Teenager designs world's fastest consumer drone

There's a new consumer drone in town and it's got a real need for speed.

With an average top speed of around 70 miles per hour (the drone can reportedly fly at up to 85 mph in the right conditions), the Teal drone is nearly twice as fast as DJI's Phantom 4. George Matus, the 18-year-old inventor and CEO of Teal Drones, Inc., claims it's the world's fastest production drone.

"This drone really started from my own love of flying," says Matus in an introductory video for the Teal drone. He first started flying drones at 11 and built his first one at 14.

Matus says his desire to build a super-duper-fast drone grew when his family moved to Utah and he suddenly had a huge backyard to fly drones in.

"I just got obsessed with flying faster, doing new things, sharing them with the kids I raced with," says Matus. "I thought about it before I went to be bed and couldn't wait to fly in the morning."

Matus' obsession with drones eventually led him to create a wish list of features he wanted in one. As his list expanded, he finally decided to just build his own dream drone.

Though Matus has no formal background in electrical engineering or software development — he told Mashable he picked up a lot of his knowledge from the internet — he was heavily involved with the concept, design and engineering, which has expanded beyond him to Teal Drones, Inc., which now employs three full-timers, 12 full-time contractors and 30-40 people working on the engineering and design side.

Matus' entrepreneurial spirit also earned him a Thiel Fellowship with $100 in funding. To bring the Teal drone from concept to reality, Matus told Mashablehe's secured $2.8 million in seed funding from various investors. Not bad for an 18-year-old.

"This is really my dream come true. It's the dream of what a drone could be. It's fast. It can withstand 40 mph winds. It's built to run as many apps as you can think of. And it has a super computer onboard that lets it do things no other drones an do."

The Teal drone is fast, customizable and powerful, which almost sounds too good to be true. 

For starters, it'll be manufactured in the U.S. And at $1,299 it's $100 less than the Phantom 4 and offers so much more. 

"Our main priority was to get this out to as many people, instead of making money," Matus told Mashable. Though they're not selling them at a loss, Matus was frank in admitting the company's profit margins "aren't good." 

Right now the focus is on shipping a quality drone. Matus told Mashable the Teal is targeted at four demographics: general consumers who may not ever have flown a drone, hobbyists who like to tinker and mod stuff, drone racers and app developers.

The Teal drone is light (1.6 pounds) and its carbon-infused polycarbonate plastic body is water-resistant. It has a range of 300 feet when connected over Wi-Fi and 2,500 feet on extended Wi-Fi and highly accurate GPS to keep track of its location.

The drone is controlled with an iPhone or Android remote control app, but it'll also support other types of controllers including a standard gamepad (i.e. Xbox controllers), according to Matus.

The Teal drone's capable of 10 minutes of flight time with the "High Performance Battery" and 20 minutes of flight time with the "High Endurance Battery." Two batteries are included with the drone for people who pre-order.

The drone also has an array of ports, including three USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port and an HDMI 2.0 port.

Most importantly, the Teal drone has a 13-megapixel camera that can record 4K video at 24 fps, 1080p at 30 fps and 720p at 60 fps. Videos are electronically stabilized. Additionally, the camera takes still photos and everything is stored to the drone's 16GB of internal storage (there's also a microSD card slot that supports up to 64GB).

Other impressive features include a follow mode that automatically follows the pilot, autonomous flight, geofencing and more. The company says object detection and avoidance using the camera will be patched in through a future update.

According to Teal Drones, Inc., the drone's insane capabilities are possible because of the Nvidia TX1 supercomputer that powers it. Even more bananas: you can plug the Teal into a monitor via HDMI and use it like a regular microcomputer and run regular apps and games.

And now the bad news: Although pre-orders for the Teal drone begin on Wednesday, it won't ship to buyers until later this year, before the holidays. That gives a lot of time for other players to catch up, and it's also an open question whether the shipping model will be as good as Matus hopes.

Still, if Matus can really deliver on all that the Teal promises, the consumer drone market could be up-ended overnight. DJI could really start to feel the squeeze from Teal Drones, Inc. and Xiaomi.