Gear Friday: Droning on

Parrot's Bebop 2 drone.

Parrot sent the updated Bebop 2 drone for me to try out, and it's been fun to fly.

It's not that new to be honest, having been launched in December last year, but it does come with a major improvement over the first Bebop: the flight time is up to around 25 minutes from 11 previously.

The extended flying time, courtesy of a 2,700mAh battery, adds heaps to the fun factor of the Bebop 2.

While you can fly the Bebop 2 with a phone and a Wi-Fi connection, using an iPad with bigger aerial adds range, ditto the bulky Skycontroller harness with two joysticks.

Watch: Parrot Bebop 2 drone footage:

As before the Bebop 2 is easy to fly with the tablet app. So much so in fact that my five year old son to figured it out in just a few minutes, further evidence that he's heaps smarter than his father; see for yourself in this video.

I wish Parrot had improved the 14 megapixel image-stabilised camera with just 8 gigabytes of storage though, because the Bebop 2 is expensive at $949 including GST. Sold with the Skycontroller, this goes up to $1,700, Pricespy tells me. For that money, I'd want much better image quality than the Bebop 2 provides.