September set for new Parrot mini drone range invasion

Parrot has revealed that Australians can expect to be guiding a new hydrofoil quadcopter hybrid – that uses the aerial drone's fans to scoot it across the water – sometime in September.

This new addition to the line up will launch alongside upgraded iterations of the existing Jumping Sumo and Rolling Spider mini-drones.

After selling over 600,000 mini-drone units in the nine months since their launch last year, Parrot's new mini-drone range will expand to 13 products within five new categories: the Jumping Night and the Jumping Race, the Airborne Night and the Airborne Cargo and the Hydrofoil.

The new range features upgrades to engine efficiency and will now include onboard memory allowing you to play with the devices for longer and capture and store photos directly on the drones themselves.

Polly want a cracker?

The Jumping Night and the Jumping Race land-based drones, come with 4GB onboard flash memory, a 0.3 megapixel video and photo compatible dashcam and will cost AU$279.99 and AU$289 respectively.

The quadcopter Night and Cargo models have 1GB of flash storage, but can only take photos using the same forward mounted dashcam and will cost AU$199.99 or AU$149.99 each.

The Hydrofiol quadcopter will retail for AU$239.99 and reaches speeds of up to 10km per hour using a similarly specced airborne drone to power it.

The entire minidrone range will connect to the Android, iOS and Windows smartphone and tablet app FreeFlight 3 and yes … with a built in microphone and speakers, both the new land-based Parrots can now talk.

• You might also be interested in the Parrot Zik 2.0 Review.