I compare the biggest and most popular F3 based multirotor flight control boards and give you the information you need to decide which one is best for you. If you're going to fly a drone racing quadcopter or fpv acro multirotor, you need a flight controller that is going to deliver serious performance. The good news is that ALL OF THESE BOARDS will run Cleanflight or Betaflight, which means EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM should fly equally well. That means that the only thing differentiating them is convenience features like extra UARTs, board layout, ease of build, reliability, and of course price. These are the exact factors that I discuss in this video.
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IMPORTANT! Here is something I missed in this video. Both the Lux and the Cyclone lack a CP210 chip for their USB-to-serial conversion. Instead, they use a Virtual COM Port like the CC3D. This means that whenever the board reboots, the COM port goes away. Some people find this annoying because it takes some time for the O/S to restart the COM. Also, on some Windows machines, the COM port doesn't come back until you plug and un-plug the board. Other people don't find it inconvenient at all and wonder what all the fuss is about--it just takes a little longer to come back after you save changes.
I say in the video that all F3 boards run through a VCP, but that isn't true. Some of them have the CP210 chip on board to let them act like a legit USB device. Only the Lux and Cyclone use a VCP.
Another side effect of VCP is that BLHeli passthrough does not work on the USB port. Rather, you have to connect an FTDI adapter to a UART. It is my understanding that support for proper (USB port) BLHeli passthrough on the Lux is currently under development, so this situation may change in the near future, but for now, this is the state of things as I understand it. UPDATE: As of Betaflight 2.6.1, BLHeli passthrough now works over VCP.
