00:00This is Borneo and it's potentially one of the prettiest places that I've ever had the
00:05pleasure of riding my bike in. I've done the likes of Destelvio, the Mortarolo, the Gavia
00:10and the Concano and the only issue is I would love to share that with you but so far my pictures look
00:18a bit like this. If only there was a better way, well in this video I'm going to show you that
00:23there might well be. So come with me. Right, let's see if it follows.
00:30This is the latest Hoverair X1 Pro Max and you can think of it as a pocket-sized flying camera.
00:37Now you might have heard of Hoverair before. I first came across one of their drones a few years ago
00:42and was amazed by how easy it was to use and how good it was at not crashing. So what's changed
00:48with this new one? Well firstly, and this is an important bit for us cyclists,
00:53it's faster. A lot faster. The latest model can now follow at speeds of up to 42 kilometres per hour
00:59and even short bursts of up to 60 kilometres per hour. That's obviously handy if you're riding on
01:05the flat and I even had a go at trying to outrun it on some descents. I think this one is the top
01:11section of the Gavia and this hidden gem is the Monte mountain. It is safe to say though that if you ride
01:18around Northern Italy being chased around by a drone then you can expect plenty of inquisitive
01:23cyclists to ask you just how it works or who's controlling it. Well no one. It follows all
01:29by itself. Here's me trying my best to talk through some of the features while I was ticking off the
01:34magnificent Concarno climb. Yeah it's got loads of different modes so it's in follow mode now. I think
01:43it's on the high setting whereas but you can set like how high it is. So yesterday I had it in mid.
01:51Like a bird's eye view as well. And yeah yeah so you can go bird's eye. It can do dolly track as well so
02:00it comes alongside you. So that's really good if I want to show off the bike or something. Yeah. And
02:06then yeah the biggest thing with this one is that it can it's now a lot faster. So even on the descent.
02:14Yeah so recording up to 8k it's got a proper wide angle lens on it as well which is good. And then
02:20because it's so high quality you can obviously crop into that shot. So all right so the next corner
02:26Yeah. I reckon we should try and drop it. Yeah. To have a race. See if we can drop the drone.
02:33Ready? Yeah. Go go go.
02:40Ah it's still there.
02:45No. I think there's no chance to. No not on the uphill. Where else? I think the main thing is the
02:53the obstacle avoidance. And it's just so easy to set up like you click one button.
02:58It's up in the air. And it's following me. I can go past other riders and it
03:04follows me around them. It doesn't just fly into the back of them. I've even taken it mountain biking and
03:10like through the trees. And it's really good.
03:13So I've just popped it into side track. And now as you can see it's flying alongside me. So
03:20you can check out my Haya Bianchi. In full Celeste of course. Very Italian.
03:27This is kind of like a little little race track here.
03:32It's also got this dolly track mode which means that it will fly in front of me flying backwards and
03:38record me talking to the camera. Which is really rather clever. And I don't know how it does that.
03:44I wish I was that good at reversing. So yeah this is obviously really useful if you want to talk to
03:49the camera. So let me run you through a few more stats. Although I'm running out of road so I might
03:54have to do that back at base. The model that we've been using is the flagship X1 Pro Max and ours came
04:01as part of the cycling bundle. Now this includes the drone itself which is in this box here and that's
04:07got a battery fitted to it. We'll get onto that in a moment. Also in the box you get a USB C to C cable,
04:14a carry pouch, protective pouch and then the info guides and all of that is in there too.
04:22But as part of the cycling bundle you also get two additional batteries, a charging hub and power
04:28adapter, the beacon for your bars and that goes on using the supplied mounts. So that one just wraps
04:36around your bars or there's this little magnetic adapter mount so it can go on a GoPro style mount
04:42basically. And then you also get a carry bag which has this sort of clever design so it zips up in
04:48the middle or you can put it over your top tube if you want to carry your drone like that. It's got a
04:53carry strap for when you're not on the bike. And then the last thing in the box is these ND filters,
05:00which are basically sunglasses for your camera. So the camera in question, well that's obviously here.
05:07It's on a gimbal. It can record in 8K with a 1 over 1.3 inch cmos sensor. What that means is it lets
05:15loads of light in. It's also got 14 stops of dynamic range and apparently this lens is a custom
05:22seven layer affair. Now I don't know much about that but I do know that the ultra wide 107 degree
05:30field of view has helped me to get lots of mountains into my shots. All the controls are on
05:37here so if I just press and hold this middle one then it will start up. There we go it's chirped into
05:45life. Current mode hover. So as it's just told us it's in hover mode at the moment and then you just use
05:52these two buttons here to go through the different modes. So hover. Zoom out. So that's pretty self
05:59explanatory. Follow. So that's one that I've been using a lot of the time. Orbit is when it will go
06:05around you. Bird eye. Pretty self explanatory. Dolly track. Dolly track is when it's in front of you. Ski mode.
06:14Ski mode. I don't need ski mode because I lie on the floor a lot when I go skiing. So cycling mode. I will
06:21explain that one. So basically it's designed to be more precise and stable for when you're on the
06:26bike. And you can use it in two different modes which you choose in the app. So narrow routes
06:32where it will track your path. So it will literally follow the route that you take. Or you can have it
06:38in open areas mode where it will basically take some shortcuts to save power. Now I mentioned earlier
06:45that it's really good at avoiding crashing. And so how does it do that? Well it's got this big camera
06:51on the front. So it's looking where it's going and then avoiding any obstacles. It's also got a sensor
06:58underneath here. So it knows how high off the floor it is. And also a sensor on the rear for when it's
07:04flying backwards. Now you will notice that there's no side sensors. So when you're doing 360 spins
07:11use a bit of caution. Because for example if there's a big rock then you might want to avoid that.
07:18Because the rotors are in this cage though it is surprisingly robust and if the worst does happen
07:24then repair kits are available over on the hover our website. All right well it's worked on the
07:28mountains as if it'll work in a tunnel. I hope it didn't just catch me cross-chaining then. Cool tunnel.
07:44I think the other good thing is I don't have the beacon today on my bars. I do have my phone in my
07:51pocket but I don't need it. You can just use it like without the phone as well. Yeah no signal no you
08:01don't need to take anything with you. However you can go into a lot more detail in the app to fine
08:07tune all those settings. Choose your aspect ratios. Choose how far away you want it to follow you.
08:14Choose the resolution the portrait or landscape you can do in the app. And then to actually capture the
08:20footage all you're going to do is hold the drone out in front of you. Click the middle button and
08:25then when the light goes red it's recording straight on to the 64 gigabyte internal storage
08:31or you can pop in a micro sd card to expand that until your heart's content. So how long can you
08:40record for? Well hover air says 16 minutes, but let's see how I got on.
09:10Well that is seven climbs in Vormio completed. More of them shot on the Holler Air X1 Chromax. Let me know what
09:33you think of this footage down in the comments below. If you want to get hold of one then we'll pop a link
09:38down in the description. Thank you very much for watching and we'll see you next time.
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