Drone Review: Cfly Faith 2 Pro review

 

Reason to buy

• UHD 4K recording with 3-axis gimbal stabilization;
• Fly perfectly out of the box;
• Remote controller with WiFi repeater mode;
• Decent battery life;
• Outstanding flight speed;
• Intelligent flight modes (Follow me, Orbit and Waypoints);
• Creative quick-shoot modes (Skyrocket, Flyaway, Spiral, Comet, and Circle).

Reason to avoid

• A bit overpriced;
• No multiple flight speed rates;
• Poorly developed mobile APP;
• Random Jelly effect on videos (even when it is on the ground);
• It takes an eternity to charge fully (about 5 hours).

C-fly Faith 2 Pro drone review

The package arrived smoothly in just 10 days at the front of my door, without additional taxes or laborious custom clearance. The box was additionally protected by double-layer bubble wrap. RCGoing receives 5 stars again for order processing.

Unboxing

C-Fly packs with the Faith 2 Pro a nice and handy bag. In addition to the drone and its transmitter, the following accessories are included: gimbal guard, flight battery, charger adapter, USB charging cable, and 1 pair of spare propellers with bolts. Other reviewers also received a phone holder extension bar. The handbag comes with a removable shoulder strap and can accommodate up to 3 spare batteries, a charger adapter, and other small accessories. It has a large zipped pocket on the outside.

In terms of design, somehow reminds me of the DJI Spark. With folded arms it measures 182x255x74mm, being only a bit larger than an adult’s palm. Weighting 530 grams (1.1 lbs) requires registration in most countries, including the US and Canada. Its folding mechanism works much smoother than the one I found on the SJRC F11 4K Pro.

The micro SD card slot is behind a tiny rubber flap that protects from dust and prevents losing the TF memory card accidentally.

Its long-service life brushless motors are installed with foldable propellers. In addition to the optical flow camera, there are two ultrasonic sensors on the fuselage’s belly. These should allow stable indoor hovering. It has only 3 LED lights, one under each frontal arm, plus one on the back of the battery, which helps orientation.

The orange color makes it visible both in the sky and on the ground (whether covered with snow or grass).

Price, availability, and options

RCGoing offers the Faith 2 Pro drone in 3 colors (orange, blue, and black) with up to 3 flight batteries. Starting price for the ‘Standard’ edition with one battery is $310.99. This price includes all the accessories shown in this review. For extra 80 bucks, you can opt for the ‘Fly More Combo’ pack with two more batteries, which provides about 100 minutes of playtime. A set of spare propellers can be ordered for $5.99. Update: Now, during their spring sale, you can get it with two batteries for only 344.99 (note: promotion price is valid for orange version only).

Camera and image quality

The C-fly Faith 2 Pro’s camera is based on a powerful Ambarella A12 imaging processor and a Sony CMOS image sensor. It can capture 20MP photos (5120*3840) in JPEG /JPEG+DNG formats and 4K videos (3840×2160@fps) with up to 60Mpbs. Thanks to its 3-axis (pitch +30/-120°, roll ±35°, direction ±30°), you can remotely change the camera angle from -90 to 0°. The micro SD card slot can take memory cards with up to 128GB.

Update: The lasted version of the C-Fly2 APP includes lots of manual settings. Now you can change the resolution (4K@30fps, 2.7K@30fps, 1080p@60fps, or 720p@60fps), adjust exposure (from -2.0 to +2.0), white balance (Incandescent, D4000, D5000, Sunny, Cloudy, or D9000), add video\photo watermark (date, time, or date+time), photo resolution (5120×3840, 4192×3104, 3648×2736, or 3480×2160), ISO (Auto, 100, 200, 400, 800, or 1600), Video FOV (Wide, Medium, or Narrow), Scene mode (Normal, Flash, Night, Sports, Landscape, Portrait, or Sunset), and Effect mode (Normal, Art, Sepia, Negative, BW, Vivid, or 70Film).

At the end of my review, you can find few ‘RAW’ sample videos recorded with the Faith 2 Pro drone to evaluate the provided image quality personally.

Remote controller and range

The beauty of the C-fly Faith 2 Pro’s controller consists in the fact that it works like a WiFi repeater. Practically, your phone talks with the drone through the transmitter. This technique should provide much reliable communication over longer distances (at least theoretically). C-fly claims that their Faith 2 Pro has an up to 5Km (3.1 miles) flight range in FCC mode. This approach is more than welcomed because Apple is mulling removing the Lightning port from the new iPhone models in favor of wireless charging. If these rumors are true, DJI needs to rethink its wired downlink connection.

There are only 4 buttons (RTH, Take-off/Land, Pause, and GPS On/Off) in addition to the usual control sticks and power switch. There is no status display, unfortunately. The RC is powered by a built-in battery, which can be recharged through the micro USB port. By default, the transmitter comes in mode2 (throttle left), but you can toggle it to mode 1 if you prefer it more.

It has one shoulder button on each side. While the left one allows taking photos, the right one starts/stops video recording. Additionally, there is a dial-knob that allows changing the camera’s angle.

Antennas are genuine so, before the flight, you need to unfold them as described in the user manual. I performed 3 range tests at a different flight altitude. I got the best range at 70 meters.

C-FLY2 mobile APP

In addition to live-view (FPV), the C-FLY2 APP provides detailed telemetry information such as flight altitude, speed, distance, and battery life. From the APP, you can also activate all the intelligent flight modes. As previously mentioned, there are no manual camera settings (exposure, ISO, frame rate, or resolution). I hope that these features will be included in the next software update. While the latest version of APP brings manual camera settings and some other minor changes, it still needs some improvements. During my range test, it even crashed which for newbies can be a fatal software bug.

C-fly Faith 2 Pro review: Battery life

According to C-Fly, the Faith 2 Pro drone is powered by a 3 cell 3100mAh battery that should allow up to 35 minutes of crossing time. The LIPO pack has 4 charging level indicator LEDs and a power button.

Before the maiden flight, I did a hovering test to check if everything is OK with the drone and to test the real battery life. The C-fly Faith 2 force-landed after 27 minutes when the battery level reached 10%. It was quite windy during the test, so, on a calm day could reach 30 minutes or even more. Sadly, the charging process from 10 to 100% takes about 5-6 hours. I think I will mod the charging adapter by adding a balance port for faster charging.

Flight experience

After the hovering test, I performed with a short-range proximity maiden flight. The good news is that you don’t need to calibrate it every flight like in the case o similar GPS enabled drones. It is ready to fly off the box. Locking GPS for RTH is almost instantly done. Another fact that truly impressed me was its speed. This thing flies really fast, maybe too fast for cinematic footage. I expected FPV to be stable and reliable, instead was glitchy, similar to the traditional (phone to drone) WIFI communication. Ben from RCGoing told me that the C-Fly works on an upgrade that will improve image transmission.

Due to the low gimbal ground clearance (~2cm), it requires a perfectly flat ground for take-off. Otherwise, the gimbal fails the initialization process and the videos will be shaky with Jello effect.

By default, flight altitude is limited to 120 meters, but you can override this safety feature from the C-FLY2 APP, enabling 500 meters top altitude. For indoor flights, you can disable GPS, but remember in this mode fail-safe RTH is disabled!

Intelligent flight modes

The C-fly Faith 2 Pro features plenty of intelligent flight modes. In addition to the usual Follow me, Orbit, and Wyapoing modes it comes with DJI-like quick shot modes: Rocket, Dronie, Spiral, Helix, and Boomerang. Unfortunately, these mods do not work exactly like on my Mavic Air 2 drone. Instead of drawing a rectangle around the subject, you need to place the subject in a predefined rectangle. Its tracking software isn’t perfect. During my tests, it lost the subject quite often.