Yahoo News GoPro's Karma drone is back on sale after design flaw made them fall out of the sky
GoPro's Karma drone is back.
The action camera company launched Karma, its first consumer drone, to great fanfare in late October. But shortly after, GoPro voluntarily recalled all 2,500 shipped drones after some owners reported their quadcopters were inexplicably losing power and falling out of the sky.
SEE ALSO: A blind man attached a GoPro to his guide dog - the results are horrifying
At CES 2017, GoPro revealed a bad latch mechanism that was used to secure the drone's battery in place was to blame. On Monday, GoPro announced the return of Karma with a redesigned battery latch that fixes the issue.
Karma's is available once again at GoPro.com and select U.S. retailers; international markets will have to wait until the spring. Pricing is the same as before: $799.99 for the Karma (without GoPro camera) and $1,099.99 for the Karma with a GoPro Hero 5 Black action camera.
When Mashable checked out the Karma at the launch event in September, we were impressed by its foldable design, removable three-axis Karma Grip handheld camera stabilizer its easy-to-use controller.
There were only two features we wished GoPro had included in the Karma: auto-follow and object avoidance — two features that DJI, the market leader in consumer drones, has aggressively included in its own drones like the Phantom 4 and Phantom 4 Pro.
But while the Karma was technically the first real foldable consumer drone, the recall let DJI quickly swoop in with the Mavic Pro, an even smaller foldable drone. Still, there's enough to differentiate the Karma from the Mavic Pro beyond size so it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.
Time will tell if GoPro will be able to catch up to DJI with Karma. For now, it's just good to see it back on sale and ready to take to the skies again.
