When looking to purchase a professional drone, one of the key buying decisions you’ll need to make is whether to go for a fixed wing drone (sometimes referred to as a flying wing) or a heli-style rotary system, such as a quadcopter or multicopter.

So, how should you decide? Which UAV will be the perfect fit for your business? The answer – as is often the case when buying expensive kit – is that it depends.

It depends mainly on how you plan to employ your drone.

• What kind of areas or structures are you looking to document?
• What object resolutions are you aiming to achieve?
• What size areas will you typically want to cover?
• What are the weather conditions likely to be?
• How much room will there be on-site in which to land safely?

The infographic below explains the core differences between what a fixed wing drone (such as the eBee) and a rotary UAV (such as the albris) have to offer. In essence, these differences are largely the same as with full-sized aircraft (the coverage difference, for example, being the reason you probably don’t fly off on vacation aboard a helicopter!).

Fixed Wing vs Rotary Drones

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Moving on from the starter guide above, the table below gives a real-life senseFly-specific example. It compares the key specifications of our eBee and albris UAVs; the eBee is senseFly’s popular fixed-wing mapping drone, the albris is our intelligent quadcopter for inspection and close mapping applications.

senseFly eBee vs senseFly albris

 

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Explore our full eBee/albris comparison page.