were heavier than I wanted.

So the first criteria I used to narrow down my options were that the drone had to weigh around a pound, it had to fold up for travel and it had to have a protective case. Unfortunately, most of the drones that fit those criteria were not very high quality. They either lacked features or weren’t capable of shooting the best videos and images. In fact, the Holy Stone HS720 was the only one that had everything I wanted.

Amazon

$290

Holy Stone HS720 Foldable GPS Drone with 4K UHD Camera

There's a reason this budget-frinedly drone has earned a near perfect rating backed by over 6,000 glowing reviews on Amazon.

Amazon

It has a 4K camera with image stabilization, so I knew the visual quality would be excellent. Plus, it can rise up to 3,000 feet, which allows it to capture truly panoramic views that just aren’t possible with drones that can only rise up to half that distance. Best of all, the Holy Stone HS720 drone comes with an extra battery, so you get a total of 52 minutes of flying time.

It has all the other bells, and whistles, as well. It automatically returns when the battery is low, it has one key start and stop. Altitude hold and an electric fence make it easy even for beginners to control.

To get all of that and more in a drone that weighs just a hair over a pound and comes with a very well-padded case plus extra battery, for under $300 seems like a miracle. And Amazon is still offering it with a $20 coupon applied at checkout. Really, there is nothing more I could ask for in a travel drone.

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