Eternal Angler
Administrator
Well Dustin Dunnill just gave a pretty thorough review of the Navatics Mito and things are not looking good. I kind of had high hopes for this underwater drone considering it was one of the first in it's class to come out with a replaceable battery. I mean who knows, maybe the focus problem was just a hardware defect in the camera because this is was a test model. The footage Dustin showed at the 25:53 mark looked all out of focus and quite blurred, the underwater video footage was completely unusable in my opinion. But I'm sure there's more to this story, I don't think Navatics would put a drone on the market that has this problem, something must of went wrong with this particular model, I hope!
But I think if you're going to claim to have the most stable drone on the market, you're definitely going to need 5 thrusters or more. Like what Dustin Dunnill is hinting to in the video, without that extra one or two thrusters for more stability, you start getting that rocking motion when navigating in current. In my opinion, it doesn't look like the MITO beats out the Gladius Mini for stability.
Another thing rather worrisome is the controller's battery drained pretty fast! Navatics claims the MITO has a total run time of four hours, well those four hours are only good if the controller and the wifi buoy will keep up with the battery power on the underwater drone. The MITO had 91% battery power left, while the controller had 45% battery power left. Now I'm not sure if the controller's battery is replaceable, maybe it is... But I know the controller battery on my Geneinno T1 underwater drone wasn't.
What's also disappointing is Navatics seem to take a very innovative risk using a controller that has thumb pads instead of the typical joysticks. Dustin has tried out just about every underwater drone on the market and the feedback I was getting from this video is using that type of controller for underwater drone precision wasn't very good, seemed to be a con instead of a pro. Right around the 18.51 mark, you get to see how Dustin had a hard time bringing the MITO off the bottom when it was kicking up sand.
Dustin Dunill said:19:18 - Little bit of the lag in the stream and the way it's controlling with these pads, it's making it very difficult for me to kind of hone in on this little shelf I'm trying to get to.
However, I did hear Dustin say that the MITO is the best drone he ever used for staying locked into place on filing an object without drifting away, he also said Navatics compass on the software app is quite accurate. However, I'm not sure if I like the idea of having a wifi buoy, as Dustin said it kept flipping over and losing the signal.
It's interesting, because after I saw Dustin's video, I say to myself the MITO is definitely not worth $2k. Afterwards I go over to Navatics.com, I noticed the company has recuded the drone price by $400, so now it's being sold for $1599... That price is definitely more reasonable!
I really thought after watching Erik Aaderra's video on the Navatics MITO in Norway, that the MITO was definitely going to be an underwater drone that would give the Gladius Mini a run for its money, but after Dustin did a more in-depth through review of the MITO, sadly I don't think that's going to be the case. Still could be a very promising drone, but I think it's just another drone the specs look good on paper, but didn't translate out in the ocean.
I'd get rid of the thumb pad controller, add in one or two more thrusters of extra stability, fix whatever issues the 4k camera is having with the background being blurred, you'd probably have one hell of a solid underwater drone. Still, I'd like to see what this underwater drone can do in freshwater rather than just the ocean, as the ocean definitely has more current.
I'd really like to see Dustin do a second test with the Havatics MITO!
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