My First "Toy" Drone Experience - Ended Badly

I found myself browsing Amazon on Prime Day and scored an Amazon Fire Stick for $20. A toy drone, with camera popped up on the suggested items and I clicked it out of curiosity. The next thing I knew I was checking out with the drone in my cart. What was it you ask? A DBPower X400W.

My first impression of the drone when I received it was honestly rather impressed. It was built, what I thought decently, although extremely light. It required some light assembly (only because I wanted to put the prop guards on, I knew I would crash it), I breezed rather quickly through the manual and outside I went.

My first several flights were actually pretty flawless. I zipped it around the yard and around trees, flew up over my house and captured some video. The quality of the video however is poor. It only shoots in 720p so the footage is grainy. However what do you expect with an entry level drone for under 60 bucks. My other gripe about the camera is the feed. The Wi-Fi drops in and out constantly. After about 12 flights the camera and Wi-Fi on my drone stopped working all together and I had to reach out to the company to request a new camera. DBPower was awesome though as they sent me another drone to fix the problem.

Battery life is only 5-8 minutes depending on how you fly it, so if you are just getting into drone flying and want something to practice on, this is an ok unit but buy some extra batteries.

Fast forward to the second drone I received. Call it cockiness or whatever. I went outside and took off to capture some video of my house and the surrounding foothills where I live. There was no wind to be felt. Once I got the drone above the trees it proceeded to fly wherever it wanted to go. I tried to fight it and almost got it back to my yard when it disappeared and the footage cut out. I should have killed it and let it fall to the ground taking my chances but I thought I could recover it. Lesson learned.

In the end, I still have the original drone minus the camera since it doesn't work. If anyone is considering purchasing this drone for themselves, don't fly it too high. You will only be disappointed when you end up with a controller and no drone to go with it. At its simplest form, the X400W is a great drone to learn the basics of flying and how not to crash. I wouldn't put much confidence in the subpar camera.