Syma X1 4 Channel 2.4G RC Quad Copter - BumbleBee

I was completely new to RC aircraft. This was the 1st time I'd had the belief that it wouldn't be killed by my lack of coordination. So far, it is still working.#1 - calibration is needed every time the battery is pulled. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP. See the manual for the necessary steps. It took me 3 charge cycles to figure this out.#2 - The guide is Engrish - really, really bad Engrish. After re-re-re-re-reading the 2nd page with the description of the features, I still haven't a clue. Would have been nice if any reference to the numbered buttons was included. The large diagram was useable. Mode A/B ... I still haven't a clue.#3 - Fun!So I'm not at the level of being able to hover yet. Afraid to take it outside - cold and wet here.Get a few extra flying batteries. 7 minutes is just not enough time. So far none of my crashes have been bad enough to break anything.Really wish there was an On/Off switch on the Quad itself. Disconnecting the battery "off" is less than ideal.Also removed the "bee" shell.Might want to get a tiny camera or video cam to put onboard to get a different view? A nicer way to check gutters to see if they need to be cleaned? Or perhaps check the exterior for wood rot? Those are my dreams ...

This is my very first Quad Copter. I wanted something very inexpensive to even see if I enjoyed flying. For the price, this little guy delivers in spades. Extremely fun to fly and very easy to learn. Takes a few tried (and crashes) but you get the hang of it quickly. I've wrecked it on concrete tens of times and outside of some scratches its still buzzing around just fine. One of the blades bent, but I simply bent it back and its business as usual. The little guy can take a serious beating.The "trick" flip button is an EXCELLENT addition too ;-). When people stop to watch its fun to do a back-flip and a barrel-roll. Makes you look like a pro even if its just simply hitting a button.This is probably the best $35 I've spent in a long long time. I highly recommend it!---Make sure to buy a few extra batteries when you order it. You only get about 6 minutes of real fly time. You can squeeze out 10 minutes but it looses juice and becomes harder to fly on low power.

2.4 GHz for a copter of this price is amazing. We had a 16 person tournament with these where the goal was to either destroy the other helicopter with yours or cut a streamer hanging off the bottom as short as possible. I have seen a lot of these things take quite a serious beating. We were disappointingly unsuccessful at destroying these during the event. The most useful weapon was string that would take the pilot too long to untangle.The only bad thing I can really say about these is the lack of a shroud around the outside makes it not handle contact with other objects very well. If one blade touches a solid object like a wall it slows down. With the other blades still going this makes it tilt further into the wall. Non quadracopters can bounce their blades off objects, this thing however will flip into any object upon contact.I also could not "bounce" as well as I could with other copters. This involves moving in a direction, starting it rotating, cutting power, letting it rotate further than would normally be possible, then punching the throttle in order to get really high speeds. I could do this with the cheap twin rotor copters but the quad has a hard time balancing the power in that situation and it isn't stable enough to do reliably. Normal flight, when I'm not trying crazy things, is rock solid.The sensitivity button is a pretty awesome feature of this copter. I typically run on high sensitivity until I'm doing something with precision. During the tourney I would normally fly around with high sensitivity until I got ahead then I would switch to low sensitivity and hover in a narrow skylight that was hard for other pilots to reach.One caveat: pushing the sensitivity button in the middle of a flip will cancel the flip action, turn on all blades, and send the copter straight into the ground with quite a bit of force.Overall: lots of fun for the money.

After doing a lot of research on entry level Quad Copters I decided on this one. It came packaged well and looked good. I opened the package and examined the contents which were all there. I read the instruction manual, which is poorly translated, and the setup seamed pretty simple. That's when the problems began. I could not get the unit to fly correctly or hover. I got back online and discovered how poorly written the instruction manual is. There are certain steps that must be done correctly or you will have problems with this unit. Once I figured out how to correctly bond the Copter to the controller and made sure it was level I was set to go. Please remember this was my first Quad Copter and I was unfamiliar with their operation. I should have done better research on their operation and avoided this frustration. On the other hand the instruction manual is terrible and needs to be rewritten or have a link to a website that better explains the setup and operation. I was still not able to get the unit to hover and it was difficult to control. I tried the remedies I read on line but none of them worked. I am returning the Copter for a refund. If you Google this Copter about not hovering you will discover there are multiple possibilities for this problem. I don't want to spend my time fine tuning or repairing this Copter, I want to fly it. If you get one that flies correctly it would be a lot of fun. I have seen flights on YouTube and that's what I expected after some practice. If it flies right it's a good deal for the price, if it doesn't all you get is frustration. I will invest more money on a better unit next time.I have to throw a shout out to Amazon and the seller. I returned this unit with absolutely no hassles and they paid the freight. I received my refund in 3 days. Now that's customer service. I did spend a little more and purchased an X5C and was rewarded with a great flying Quad. You can read my review on that Quad if you like.