Hi all,
I have been doing my research for some time now and to be honest, I am not getting any smarter the more I read...
I have been practicing on my Hubsan H107C for a couple of weeks now and I am hooked up and I would like something bigger, to do some proper outdoor photography. By no means I need a "pro" equipment, just decent quadcopter with good camera/stabilisation properties, proper range and FPV would be a nice bonus.
Here are my choices and thoughts about those:
1) Phantom 2 Vision - Seems to be the most capable out of the box set, unparalleled battery time, everything ready to fly in the package, stable hovering, flight modes ranging from gps assisted simple for amateurs and fully manual if one needs. It does seem to be a perfrect choice for me but the horror stories of fly aways are steering me away from this. I cannot justify spending 900 Euro on something that might as well just fly away and crash by itself, even if it was properly calibrated, had all the gps satelites etc.
2) Walkera QR X350 pro - strongest second contender. For 899 Dollars I can have a fully working FPV platform, iLook+ camera, fpv screen built in controller, gimball etc, or for 869 dollars a version with Devo 10 controller and external Boscam FPV image receiver. It used to be my favorite however it seems to be lacking consistancy with quality, lower flight times and no quality low voltage protection, worse quality of materials. Seems to be more "raw", though, faster and for the money, offering better image stability (gimbal) and cheaper batterries/parts.
3) 3dr Iris+ - This newcommer will offer worse equipment than Vision, out of the box. For the price of Vision you get just the RTF quad plus a Tarot gimbal, so you are missing the camera (possibly go pro) and whole FPV capabilities. What you get is more autonomous quad, based on open platform, nice modes like "follow me" or "circle" mode, plus you basically get all the other modes that phantom offers. It seems to offer a bit worse battery life and might be a bit more difficult to understand and set up, but more advanced features might be a worthy advantages to follow this path.
4) Parrot Bebop - a bit more like a toy, with only 12 minutes advertised time, however there are some things I fancy. It will most likely cost less than Vision (even with the SkyController) and offer similar functionality. Having GPS + Glonass + Gallileo should mean it will have the best precision and hopefully no fly aways. Other things I like is the fact, I can play with it with my phone or hook up the advanced controller if I want to do some serious flying. What I don't like, on the other hand, is that it heavily relies on Android/IOS app, which might be problematic.
5) Rclogger NovaX - Not really much known at this point, other than they are finalizing the firmware and the quad should be a good one, heavily relying on peoples' feedback and opinions.
Now, I won't lie to you, the most important factor for me at this point is to have an equipment, that has the least probability to go crazy by itself (fly away) and crash, aside from user error. I don't care if it crashes by my mistake, my fault and I will live with that, however flyaways without possibility to control the quad because of some glitch - not acceptable for me. You may as well say that if not acceptable, than I should stay away from this hobby, but I presume some platforms are more stable than others so I would like to hear your opinion as some of you most likely fly other things than Phantoms.
Second most important factor is the image quality but this is very similar among all of them, as I can hook up a camera of my choice to a gimbal on either of them, aside from Phantom Vision.
How would you approach buying your first FPV quad, if you had to do it from scratch and you would not like to do any tinkering and too much assembly?
Would you buy Phantom 2 again, or would you buy something else, maybe something I mentioned above?
Thanks!
I have been doing my research for some time now and to be honest, I am not getting any smarter the more I read...
I have been practicing on my Hubsan H107C for a couple of weeks now and I am hooked up and I would like something bigger, to do some proper outdoor photography. By no means I need a "pro" equipment, just decent quadcopter with good camera/stabilisation properties, proper range and FPV would be a nice bonus.
Here are my choices and thoughts about those:
1) Phantom 2 Vision - Seems to be the most capable out of the box set, unparalleled battery time, everything ready to fly in the package, stable hovering, flight modes ranging from gps assisted simple for amateurs and fully manual if one needs. It does seem to be a perfrect choice for me but the horror stories of fly aways are steering me away from this. I cannot justify spending 900 Euro on something that might as well just fly away and crash by itself, even if it was properly calibrated, had all the gps satelites etc.
2) Walkera QR X350 pro - strongest second contender. For 899 Dollars I can have a fully working FPV platform, iLook+ camera, fpv screen built in controller, gimball etc, or for 869 dollars a version with Devo 10 controller and external Boscam FPV image receiver. It used to be my favorite however it seems to be lacking consistancy with quality, lower flight times and no quality low voltage protection, worse quality of materials. Seems to be more "raw", though, faster and for the money, offering better image stability (gimbal) and cheaper batterries/parts.
3) 3dr Iris+ - This newcommer will offer worse equipment than Vision, out of the box. For the price of Vision you get just the RTF quad plus a Tarot gimbal, so you are missing the camera (possibly go pro) and whole FPV capabilities. What you get is more autonomous quad, based on open platform, nice modes like "follow me" or "circle" mode, plus you basically get all the other modes that phantom offers. It seems to offer a bit worse battery life and might be a bit more difficult to understand and set up, but more advanced features might be a worthy advantages to follow this path.
4) Parrot Bebop - a bit more like a toy, with only 12 minutes advertised time, however there are some things I fancy. It will most likely cost less than Vision (even with the SkyController) and offer similar functionality. Having GPS + Glonass + Gallileo should mean it will have the best precision and hopefully no fly aways. Other things I like is the fact, I can play with it with my phone or hook up the advanced controller if I want to do some serious flying. What I don't like, on the other hand, is that it heavily relies on Android/IOS app, which might be problematic.
5) Rclogger NovaX - Not really much known at this point, other than they are finalizing the firmware and the quad should be a good one, heavily relying on peoples' feedback and opinions.
Now, I won't lie to you, the most important factor for me at this point is to have an equipment, that has the least probability to go crazy by itself (fly away) and crash, aside from user error. I don't care if it crashes by my mistake, my fault and I will live with that, however flyaways without possibility to control the quad because of some glitch - not acceptable for me. You may as well say that if not acceptable, than I should stay away from this hobby, but I presume some platforms are more stable than others so I would like to hear your opinion as some of you most likely fly other things than Phantoms.
Second most important factor is the image quality but this is very similar among all of them, as I can hook up a camera of my choice to a gimbal on either of them, aside from Phantom Vision.
How would you approach buying your first FPV quad, if you had to do it from scratch and you would not like to do any tinkering and too much assembly?
Would you buy Phantom 2 again, or would you buy something else, maybe something I mentioned above?
Thanks!