This video is sponsored by AirHogs who provided the Airhogs DR1 Drone Racing Toys for review and our thoughts. Unlike a most of the gear and products we’ve done videos on which a clearly geared to someone already in the Hobby, this is a toy grade product designed for kids to play with and get a taste of what drone racing and FPV is all about.
Airhogs and Thomas go way back in that he used to have many of their aircraft toys, like their pump up free flight gliders etc, so its pretty cool seeing them target the Drone Race Scene. I imagine this is the sort of toy that will get younger kids interested in the FPV Scene and make the hobby even more main stream. This is the sort of thing that will get more people the opportunity to get a taste of what Drone Racing is all about.
The two products include the DR1 Micro Racing Drone and the DR1 FPV Racing Drone.
DR1 Micro Racing Drone
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This is a really cool product in that it flies really well and is more than enough to teach kids to learn to fly. It’s very light and as such should be pretty difficult to actually break. Keep in mind both Thomas and I are Mode 1 Pilots and these are both Mode 2. So we kept putting in wrong inputs and crashing over and over again, without breaking it.
Flight time is very dependant on how aggressively you fly it, if it’s indoors or out doors with wind. They only come in mode 2 format (Throttle on the Left Stick) which isn’t really an issue since most people fly Mode 2 anyway and if you’re getting your first taste in FPV then the transition to full blown FPV will be a lot easier in that you’ll have more people you can get help from.
The DR1 Drone Series don’t come with interchangeable batteries, so once the battery is flat you have to wait for it to charge and then you can fly again. Having said that, this is a comparison being made to hobby grade toys so probably not fair.
DR1 FPV Racing Drone
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Firstly this isn’t a Tinywhoop so you’re not going to be flying very far away, but having said that it’s perfect for flying in the house and exploring and even racing. The video link is via your mobile device such as an Android Phone or iOS, so hence the limited range. The app is able to record and take photos directly to your phone which is cool.
Flying FPV with the Head set on, we found a little difficult but that’s probably because we’re both used to flying with FPV Goggles on with a smaller field of view. Even though there is a reasonable amount of latency between your inputs and what you see in the goggles it’s not too bad if you’re not flying too fast.
All in all Thomas was able to get to the stage where he was able to fly it FPV in Mode 2 which isn’t too bad when you consider how long we’ve been flying Mode 1.
Conclusion
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The FPV Drone is the harder of the two to rate since it’s so close to the FPV gear we use with some limitations. Having said that, these are toys and both of which do give the user a taste of what it would be like to actually FPV a real racing quad, so I think this is a big plus for the hobby. All in all Airhogs have done a great job with the line up and I expect come Christmas time it will get a lot more people interested in the awesome FPV Hobby.
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