SYMA X1 Review

Expensive mid-range drones are easy to find. But is it necessary to start with them? Like we all know flying can be hard and it can take time to get use to so wouldn’t it be better to do your first crashes with a cheap drone? I believe so and that’s why this time I’m reviewing this tiny quadcopter called SYMA X1.

SYMA X1

SYMA X1 is a quadcopter developed by the company SYMA. It’s a cheap and tiny drone that costs $40. This also includes a transmitter! It is available in 3 different styles: UFO, bumble bee and spaceship.

SYMA X1 Drone Review

Initial Impression

The drone arrived in a small retail box. After taking out the drone I was actually surprised how such a cheap drone has such good quality. The SYMA X1 has 4 fixed-pitch rotors with 4 electric motors. The square tubes that hold the motors are made out of carbon fiber. At the centre of the drone is the control board and battery mount, which is covered with your chosen plastic body style. The drone weighs 68 g in total.

The package contains:

  • The SYMA X1
  • The stock transmitter TX
  • 1S 3.7v 350mAh Lipo Battery with a JST connector
  • USB charging cable
  • 4 replacement rotors
  • Instruction manual

Transmitter

The stock TX transmitter is quite basic and feels somewhat boyish. The transmitter doesn’t have a charging cable or a possibility to charge batteries in it. The transmitter itself requires 4 AA batteries. Besides the normal control sticks there are also 4 trim buttons for each channel. There are also two extra buttons at the top of the transmitter. The left one is for switching modes and the right button is for flips. PS the plastic buttons next to the LCD screen are fake and don’t do anything.

Drone transmitter

Source: symatoys.com

Flying The Drone

The first thing needed is charge the battery. DO NOT charge a unprotected lipo battery with the stock usb charging cable. This cable doesn’t know when to stop and if you use a unprotected battery it will continue charging until it explodes. The stock battery has a Over-Charge Protection so you don’t have to worry when charging the stock battery.

The first flight was done indoor. The drone is super stable and extremely easy to control. And this isn’t just the case of indoors, it was the same even outdoors! The motors are also quite quiet. Rotors are coloured black and white. The front ones are white and rear ones black. The cool thing is that you can even do flips with just a push of a button. The flight time I managed to get out of it was 8 minutes.

Another superb thing is the fail-safe feature this drone has. As soon as the radio power gets cut the X1 stops flying which means this drone won’t be flying away from you.

The thing I did notice is that the transmitter has quite a low range. I could fly the drone as far as 30 m (100 ft). If you hooked this up to a better transmitter you could fly it way further.

Pros

  • Price
  • Stable flying
  • Comes with a transmitter
  • Quiet motors
  • Light
  • Decent flying time
  • Different modes

Cons

  • Limited range
  • No GPS

Conclusion

The SYMA X1 is a lot of fun and amazing for a first quadcopter. Controlling and flying is just like any mid-high range drone and you can do all your first mistakes on it without any problems. Also lets be honest, you can’t beat the price of this drone.

SYMA X1 Review
7 Total Score
Good For First Drone

Price
10
Build Quality
5
Flight Time
6
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