Pixy, the Snapchat selfie drone, will do what Snap does best – vanish
Pixy, the Snapchat selfie drone, will do what Snap does best – vanish
Snap will still sell the drone for now, but development will cease, meaning the once theorized Pixy 2 will have its wings clipped
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: Pixy RIP
🚁 Snap launched a cute yellow Snapchat selfie drone in April 2022
📸 It takes silent selfie videos & pictures 10 seconds at a time
💰 Despite being $229 and lighter than any DJI drone, it didn’t sell well
🙅♂️ Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is sidelining further drone development
😬 Remind me to take my drone out of the recycle bin after this photo
Like Snapchat videos and photos, the disappearing media app’s companion drone will be short-lived, too. Snap Inc’s cute, yellow Pixy drone won’t be seeing a sequel as the company’s CEO Evan Spiegel said that further development on the idea will cease, as reported by the Wall Street Journal today.
My ‘snap’ Pixy review: short-lived fun
The Pixy drone launched just four months ago with some potential – it costs just $229 (it’s still on sale, so present tense) and it’s lighter than any DJI drone, which means there’s less chance of “an incident” when it falls. That’s when – not if. Pixy, in my experience, is a delicate drone. Without object avoidance systems, when the drone bumps into any wall, it tries to land immediately. But it’s fun to use in an open area.
Here’s my first Snap Pixy test flight – over some water. 😅 Watch my happy face go to a concerned face back to happy face as the Pixy almost hits a pillar (and if it did, it would have gone straight down to land in the water).
I like that Pixy is incredibly simple to capture photo and video selfies on pre-defined flight paths (albeit silent since it doesn’t record sound as it noisily hovers in the air) as well as track a subject while hovering. There’s a physical switch to perform these quick shots; they’re not buried several menus deep in the app. So I’ve been able to make the drone go in a circle around a subject (me or me and friends) and go away and come back for unique-looking 10-second Snapchat videos.
But my purchase of the Pixy didn’t propel Snap to continue on with its tiny drone, as it is now reprioritizing company resources. That’s OK, I’ll just put the Pixy drone right next to the equally deprioritized Snapchat Spectacles, which I reviewed for TechRadar in 2016. At least Snap’s “smart glasses,” which also took short videos and photos, got up to iteration three.