Good starter quad with camera (in USA warehouse) $56 delivered
4Syma X5C-1, includes battery, camera, even a microSD card. Everything you need to get in the air.
It's about the same size as a Phantom, but that's where the similarity ends. No GPS, no compass, no "return to home" mode. But it's a great starter. I get a bit over 7 minutes of flight time with mine with the camera, closer to 9 minutes without the camera. Batteries are dirt cheap on eBay (about $3 delivered). So for under $10 you can add another 30 minutes of fun.
This one is in the US warehouse, so you'll have it in under a week.
Here's a quick video I did with mine a few months ago...
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I took your advice and bought one of these from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. Also bought 4 extra batteries and a charger.
So far I'm having a blast! This is my first quadcopter and it flies great. In greatest challenge now is keeping it out of trees.
I've been taking it down to the local park where the dogs seem so love it.
Thanks for the recommendation!
@DaveInSoCal Glad to hear you're enjoying it! Just be careful... it can be a gateway drone, and the next thing you know you've got seven quadcopters and a hexacopter and you're planning your first scratch build. :-)
@ruouttaurmind Yea, the two worst features of the Syma are 1) When it loses signal from the TX, it continues the last signal for about 1-2 seconds, so if it's going away from you, it's really going away from you, and 2) the battery flash warning happens about 5 seconds before it'll just cut engines and fall from the sky
@ruouttaurmind totally a gateway drone, i started with an x5c, than a cx-10, an x5, x8c, and another cx-10. Now starting to plan / price out building a 250 fpv racer.
@cs6ranger we're all building 250 clones over in the let's build something thread, whether you go with the aliexpress kit from ready to sky or not feel free to join us there.
@djslack Well not all of us. I went crazy with the Reptile 500
Syma was my starter quad. Another big difference from the Phantom is weight. The Syma has a really tough time in windy conditions compared to the phantom. Still, it's a great buy. I like to use the Syma for practicing more aggressive flying, and the phantom for photography. Also, I feel a lot less scared of breaking something in my home when flying the Syma inside compared to the Phantom :-p
@MikeyNick I feel a lot less scared of breaking something on the Syma! LOL! I can replace the whole thing for about the cost of a set of genuine DJI rotors for the Phantom.
I ordered one of these but Amazon shipped it to Ohio, so I got a refund and picked up a Holy Stone, which as far as I can tell is a knockoff but with headless mode. Finally got to take it out last weekend and my grandmother's ranch; pretty rad! Catches the wind really bad though, as you can see at the end. Now I really want to buy a nicer (but still
@Moose Great video! Did it get inverted there at the end?
@ruouttaurmind Yeah, the wind blew it really high and then back, and then I cut the power so it would just drop and not fly into the neighbor's pasture.
@Moose nice. It's quite clear (the video) at least in my mobile phone.
@Moose One nice thing about the light weight... they don't suffer much damage in a crash.
I purchased the Phantom V1.1.1 and am thinking about getting the Syma X5SW with FPV. Does anyone have this? Does Holy Stone have an FPV version?
@sdcoil X5SW just started shipping VERY recently. I'm curious to read some reviews for it also. I'm also interested in the X9. It's basically a scaled up version of the X5.