Holy Stone's X300C FPV Quadcopter is a nice little quad but I cannot recommend this for FPV flying. The FPV uses wifi which is inherently laggy, has a limited range and can cut in and out. FPV flying is hard enough but these are the issues I experienced when I reviewed this product. If you want to fly FPV, then it will set you back several hundred to get a quality setup up and to get up and running.
To be candid, I did receive a sample for review purposes. I try to be as honest and unbiased as I can be and look to shoot it to everyone straight. What follows are my thoughts and opinions on this product for everyone's consideration.
All is not lost, as I found a neat workaround for the FPV and the quad flies great and has some nice features. Unlike quads that have a camera, this one will let you take photos and videos of images in real time. No more worrying if you got the right shot with this guy. I found this to be a nice little saving grace which is an advantage over non-FPV quads with cameras. I can recommend this as a beginner quad for folks looking to get into flying drones. Starting out with what you get, you get the basic items in the box. You get the quad, an extra set of prop blades, a removable prop guard, a little Phillips screwdriver, shades (which weren't necessary in my opinion), two 750 mAh Li-Po batteries, two chargers, the transmitter and a nice illustrated instruction manual. You need a smartphone and you will need to download a free app (IOS & Android compatible). Heed the manufacturers advice on the product description as far as giving it rests in between flights and limiting the current to your chargers. The chargers need to be plugged into a computer (0.5A). Holy Stone makes a high speed, high current charger that will charge your batteries faster and will also plug into a wall USB charging station which is what I have in my kitchen for charging all of my electronics.
The quad was quick and responsive in flight and easy to control. The transmitter can be setup in either Mode 1 or Mode 2, which is left hand throttle (Mode 2) or right hand throttle (Mode 1) which is more common in Europe. There are three modes but they really only act like two. The first mode is beginner with limited flight envelope characteristics. I recommend everyone start out in this mode until they get a handle on how this quad flies. The next mode is intermediate, which is really quite fun to fly-in especially if you have flown quads before and know a little bit about what you are doing. The third mode is experienced or expert but it is essentially the same as intermediate with flips thrown in. Once you go over 95% in forward, backward, left or right the quad will do a flip in that direction. This is ok but I would have preferred a more aggressive flight envelope to really let this quad rip. Instead, I got a quad trying to do flips in the middle of the road when a car came down my street. It has headless mode and A Key back (auto home) but I don't really recommend these modes as it doesn't teach you how to fly a quad. I also don't want something without GPS trying to come back to me in the middle of my neighborhood with trees all around me. The flips were nice and tight, this quad has great recovery on the flips.
Some other things I liked about this quad
-Easily removable prop guard
-Get an extra battery
-Motors were designed to be easily replaced without soldering
-App worked nicely, was free and worked fine the first time. Turn on quad, find wifi, connect, open app, hit monitor and you are ready to roll
Some things I didn't like about this quad
-FPV, can be done, not impossible but just not as easy as a beginner would like. This needs to be done in a safe area as it would be real easy to crash or lose your quad when first starting out flying FPV.
-Transmitter sticks came out, perhaps for packaging but a poor design. One fell under my car but luckily I was able to recover it. I suggest some krazy glue to lock them in place. If you lose one, you might want to try shoving a Q-tip in there and then using that. Not exactly going to impress your friends but I wanted to put that in because I did actually think about it.
I hope this has helped shed some light on this quad and whether or not it is right for you. Like I said before, I was provided a sample but I tried to shoot it to everyone straight.
