We praised Parrot for ironing out control kinks and upgrading the first AR.Drone's VGA camera to an acceptable 720p one. Needless to say, we declared the $300 AR.Drone 2.0 the drone to buy.

There was just one niggling annoyance we had with the AR.Drone 2.0: flying time. The AR.Drone 2.0 can take to the skies for only around 10 minutes with its included 1,000mAh battery before it's forced to land. That's not a whole lot of play time.

In June, Parrot started selling $70 batteries with 1,500mAh that pushed the AR.Drone 2.0 to 18 minutes, but even so, a lot of drone owners weren't too impressed with the 18 minutes of flight time.

Longer Flying Time

With the recently released AR.Drone 2.0 Power Edition, Parrot's doubled that flying time to 36 minutes. But the company cheats a little. We say cheat, because the Power Edition only achieves its combined 36 minutes of flight using two 1,500mAh batteries that are included in the box.

Since the drone only has one battery compartment, you're really looking at two 18 minute sessions of flying with battery swapping when the first battery runs out of juice.