GoPro Karma In Trouble, Full-Scale Recall In Effect

When everyone else was occupied by the ongoing election, it would seem that outdoors camera company GoPro was having some trouble of its own. It has had to recall 2,500 units of its Karma drone because of power issues. This spells trouble for the company, especially since this is their first attempt at a miniature UAV and made a huge fuss over it.

Back in September, GoPro announced the existence of the Karma drone during a rather expensive company summit on a literal mountaintop. It was meant to take on the DJI Phantom 4 and other established quad-copter units in the market. Sadly, the $799 UAV fell a little short of doing that thanks to some missing key features, including “subject tracking.”

Now, it turns out that the Karma actually has power problems where it randomly loses power mid-flight, The Verge reports. There have been no reports of injuries caused by the defect so far, but the company is playing it safe anyway and is recalling all the units of the drone sold until now.

The drones can be returned to the retailer that sold it to customers or it can be sent to GoPro directly to get a full refund. There have been no offers to exchange the drone nor is there any fix that the company has come up with. This speaks of a rather serious issue since it could mean that they don’t know why the drones are failing.

As Tech Crunch notes, the Karma was only in the market for a short 16 days and during the final stretch of one of the most contentious presidential elections in American history. This could have contributed to the limited sales numbers, which turned out to be a blessing for the company. The company’s CEO Nicholas Woodman spoke on the matter, stressing that the safety of its customers is GoPro’s top priority.