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Meet the 13 new Parrot Minidrones for air, land, sea and even night

Parrot has unveiled a huge range of new air, ground and water-based Minidrones, including sexy new night-vision models, set to hit the UK in August.

The new Parrot Minidrones pack built-in microphones and speakers so you can talk to them and get audio feedback. And with special night modes and customisable flashing LEDs, you can even keep on playing in the dark, if that’s your bag.

Jumping Minidrones

To start there are two new types of ground drone – ‘Night’ and ‘Race’. The Night drones can flip, spin 360 degrees and roll at over 4mph, as well as jump up to 2.5 feet in the air. Their special feature is a pair of strong LEDs which you can control to create your own light show as you spin and bop about the place. The built-in battery supports fast charging and gives you 20 minutes of play time per charge.

The Jumping Night Minidrones will cost £159.99.

If 4mph sounds like a bunch of wimpy childish nonsense (it actually feels pretty fast in the confines of a room), then cehck out the Race model. These Minidrones pack wider tyres than the Jumping Night models, so they can roll about twice as fast, and once again they can jump 2.5-feet off the ground.

The Jumping Race Minidrones will cost £159.99.

Airborne Minidrones

Parrot also showed off its new Airborne Minidrones, Cargo and Night.

Cargo can fly for up to 9 minutes and at just 60g it’s super lightweight, but also durable enough to survive the occasional collision with trees, squirrels and other obstacles. We can testify that flying Cargo into a wall and watching it plummet about ten feet to the ground doesn’t seem to have any ill effect whatsoever. Thankfully.

To take off, all you need to do is throw the drone into the air and it’ll automatically kick into flight mode – which never stops being cool. You can then control it over distances up to 20m and there’s 1GB of built-in storage for video and photos.

Impressively, the Cargo can also carry objects up to half its own weight, as well as flip and perform random acrobatics. Automatic stabilisation seems to make it easy to control too, with a blistering top speed of 11mph.

The Airborne Cargo will cost £79.99.

As with the Jumping drones, Parrot is also releasing Night versions of the Airborne drones. These are once again very similar, but sport customisable lights so you can fly about at night and scare the shit out of your neighbours by hovering by their bedroom window. Night-vision mode means you can record video too, although obviously we’d not recommend filming your neighbours through their bedroom window. Ahem.

Hydrofoil Minidrones

Parrot also announced its new water-based drones, which can be steered about in ponds or pools (but not anything choppy like the sea). The water-based Minidrones are actually flying drones which can be attached to a hydrodynamic hull, allowing them to glide at up to 5.4 knots (about 6mph) on water.

One charge will get you 7 minutes of battery life and once again, fast charge is supported.

The Hydrofoil Minidrones will cost £139.99.

All of the new Parrot Minidrones are due for release in the UK in August 2015.

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