There are a lot of different types of drones available. If you’re in the market for your first drone, or you’re looking to buy one as a gift for someone, you’re probably feeling pretty overwhelmed. And the prices are all over the place. So I’m here to help you out!

Click here to see the video I created on this topic.

I’m going to help you make a decision, but I’m going to help you out the RIGHT way. If I just gave you a list of drones to buy, well, that’s not that helpful. I don’t know your particular needs. Instead, I’m going to go over the essential features that ALL drones need to have for a good flying experience, and then you’ll be armed with the tools to make your own decisions. And at the end of this article, I will suggest some different drones in different price ranges, so you have a starting point.

By the way, no one is paying me to suggest any particular drone, and no one has sent me any free merchandise in exchange for mentioning them. This is all based on my personal experience and research.

Here’s something to consider: if you spend $500 on a drone, you get to fly a $500 drone. If you spend $100 on a drone, you might be throwing that $100 away. The reason is your cheap drone might just decide to keep flying and never come back!

Generally, the more you spend on a drone, the more features it includes that will prevent you from losing or damaging it. The struggle is to find out how much money is “just enough”.

GPS

Which brings us to our first essential feature that every drone should have: GPS.

You use GPS, or Global Positioning System, every time you find your way across town using your phone’s mapping. Many drones have built-in GPS as well. This is really important because it tells the drone where it is on the planet. If your drone loses connection with your controller, it can use GPS to find its way home. 

More sophisticated drones can integrate maps so you can get a better sense of where it is, and they can even log the drone’s last location if it crashes or runs out of battery power. But even if your drone only uses GPS to find its way back to you, this is a valuable insurance policy.

Make sure that the drone’s GPS is reliable though. If the drone loses signal with your controller AND it can’t pick up a GPS signal, it will likely just keep flying until it hits something or falls to the ground.

How do you do this? First, go on YouTube and search for the specific brand and model of the drone you’re interested in. See what the reviewers say. While not all reviews are honest, they’re more likely to tell you that the drone ran away from them. 

Also, check the 1-star reviews on the drone on shopping sites. There will always be complainers about any product, but if there are a number of complaints about the drone flying off uncontrollably, you should consider a different model.

Camera

The second feature your drone absolutely needs is a camera that will display video live, as you’re flying it. Even if you don’t plan on taking photos or video with your drone, you still need to see where you are. If the drone doesn’t have a camera, you are limited in how far you can fly it. Without a camera, even flying it across the park is risky.

Just like drones, cameras come in all price ranges and levels of quality. In fact, many expensive drones are expensive BECAUSE of their cameras. So…do you need a budget camera for just seeing where you're going? Were you hoping to take a few photos to post on social media? Or were you hoping to record professional aerial film sequences?

Some drones just send a live signal back to your phone, and the drone app displays the video and maybe does the recording. This is going to be the lowest quality because the live signal doesn’t have a lot of bandwidth. You’re also likely to have video dropouts and other glitches that result from transmitting the video. 

More expensive drones also record the video to an SD card, so that you can access the full-resolution data when it returns. If you’re hoping to share your photos or video with the world, this is a must-have.

$300 seems to be the minimum price point for acceptable video quality, with $500 and up getting you into the (semi-) professional zone. Below $300 and the drone cameras tend to have pretty poor quality. The camera can have lots of chromatic aberration that makes the edges of things purple, and the camera footage can be pretty shaky. If you’re just shooting photos, then the shakiness is not an issue. However, the image quality still is.

Watch out for dishonest ads when it comes to image quality! Some ads mislead you into thinking the camera has more resolution than it does. 4k video is better than 1080p video, for example. However, many drones have 4k video quality for photos, but only 1080p resolution for video. Guess which one they’re going to advertise? 4k! If the drone ad says 4K in it, dive deep to see if that’s the video resolution. 

Resolution isn’t everything though. It’s possible to have a legitimately 4K camera that still looks bad. If video and photo quality is important to you, find examples of your drone on YouTube. If the quality isn’t what you’re looking for, then you’ll have to keep shopping.

I know I keep coming back to YouTUbe, but it really is a great resource. If the drone you’re considering isn’t reviewed on YouTube…skip it. It’s not worth the risk.

A good camera can still look bad if the video is shaky. Drones move around a lot in the sky, even when hovering in one spot. The cheapest drones don’t do anything to counteract this, and the video can be almost unwatchable.

As you move up the price ladder, you get drones that have some sort of electronic stabilization built in. This means they try to counteract the movement of the drone by shifting pixels around on the image. This can work pretty well for very minor movement but falls apart when the drone is buffeted by winds or changes direction quickly.

For near-perfect image stabilization, your drone needs the camera to be mounted on a gimbal. This is a set of arms that allows the camera to move in two or three directions. As the drone moves one way, the gimbal moves the camera the other way, keeping it in the same position. As you might expect, drones with gimbals are more expensive than those without. Is a gimbal essential for drone flying? No. Is it essential for cinema-grade videography? Yes.

Phone Integration

The next essential feature you need to consider is how well the drone integrates with your phone. Seeing a live feed while you’re flying is important. But the QUALITY of that live feed might mean the difference between crashing your drone or not. Let me explain.

Some drones connect to either your phone or the controller, but not both. Other drones connect to your phone and the controller, but are using the phone’s wifi to talk to the drone. This can lead to lag, which means your drone might take several seconds to react to a command. This can be a problem, for example, if you’re trying to avoid a tree!

The more expensive drones use 5 Ghz technology for a more reliable signal, with controllers that have larger antennas built in. The controller connects to the drone, and the phone is only used to display the video feed and to send commands via the controller. The phone doesn’t connect directly to the drone because that tends to be a weaker, less reliable way to connect.

Battery Life

I’m not going to cover every single conceivable feature you might find on a drone because many of them are not essential for the first-time drone buyer. But there is one more feature I have to insist on: battery life. Don’t buy a drone that has a battery life of less than 20 minutes. If you do, you’re going to get very frustrated.

Drone manufacturers sometimes overstate the battery life of their drones by quite a bit. Often, the stated battery times were measured in completely motionless air, under ideal temperature conditions. In other words, not the real world! So 20 minutes becomes 15 minutes in real life. You aren’t going to use all the battery power during a flight though, or your drone will crash. Therefore, 15 minutes becomes 10 minutes, and then you’re spending as much time launching and landing as you are flying.

Read the ads carefully! Sometimes, drone manufacturers will include two batteries with the drone and then claim that the flying time is twice as long as it really is. This is disingenuous though because you can’t change batteries in mid-flight! 

What to Buy: Over $300

Let’s talk about some possible options, depending on your budget. 

I do want to reiterate that no manufacturer is compensating me in any way for these recommendations. If one of these drones sounds interesting, I encourage you to use the affiliate link for it that I’ve included in this article. It doesn’t cost you anything, and it helps me continue to bring you good video content.

If high-quality video is a priority for you, then there are three manufacturers I can recommend. Basically, any drone from these companies will be more than enough for the beginning drone enthusiast. 

The least-expensive drone that I would consider for serious aerial photography or video is the DJI Mini SE. It currently costs $300 and has a 2K camera. While the camera isn’t as good as the more expensive DJI products, it’s good enough to use on YouTube and other social media platforms. It also has very sophisticated features to help you avoid losing or crashing it.

Check prices on the DJI Mini SE.

At around $450, you can get a DJI Mini 2. This offers 4k video and additional features, and I use this drone all the time for when I need something light, yet high quality. It’s great for squeezing into a backpack on a long hike.

Check prices on the DJI Mini 2.

Beyond that, you have the Mini 3 Pro, which is the same size but even higher quality and costs just under a $800. Beyond that, you get into much bigger drones, costing thousands of dollars. Bigger cameras, more collision sensors, more flying time…you get what you pay for.

Check prices on the Mini 3 Pro.

Autel Robotics also makes a line of drones, and anything you buy from them will have all the essential features I’ve mentioned. You have the EVO Nano and Nano Plus, which are under a thousand dollars. In the over-1K price range, there’s the EVO Lite and the Lite Plus, as well as the EVO 2 Pro.

Check prices on the Autel EVO Nano.
Check prices on the Autel Nano Plus.
Check prices on the Autel Lite Plus.
Check prices on the Autel EVO 2 Pro.

Skydio also makes a range of drones, and their entry-level Skydio 2+ comes in at just under a thousand dollars. It has a stellar camera and some innovative self-flying features that set it apart from others. The top of their range is the Skydio 2+ Pro.

Check prices on the Skydio 2+ Pro.

So, DJI, Autel, Skydio…you can’t go wrong with anything these companies sell. But they all cost a lot of money. What if you don’t want to spend $300? 

What to Buy: Under $300

You still have options! It just means that you’re going to sacrifice some quality, most notably with the camera and collision avoidance. You also have to weed through a lot of unknown manufacturers, some with dubious reputations. Please do some research before buying!

Ruko makes the U11 Pro, which sells for $260. They claim 4k quality, but that’s for photos. The video appears to be 2k, which is still fine and can be recorded to an SD card internally. 

The U11 Pro has GPS built in and connects using your phone’s wifi. It has a return-to-home feature, and will track the drone’s position if it gets lost. 

The drone’s camera isn’t stabilized by a gimbal. In high winds, the drone struggles, and I’ve noticed some rolling-shutter issues with video. This means the image warps a little as the drone moves around.

Check prices on the Ruko U11 Pro.

For even cheaper, There’s the TENSSENX TSRC A6 drone. I can’t find this company online anywhere, so I suspect it’s a rebadged product. This goes for about $170. The ads say it has a 4K camera. If you dig deep, you’ll find out it takes 4k photos but only 1080p video.

It also has GPS built in and will return to base if it loses signal. It comes with two batteries, and they do the ‘double flight time’ misdirection in their ads too. The drone is rated at 23 minutes on a full battery.

Check prices on the TENSSENX TSRC A6.

Hopefully I’ve taken away some of the stress associated with buying your first drone. One thing I’ve noticed though is that FLYING a drone can also be a little stressful for the beginning drone pilot. So I’ve put together a video for you that can help you overcome stressful flying situations, and get moving toward a relaxed drone-flying experience. Click here for a stress-free flying experience!