Review Details

Monster Pack! Upgraded Syma X5C-1 X5C Quadcopter Drone Mode 2 With Camera

Product Review (submitted on January 11, 2016):

A rock solid, cheap drone perfect for learning how to fly. Crashed countless times and even without the supplied prop guards, it still performs just as good the day we got it. Range is decent but not great, but is more than enough for an inexperienced flyer. I get around 100m flying distance straight up, and around 40 laterally. There are no battery/signal strength indicators on the control, (the ones shown are fake) and the drone after around its 10 minutes flying time gives you just 5 seconds or so of of warning whilst the quadcopter is still controllable, before falling out of the sky. However, since its range is so limited, as long as you are flying in an open area, this isn't too big an issue. Its gyro stabilising system works well to keep the drone horizontal no matter what and is very effective to the point where it will correct its orientation before hitting the ground if you drop it upside down from head height. However this system does not counter the wind and this drone will drift easily despite staying level. Surprisingly, it also does a good job of keeping its directional orientation and rarely do you need to correct it even in high winds. It has two modes “low” and “high”, this simply increases the attitude at which the quad tilts - which I interpret as “indoors" and “outdoors” - as in the low mode, it can be difficult to counter the wind. The camera is decent and angled perfectly and the supplied 4gb micro sd card is ample for several flights worth of recordings. The controls for controlling the start/stop of recording and taking photos are not clearly labelled however and are a bit finicky to use but do the job. It can also do a 360 flip with a press of a button.
Overall this is a great starter drone, and for the price you can't really go wrong with it.