Flite Test Review: B.A.D Tiny Whoov

January 8, 2019|FliteTest

This micro hovercraft, designed by the original Whoov team, is a powerful, fun-filled machine built for pure 'whooving'.

Reviewed by James Whomsley

Promo Video

Overall Rating

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Awesome, great value, down to earth fun.

Price

$34.89/ £30.00

Pros

- It's an absolute blast to drive around

- Robust construction

- Easy to assemble

- Ability to add FPV camera

- Power to, surprisingly, drive over many surfaces including rough ground and thick carpet

Cons

- Perhaps slightly limited - you might get bored after a while

Overview

The Tiny Whoov, originally conceived by Alexander Desvignes, is a micro hovercraft that uses components from micro quadcopters like the Blade Inductrix. The latest version is a thoroughbred racer with a great deal of potential for fun.

It's available as a kit on the Bad Ass Drones website and includes everything you need to get 'whooving', which is great. The tiny controller is compact but has a decent feel and has multiple programmable buttons and trims. The battery is a 1s 300mah which will give you a decent 'flight' time of around 10 mins of continuous running.

It's not an absolutely tiny hovercraft, but it will fit in the palm of your hand just as you'd expect with a similarly sized quad. The foam material used for the airframe is super light meaning that the Whoov really does have a great power-to-weight ratio.

Building the Whoov

The Bad Ass Drones Tiny Whoov comes as an all-inclusive kit. For how affordable the kit actually is, you do get good value for money.

Like a Tiny Whoop, the Whoov is controlled by a flight controller board. This one is from Wolfhoo. It's simple to set up as it's preprogrammed and doesn't require soldering.

This board is mounted to the underside of the Whoov. One thing I don't like about how the Whoov is stuck together with adhesive pads is that the exposed sticky surfaces tend to pick up a ton of fluff from your floor.

Running the Whoov

It was a pleasant surprise to find that this tiny lightweight hovercraft has a ton of power at its disposal to scoot along the floor. It's quick, and I mean really quick. You've got several lift settings that you can sequentially increase using a button on the controller to give you a larger cushion of air if you need it.

Increasing the power allows the Whoov to get up to speed even over rough carpets and outdoor surfaces - I wasn't expecting that. Driving it is simple and intuitive. You can even reverse by revving the lift motors a little, essentially wheelie-ing the hovercraft until it goes backward. It takes some practice, but that's where the second level of fun comes in - learning tricks.

Summary

If you're looking for something fun but different to build and play with, you can't go far wrong with the Whoov. It's a superb concept. My hat is off to the equally tiny team behind the tiny hovercraft. You can get yourself one from their website here along with many spare parts, upgrades and customizable thingy-majigs.

Bad Ass Drones - https://badassdrones.fr

Products from their site - https://badassdrones.fr/en/2-home