Good compact drone for beginners
4
Michael
I unpacked my Holy Stone HS165 and was immediately struck by it’s size. When folded the drone has the footprint of a standard cell phone and at 174 gm doesn’t weigh much more. I could easily slip it into my pocket. It comes with a nice case that’s very small and laid out just as you would like, with fitted compartments for the drone, the remote and the batteries. It has a mesh zippered pocket to hold all the usual extras, charging cables, spare propellers, User Manual and even the cute pocket notebook from Holy Stone. The whole package easily fits in a backpack, should you want to take it on a hike.
After charging the two batteries and the remote I went flying. Initially there was some vibration at one of the motors and I was going to change the propellers but after a couple of flights it smoothed out and thereafter was fine. Here are my thoughts from my multiple test flights.
The Pros:
I really love the small package. Great for portability. The whole package in the case weighs less than 2 lbs. And at only 174 gm the drone does not need to be registered with the FAA.
The HS165 supports Headless Mode which makes it great for beginners, the real target audience for this drone. It also supports the usual GPS-related features such as return-to-home and special flight modes for video.
The arms unfold and snap into place with a satisfying “snap” and I like the landing pegs under each propeller which gives the drone a nice stable footprint on the ground. As long as the grass isn’t too tall I can almost always take off from it’s landing position. Other drones sometimes fall over after landing on irregular ground.
Initially, I had some difficulty in getting the compass calibrated correctly. The drone would refuse to hover in one spot, continually making circles around the take off point. But I repeated the calibration multiple times and eventually it worked perfectly (no doubt operator error). At take off it hovers at about 5 feet within a foot of my landing pad. Excellent accuracy. When flying it will hover accurately at any location. It seems to be very stable.
The drone is very quiet in flight. And maybe the pitch of the sound is just right because it seems to attract numerous hummingbirds. It’s nice to share the airspace.
I initially thought the rather clunky-looking, very basic remote would be a con but it’s shape actually makes it nice to hold when my heavy iPhone 6S Plus is in the holder, counterbalancing the weight of the phone better than some other remotes. By the way, my 6S Plus fits nicely in the holder even with its case on, a plus.
The images and video from the drone are stored on the phone in full resolution, 1920x1088 in the case of images. This makes it nice for sharing. Many other drones save only low resolution images on your phone which means you have to go through the extra step of downloading the full resolution images from the microSD card.
Videos are stored on the microSD card in mp4 format, which is very nice. This is much better than others that save videos as avi files which may require a separate conversion step before they can be utilized on your computer. The drone also has some nice video shooting modes like follow-me and circle-fly.
There are two speeds. The slow speed is great for beginners and the HS165 is pretty zippy on the second speed, more so than I was expecting from a low cost camera drone. This makes it both easy and fun to fly.
The Cons:
Battery life is much worse than I was expecting. With normal flying a battery lasts about 8 minutes till the Drone Low Voltage message and continues flying to about the 10 minute mark when the propellers won’t even turn. This short flying time is definitely disappointing and unexpected in a drone in this price range.
Of the two speeds, the first speed is more of a beginner flying speed. Unfortunately, this is a bit too fast to enable good video. Since the camera is fixed and not gimbaled it is difficult to make slow smooth pans. A third, even slower speed would be most helpful for camera work.
The iPhone app has large text which makes it much easier to read when sunlight washes out the phone screen and it seems to work well with one anomaly, when RTH is in progress the status bar in the upper left of the screen displays the status in Chinese, not English. The remote is beeping so the loss of usable status in the app is not that serious.
Things to be aware of:
Return To Home works somewhat differently than many other drones in that you can’t modify the return altitude, which is fixed at 20 meters, unless the drone is already above that height in which case it stays at its current altitude. This could become an issue in the event of low voltage RTH or lose of connection RTH, particularly if you are flying in an area of tall trees or buildings. RTH accuracy seems to be good though. In the times I tried it the landing was always within a few feet of the landing pad.
The fixed camera with its wide angle lens means you can’t take a shot with the horizon level. In fact, you have to fly quite high to get the horizon in the picture at all. And since the camera is pointed down the horizon will be curved. By the same token it doesn’t point straight down so you can’t really get that view either. If the camera could at least be manually tilted that would increase the range of pictures the drone can take. But I don’t consider the camera limitations to be a serious flaw since the HS165 is not really intended to be a platform for camera and video work.
In Summary:
I would classify the Holy Stone HS165 as a beginner, learn-to-fly drone with an added camera to add some interest. The compact, light weight package makes it really easy to take with you anywhere, it’s fun to fly and easy to control. I would give it a top rating were it not for its one serious flaw, its short battery life.
After charging the two batteries and the remote I went flying. Initially there was some vibration at one of the motors and I was going to change the propellers but after a couple of flights it smoothed out and thereafter was fine. Here are my thoughts from my multiple test flights.
The Pros:
I really love the small package. Great for portability. The whole package in the case weighs less than 2 lbs. And at only 174 gm the drone does not need to be registered with the FAA.
The HS165 supports Headless Mode which makes it great for beginners, the real target audience for this drone. It also supports the usual GPS-related features such as return-to-home and special flight modes for video.
The arms unfold and snap into place with a satisfying “snap” and I like the landing pegs under each propeller which gives the drone a nice stable footprint on the ground. As long as the grass isn’t too tall I can almost always take off from it’s landing position. Other drones sometimes fall over after landing on irregular ground.
Initially, I had some difficulty in getting the compass calibrated correctly. The drone would refuse to hover in one spot, continually making circles around the take off point. But I repeated the calibration multiple times and eventually it worked perfectly (no doubt operator error). At take off it hovers at about 5 feet within a foot of my landing pad. Excellent accuracy. When flying it will hover accurately at any location. It seems to be very stable.
The drone is very quiet in flight. And maybe the pitch of the sound is just right because it seems to attract numerous hummingbirds. It’s nice to share the airspace.
I initially thought the rather clunky-looking, very basic remote would be a con but it’s shape actually makes it nice to hold when my heavy iPhone 6S Plus is in the holder, counterbalancing the weight of the phone better than some other remotes. By the way, my 6S Plus fits nicely in the holder even with its case on, a plus.
The images and video from the drone are stored on the phone in full resolution, 1920x1088 in the case of images. This makes it nice for sharing. Many other drones save only low resolution images on your phone which means you have to go through the extra step of downloading the full resolution images from the microSD card.
Videos are stored on the microSD card in mp4 format, which is very nice. This is much better than others that save videos as avi files which may require a separate conversion step before they can be utilized on your computer. The drone also has some nice video shooting modes like follow-me and circle-fly.
There are two speeds. The slow speed is great for beginners and the HS165 is pretty zippy on the second speed, more so than I was expecting from a low cost camera drone. This makes it both easy and fun to fly.
The Cons:
Battery life is much worse than I was expecting. With normal flying a battery lasts about 8 minutes till the Drone Low Voltage message and continues flying to about the 10 minute mark when the propellers won’t even turn. This short flying time is definitely disappointing and unexpected in a drone in this price range.
Of the two speeds, the first speed is more of a beginner flying speed. Unfortunately, this is a bit too fast to enable good video. Since the camera is fixed and not gimbaled it is difficult to make slow smooth pans. A third, even slower speed would be most helpful for camera work.
The iPhone app has large text which makes it much easier to read when sunlight washes out the phone screen and it seems to work well with one anomaly, when RTH is in progress the status bar in the upper left of the screen displays the status in Chinese, not English. The remote is beeping so the loss of usable status in the app is not that serious.
Things to be aware of:
Return To Home works somewhat differently than many other drones in that you can’t modify the return altitude, which is fixed at 20 meters, unless the drone is already above that height in which case it stays at its current altitude. This could become an issue in the event of low voltage RTH or lose of connection RTH, particularly if you are flying in an area of tall trees or buildings. RTH accuracy seems to be good though. In the times I tried it the landing was always within a few feet of the landing pad.
The fixed camera with its wide angle lens means you can’t take a shot with the horizon level. In fact, you have to fly quite high to get the horizon in the picture at all. And since the camera is pointed down the horizon will be curved. By the same token it doesn’t point straight down so you can’t really get that view either. If the camera could at least be manually tilted that would increase the range of pictures the drone can take. But I don’t consider the camera limitations to be a serious flaw since the HS165 is not really intended to be a platform for camera and video work.
In Summary:
I would classify the Holy Stone HS165 as a beginner, learn-to-fly drone with an added camera to add some interest. The compact, light weight package makes it really easy to take with you anywhere, it’s fun to fly and easy to control. I would give it a top rating were it not for its one serious flaw, its short battery life.