My kids got an inexpensive miniture RC helicopter for Christmas and we really enjoy flying it.
We’d like to get an inexpensive drone.
Tell me about your experiences!
I got this one for some of the grandkids at Christmas, and we all had a good time playing with it that day. The dogs hated it though! It charges up quick, and makes a fairly annoying noise when it flies. You don’t really control the flight, but it sensed when it was approaching an obstacle and would change direction.
Someone gave me a small drone similar to this. Not that exact one, but I suspect most of these things in this price range are near identical.
It works. That’s about the best thing I can say about it. Extremely difficult to control, but it’s survived all of my wrecks, so that’s something I suppose. Only few minutes of flight at a time. Fun to mess with the cats, but the fun to be had is pretty limited.
If the kids are not too young, there are little palm-sized plastic remote-controlled ones that fly for a few minutes on a charge. They are multi-rotor helicopter configurations, but the remote control uses its own simple control system so you or the kids don’t need to know how to pilot a helicopter.
ETA like that little quad-copter mini-drone, exactly
Be careful where you fly the damn things. I know almost nothing about drones except the following admonitory tale. My six-year-old nephew had his for exactly five minutes before he got it stuck between the roof and an overhanging branch about twenty feet off the ground. He had to be physically restrained from trying to climb a tree to get on the roof to retrieve it. It finally came down in a windstorm a week or two later. I never heard if it still worked after getting rained on and battered about by the wind.
My six year old nephew got one and he loves it, I’ve gotten more videos of him using his drone than of him playing with any other toy over the years
I have an earlier version of this one and it works pretty well. It is small enough that I only fly it indoors.
We bought thisone, which works fine inside the apartment. It’s about the size of a baseball.
We also bought a larger one for under $100 that we keep at my inlaws where there is more room outdoors.
To be honest, I don’t see my 5 year old son flying them himself anytime soon. I can barely control them. The larger one I got stuck in a tree on it’s first flight (my son’s suggestion was “CUT DOWN THE TREE!”.
Ironically, the more expensive ones might actually be better for kids than the “disposable” drones we’ve bought. I think because they are larger and have better avionics, they are easier to control and don’t get buffeted by slight breezes as much. Like the professional ones more or less fly themselves. Then again, you are also out $500 if your kid lands it in a tree.
The Syma X5c was my introduction to quadcopters/drones. Not too expensive for what they do. You do need some room to fly them to their full potential.