Gopro Karma drone back on sale and in stock after recall
Update: GoPro Karma pricing is now showing again on the UK store at £1199.99 for the GoPro Karma Drone and Hero5 camera bundle or £869.99 for the drone on its own. The entire package including extra propellers, spare battery and 2 years hardware cover costs £1,523.97. Expect order links to come back very shortly!
Update: GoPro Karma drones back on sale now in the US and shipping from the 28th of February, you can see their official release statement here.
The first batch of Karma drones were released at the end of October 2016 and then just weeks later were recalled and thousands of units were sent back to GoPro by customers. The drones suffered an issue where they would loose communication with the receiver mid-flight and fall out of the sky with no failsafe kicking in to land it safely. This sparked large concerns over the safety of the product.
The recall of the GoPro Karma has allowed other competitor’s drones to steal the lion’s share of seasonal sales. The DJI Mavic Pro, Phantom 4 Pro, Parrot Bebop and Yuneec Typhon Q500 have all benefited hugely in sales over the last Christmas period.
In the meantime the Hero 5 Black / Session and handheld stabiliser are receiving good reviews online and slowly building GoPro’s ecosystem in the Karma’s absence. The Hero 5 cameras have been praised for their lower price point and small bump in features.
Months had passed and still no news on the release on the Karma besides the fact that they are focusing heavily on the safety of the product. For loyal followers of the Karma there is light at the end of the tunnel. The handheld stabiliser (the Karma Grip) and the Karma drone are back on sale in the US.
Not much has been said about the flight failures of the initial batch of drones, but Gopro say “If you break the construction down, you’d see that we’ve redesigned the battery latch. A small change that led to a huge improvement.”. So this suggests that batteries were cutting out mid-flight and causing power failures, this does clear up why onboard landing fallbacks were not kicking in.
Internationally shipping is set to follow shortly after the first batch are shipped in the US. So expect to see to see the Karma drone back on sale in your area soon.
The recall has clearly hurt GoPro badly in sales but we will not see a price drop in the product. In fact UK pricing has temporarily disappeared so we fear an increase could but coming to reflect the weaker pound. We just hope that this set back hasn’t halted the development of the drone in the interim as it still has a long way to go to catch up in the market.
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