PowerRay Explorer

I apologize for the long narrative, but I think it is relevant to know all of the facts for a low review. First and foremost, this is such an awesome concept. Bring a professional scuba diver, this drone would allow others to view and share the underwater world in a way in which currently only professional photography/videography equipment allows. Yes, it is not equivalent to a professional underwater drone, but it allows for a simple platform for the novice user. The drone itself is not difficult to use, just takes practice. I have used $500,000 underwater remote operated vehicles, and this drone was offering a very high resolution video/photography result to the underwater novice or hobbyist without too much technical experience. Of course we all know that a product is only as good as the selling company. I purchase this drone in the beginning of January 2023, and during the first use, the vertical thruster started failing. The power to the vertical thruster was cutting on and off, despite a full charge, and all of the horizontal thrusters working. I thought it was a low power charge and stopped use in order to check for obstructions and fully charge the drone again. The next time I used the drone, the horizontal thrusters worked without incident, as did the camera equipment. Unfortunately the vertical thruster did not power on even though the diagnostics in the app stated that everything was in working order, to include a green check for the vertical thruster. I contacted the company immediately and was informed to check for an obstruction. After informing them of no obstruction, I was asked to provide my sales receipt, which I sent immediately. After two weeks of waiting I have received no response, even after multiple emails to the company regarding my issue. Of course it is now March, and I have to assume that the company is not going to assist me and the drone is worthless due to that fact that I am not able to buy a thruster anywhere else due to the proprietary nature of the drone. It is now just a disposable camera. This is the response I wrote to the company after waiting to get a response about a possible replacement drone, or even a replacement part: “I am guessing by the lack of a response that the company is not willing to assist me. I am very disappointed that such an expensive item has no warranty or assistance for its customers. I thought the concept of the underwater drone was excellent, and as someone who works in the professional scuba diving arena where a device such as this could be a critical part of the exploration of the underwater world and the teaching realm, I will not be recommending this product to anyone. Customer service is so important with technology due to that fact that if something is not backed by the company, one must think of it as disposable. This is not a throw away camera. This device could have been so much more. After one use, it is junk. This could have been fixed with assistance from the company.” Again, great concept, horrible customer service. Will be looking for a competitor who backs their product.

Unit does everything it says it does very complete package. Comes in its own carrying case which is well fitted. I purchased a seperate cable reel to spool the tether on this makes it much easier to spool out and wind tether after using. It takes a little bit to get everything up and running I ran into difficulty with the software seems one app runs both the power wizard as well as the Egg when you bring app up it goes to the Egg as soon as it senses the Power wizard you can access it. This took a call for me to customer service which was fast and provided quick help. I would suggest doing a little learning in a pool to get use to the controls before plunging into a lake or ocean. It is simple to operate video is outstanding as are the stills. Over all very well made piece of equipment good customer service

I was looking at this for years before deciding to buy it when it was on sale. Like many other people, I ignored all of the bad reviews and thought that I could just return this if I wasn’t happy. This product is almost impossible to use without scratching something, the moment you start operating it then things start going wrong. In my case, the base station got lightly scratched because the wire spool they include is very slick and the station will slide right off. For the fisherman, this thing looks great on paper. But this is a terrible fishing tool and will only disappoint you. The bait release mechanism is a terrible design and the fishing line will rest directly under the vertical motor. If you get any slack in your fishing line at all and then try to descend, the motor will suck up your fishing line every time (trust me). And on top of that, you will lose the ONE bait drop that is included with this. Customer support is rude and unhelpful. I reached out for more information about using the bait dropper because there is very little information about it on the internet. Replacements are expensive and hard to get, and it are very easy to lose. They offer no advice on how to prevent losing it. It seems that they designed it this way in hopes of getting some recurring revenue on this item. The documentation is spotty and doesn’t give you enough info on important things. The internet is full of videos that make this thing look great but they aren’t real. It’s a frustrating product to use and the manufacturer doesn’t seem to care about supporting customers at all. All in all, I had such high hopes about this fishing drone but I was terribly let down. The bad reviews are true and I don’t advise that you buy this. If you just want to fish then you can get a fantastic bait boat for this price and it will actually work. This is a product packed with features that don’t work and probably never will. Update (1/1/2023): I wanted to update this after taking this out again with some improvements to the reel for the tether cable (I put the tether cable on a spinning reel on a cable caddy). I also decided to not try using it to fish so that I could just focus on controlling it. Unfortunately this still disappoints me even though I have it every chance I could. My biggest concern was the fact that after about three minutes of cruising around, the drone completely quit responding to movement controls. The camera feed and other controls still worked but the drone just wouldn’t move. I made sure that the motors were still unlocked and tried turning the controller off and back on. Ultimately I had to gently pull it in with the tether cable. After getting it out of the water I noticed that the tether cable had gotten loose on the drone. I’m assuming that this happened while I was cruising around because I went in circles. I may be being a bit harsh, but that is just a terrible design. I know that when I put it in the water, the cable was very gently but firmly hand tightened just like the user manual suggests. If I had let this sit in the water for much longer, I’m guessing that this would have completely loose from the tether and it would have been gone forever.

I received my power ray as advertised.. problem with internal memory card. Called Powervision. They had it shipped back to them, repaired it, sent back than two weeks. The Power ray is great. It does the it’s job (under inspections) well. Use care in weeds and murky water. otherwise recommend power ray. Excellent customer service from PowerVision.

The drone did not operate as advertised for us. We have a beach property and would have loved to have underwater drone videos. Our beach waves are very small. There's not enough wave action for surfers. The drone was not able to navigate through the surf to get any videos. Be aware that if you return the drone the seller is asking that you pay for return shipping. Advertised as free returns.

I have wanted a PowerRay for some time, mainly to use for inspecting the bottom of my 37 ft. boat and VolvoPenta IPS Drives without having to haul the boat out of the water. Purchased it for myself this past December. I have never operated a drone before and often struggle with new electronic devices which never seem intuitive and the instructions are usually very scant. Instructions for connecting the PowerRay to the Base Station and Remote Controller via wifi were easy enough for me to figure out so that says a lot. Not the case with the VR Goggles. Very little instructions on that and even the video on YouTube for this is not sufficient. I haven't tried to use the goggles yet but I hear they are likely only good for another spectator to watch as opposed to being used to navigate the PowerRay. Also, the instructions for pairing the iPhone APP to the Remote Control is lacking. It requires you to key in the SSID # of the Remote Control but doesn't tell you where to locate that number. I found this by chance on some on-line forum. (last 6-digits of a number on the bottom of the Remote Control. The PowerRay takes a little practice to navigate but after two times in the pool, I was getting the hang of it. On first attempt I did have trouble getting the PowerRay to unlock so that the turbine blades would turn on. Not sure what caused this. It may have been that instead of putting the PowerRay nose-first in the water so it completely filled with water, I only set it on top of the water. In any event, I finally got it unlocked. Second time out I put it in nose-first and worked fine. I am a bit nervous about learning how to adjust the camera and video settings. I saw a YouTube video on this and got the impression that this will be a requirement in order to capture good pics and videos. I won't being using the PowerRay again until April or May 2019 when my boat is back in the water so this review is based on limited experience. That said, so far I am pleased with my purchase...and the US Support person in Texas was very responsive and helpful on the two occasions I reached out to him.

This is the first one of 5 Power Rays that I purchased. My first one was returned for the tether mount screw on the Power Ray not sealing. This is an obvious defect when attaching it and I can't believe they don't have simple quality control procedures in place to cull these caps out or even observe it upon packaging. Especially, because its such a critical water barrier protection for the unit and they stress how important it is to not let water get into that area. There is another customer who pictured this in their review. I believe it was the one I sent back and they repackaged it and sent out as new. Thank God I bought it through Amazon because they happily replaced it with a new one. My second one the assembly and startup seemed fine. On my first dive with it, sand and rocks and sediment got sucked up into the vertical thruster motor and jammed the prop. There is no shield or screen to protect this motor and the prop and it immediately becomes damaged when used on any beach, river or lake. Additionally, the nut that holds the prop on just fell off and again deemed it unusable. My third Power Ray had problems with the controller not communicating with drone and sometimes doing the opposite and sometimes just its own thing. Its not easy to man and takes some time getting use to and this just adds another level of frustration. When I sent my Power Ray to be serviced I was sent back another different one that was a crappy refurbished one that had its own set of issues. They told me it was tested and passed all in-house specifications but it doesn't work when it gets to the end user. The app doesn't work with iphone x and is only somewhat usable with the 7. These and many more issues have been communicated to the company which has yet to give me a new functioning Power Ray. I believe the other 5 star rating are not true. The Power Ray is not cheap and you expect its a functioning product and the company to stand by their product but they don't.

Very well made,powervision put lot of though into building this drone it was easy to operante i had lots of fun with it,awesome video quality