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Flying a drone is tricky business. The prosumer models are powerful, fast and can get into trouble in a hurry if you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s why smart, logical design and intuitive controls are so important in the drone game.

It’s also where the Typhoon H from Yuneec partially stumbles.

Don’t get me wrong, the $1,299, six-rotor drone is expertly designed. It has a third more rotors than, say, the DJI Phantom 4 and, unlike virtually every other drone I’ve tested, folds up for relatively easy transport: the rotor arms fold down to the body when not in flight. The landing gear can also retract to give the Typhoon H’s HD gimbal camera an unobstructed 360-degree view. In addition, the Yuneec H’s gray body is a rugged mix of ABS plastic and carbon fiber.

The Yuneec Typhoon H is also an intelligent drone, more or less matching DJI on autonomous flight control features, including built-in obstacle avoidance and the ability to track objects on its 4K camera.

It is paired, though, with one of the more confusing remote controls, called a ground station, I’ve encountered in some time.

Open it up

Like the DJI Phantom 4, Yuneec’s Typhoon H arrives in a rather large gray foam box. Lacking a handle, it doesn’t quite qualify as a carrying case (you can buy a drone backpack separately). Inside is the drone, with all its rotors folded down, the sizable remote control (the ST16 Ground Station), a bag of a dozen propellers, a large drone battery, AC/DC charger with cables for both the drone and remote, a sunshade for the remote’s 7-inch screen, a neck strap to hold the remote and a 16GB micro SD card and SD card-sized micro SD card adapter.

Setup is easy. The drone’s rotor arms fold up and snap smartly into place. Each propeller blade attaches bayonet-style to each rotor. They’re color-coded to matching rotor arms and they release with the press of a button in the center of the rotor and a quick turn in the opposite direction.

The brick-like battery slides neatly into the Yuneec Typhoon H body. It actually has a retractable handle that makes it easy to pull out when it’s time to recharge. Both the remote and drone battery take about 2.5 hours to fully charge.

Before my first test-flight, I registered the drone with the FAA ($5) and affixed the registration number to the battery before sliding it back into the Typhoon H.

Remote reservations

Before we get to flying, it's worth spending some time talking about the remote control or, as Yuneec calls it, the Ground Station.

Roughly a foot wide by 8 inches long and an inch or so deep, the Ground Station is a handful (hence the strap for comfort). Unlike the DJI Phantom 4, which uses a much smaller and lighter remote that’s paired with your iPad or iPhone running DJI flight software, Yuneec’s Ground station is an all-in-one device. The centerpiece is a 7-inch screen running Yuneec’s Android-based ground control interface, which offers real-time updates on altitude GPS and satellite availability, current position, altitude, speed, distance from pilot and photography presets. It’s also where you access most of the drone's deeper settings and more powerful modes.

The rest of the Ground Station is festooned with physical buttons, switches and dials, a number of them duplicating the on-screen software options.

On the remote’s face are a pair of easy-to-reach joysticks, four switches (each with between two and three options), a pair of dials, buttons for photos and videos, two D-pads and a power slider button. On the top edge are the antennas, another switch and a red button that turns out to be one of the most important buttons of all: it’s for taking off.

Every one of these buttons has a purpose, but there’s little rhyme or reason to their locations. Why, for example, is the critical launch button on the top edge, out of easy reach? Why does the toggle that lets you switch between Smart and the more challenging Angle mode also include Home? Shouldn’t the return home button be its own thing, as it is with the DJI remote? What’s worse is that those toggles are so close to the joysticks that I accidentally hit the switches on multiple occasions.

There are also controls on the underside of the remote (this is similar to the DJI Phantom), though I question why one that controls the overall speed of flight and response should be a control you can’t eyeball to quickly know if you’re flying closer to Turtle or Rabbit speed (those are Yuneec’s settings definitions, not mine).

I wish I could say the software interface does a better job of clarifying controls, but nothing felt obvious. And when I wanted to test Advanced features, I could find no physical switch on the remote or a top-level one on the software interface. It was hidden under settings.

Flight time

Despite my ongoing frustrations with the Ground Station, I was generally impressed with the Typhoon H drone’s flight capabilities.

Like most drones of its class, the Typhoon H is packed with intelligence. Once I launched it using that big red button and the altitude control (there’s also a software control that combines these two actions, though, like so many other things, it’s not clearly labeled), I was able to set it to hover 6 feet off the ground. I quickly noticed that the Typhoon H is considerably quieter than the DJI Phantom 4. It was also quite responsive. Initially, I flew it in Smart Mode, which includes a geofence that keeps the drone from flying farther than 300 feet way, which is actually farther away than you think. I’d like to see an option for keeping it within 100 feet of the pilot at all times. Even so, Smart Mode is definitely the mode for new pilots.

Angle mode removes those flight restrictions, letting it go to its max 400-foot altitude and is the mode I used most often.

Yuneec’s Typhoon H has many laudable features, but my favorite may be the retractable landing gear. Once you launch the drone, there’s a switch on the front edge of the remote. Flip it and the landing gear pulls up toward the drone body, which leaves the 4K camera clear of all obstructions. DJI Phantom drones all feature fixed landing gear.

Fast, smart

Once you enable Advanced mode, you can access a number of cool flight and image capture features. While it only works in the slightly more limited Smart mode, Follow Me/Watch Me may be the best and most useful feature, especially for the action video set. Follow Me makes sure that the drone follows you, the pilot. Watch Me, though, adds an even better wrinkle. It will keep the gimbal camera pointed on you at all times. Since the drone can travel at up to 43 mph, this can be tremendously useful for tracking a car driver, a speedboat racer or a motocross rider. I’m none of these, but I did find that the drone had no trouble keeping up and tracking me as I ran across a field.

Orbit me, which has the drone circle you while the camera stays fixed on you, also works well.

When I tried out the selfie feature, oddly called Journey, I almost lost the drone. The idea is that the Typhoon H will fly up and then out 150 feet before flying in to capture the perfect selfie. I hit the software button and then watched in horror as the drone nearly crashed into some adjacent trees. A quick toggle to the Home option, though, cut short that program and brought it safely back to me. When I moved another 50 feet away from the trees, Journey mode worked flawlessly.

I had less luck with Curve Cable Cam, the route-planning mode that lets you program waypoints that the drone can replay while you focus on controlling the camera view. I tried multiple times to get the drone to properly record a route and then replay it, but it kept getting stuck after the first step. My guess is that I was tripped up by the confusing instructions.

Typhoon H’s obstacle avoidance was pretty good. There’s a standalone switch for it and, with it enabled, the drone would keep its distance. If I walked toward it, the drone would back up. However, if I sent it racing toward my head, the speed seemed to defeat the obstacle avoidance system and I found myself pulling back on the throttle and changing direction before the Typhoon H ran headlong into my noggin. The company plans to embed Intel's RealSense technology in future versions, which should considerably improve the drone's obstacle detection.

In general, the Typhoon H offered pretty precise flight control, however I did notice that it had more of a tendency to drift than the DJI Phantom 4.

My total flight time per charge, by the way, never exceeded 20 minutes, which is a bit shy of the promised 25 minutes per flight.

Imagery

The Yuneec Typhoon H comes equipped with an excellent gimbal and 12.4 MP camera capable of shooting 4K video, as well as JPEGs and RAW stills. All of it is saved to a micro-SD in the ball-shaped camera body (you see a live feed of what the drone sees on the 7-inch screen). The drone can turn independently of the camera, so it can go where it needs to go while the camera lens remains fixed on a target. The physical controls for panning and tilting the camera is an odd assortment of switches and dials. It’s just another instance where Yuneec needs to simplify the controls.

Overall, the images and video look great, but I did notice image distortion, or bowing, at the edges of the lens. As a result, buildings tended, on the very outer edges of the 115-degree wide-angle image, to bend into the frame. The camera could also use some work on handling direct sunlight. For now, the DJI Phantom 4 wins the image battle.

I wish I could say I loved flying this drone, but I was often so stressed out while trying to interpret the controls and adjust for the sometimes unexpected ways it responded to my commands that I could never quite relax. 

Yet despite my reservations about the Yuneec Typhoon H, especially its bloated Ground System, I still think it’s a really good prosumer drone. Yes, it will take more time to figure out, but drone flyers are, generally, drone nerds. It is a bit cheaper than the DJI and offers more speed, less noise, the ability to capture unobstructed video and that awesome, retractable landing gear.