How to Choose your first FPV drone

With so many different types of FPV drones and options on the market, you might be confused when choosing your first FPV drone. Luckily for you, we’ve broken them down into categories for you! Hopefully we can help you decide the right model for you.

As always, please contact us if you need help choosing!

Freestyle / Acro Drones

We’ll cover these ones first because it’s the most popular category and what most people are looking for when they say they want to perform 180km/hr dives and tight air-acrobatics which a DJI Mavic won’t let you do.

FPV Freestyle is a form of FPV drone flying where the sky is literally the limit – you have the power, agility, and control to capture any footage you want. For most pilots, it’s not about the footage though. Freestyle is the freedom to soar and explore exciting destinations by air and squeeze through tight gaps while doing a yaw spin.

Here’s one of our favourites, Le Drib from Rotor Riot doing what he does best.

Freestyle Drones come in many sizes, but most pilots use 5-inch models due to their power and perfect size for attaching GoPros and other action cameras.

Our favourite Freestyle models use the following frames:

CineWhoops and Ducted Drones

CineWhoop drones have large ducts covering the propellers which make them ideal for flying in close proximity spaces and capturing footage without the worry of crashing and breaking the propellers.

CineWhoops typically use 3-inch propellers and almost always have a GoPro or action camera mounted to the top to capture HD footage. They are slow models, but stable enough to fly around people and property with low risk of injury or damage.

The result is a agile model which can capture shots which would typically be near impossible for a standard 5-inch or freestyle drone to capture

Here’s some of our favourite CineWhoop models:

Cruiser / Long-Range Drones

Cruisers and long-range drones often use many of the same components as freestyle models with a few exceptions. They also come in larger sizes such as models which use 7-inch propellers for better efficiency. Long range drones will include a long-range RC link system such as the TBS Crossfire, which has be known to cover up to 40km in range.

We use larger batteries on models designed for extended distances as the high power is not needed for agility. GPS modules can also be installed for increased reliability in the event of signal loss.

Our favourite long-range models are custom built and use these products:

FPV Racing Drones

Racing Drones are designed to be extremely light-weight and powerful. Every gram of weight added is usually considered when building them. Racers like to use carbon frames with very thick arms to prevent them from snapping in the event of a crash. As you can imagine, these drones get pushed around racetracks at ridiculously fast speeds and get crashed even harder.

Models designed for racing often use smaller components such as 20x20mm stacks instead of the normal 30.5mm stacks and micro FPV cameras for their weight.

View our full range of products in the Designed For Racing collection:

Micro and Indoor Drones

Micro and indoor drones, often known as ‘whoops’ exploded in popularity in 2018 after US company TinyWhoop opened shop and started manufacturing brushed motor micro drones with propeller sizes of just 31mm.

Since then, whoops have evolved through various interations of brushless models. Emax launched the first TinyHawk model in late 2018 which completely revolutionised the micro drone scene. The TinyHawk 2, Freestyle, and Race models shortly followed.

Many pilots that have larger 5-inch freestyle and other drones will have a micro whoop for rainy days and indoor racing in the winter months. Micro drones are usually ducted which makes them perfect for flying around the house without causing any damage in a crash!

Many beginners like to start on these models due to their low cost and ease of flying. Micro drones are often bundled in Ready to fly (RTF) packages which include everything you need to fly.

Keen to start flying FPV with a Micro Drone? View our range below