Well I got two of these things and they arrived in different boxes (what I mean by that is they arrived in differently style packaging to each other for some reason – kind of made me think they weren’t both identical.) Anyway one of them works fine but the other one doesn’t do its flips properly and I really cannot be bothered sending it back, it’s just too much hassle.
Lets be clear here, these are not the kind of drones you will see on the TV being used to produce documentaries, nor are they the kind being targeted (as far as I know) by the legal system for geo fencing and weight restriction limitations causing registration requirements. These are basically a kids indoor toy with no video camera and relatively flimsy controls (compared to the industrial drones!).
So flying them around the living room is fine, they are very easy to control once you get the hang of the controlling sensitivity, which is very sharp and responsive, as you would want because the last thing anyone needs is lag – when you push the stick, the drone moves rapidly to the instruction sent to it.
You can “trim” the drone so that it hovers without swinging left or right and you can program a “home” for it – so that it returns from where it started from, although I haven’t tested that because who needs it in their front room? The reason I say these are indoors is because even with a very slight breeze they become difficult to control in flight and could easily be lost on a house roof or up a tree with the wind in the wrong direction. But…. on a perfectly calm day or with good flying experience they could be taken outdoors no problem. This isn’t something problematic with this model – it really applies to all drones to varying levels depending on size, weight and power and aerodynamics.
The power is provided by a re-chargeable lithium ion battery which lasts around 5 to 10 minutes in full flight. One aspect perhaps of purchasing such a cheap product is the loss of the plug in port. What do I mean? Well, to charge the drone up, you must first disconnect its battery – see the photo below – you have to pull the cable off the battery socket in the drone, then plug that cable into a power cable (which comes with the package) which in turn goes to a USB power supply. My preference is to just have a socket on the machine which you can plug into – rather than having to disconnect the battery which is fiddly.
So you can see that I have had to fiddle around with a tiny little connector to disconnect the lead from the copter in order to charge the battery. It is really quite a stiff connection aswell – and I suspect the last thing you would want to do is just pull on the wire as it may cause damage – you have to get your fingers right into the mounting to get the cable out.
So because 1 worked and 1 failed – and the cable configuration the way it is – I am giving this 7 out of 10.
Remote control drone copter
Pros
- - Small
- - Responsive
- - Simple to use
Cons
- - Inconvenient Battery Charging
- - Blows in the Wind
- - One of Two ordered Failed