buy popular demand okay no one actually requested this but I enjoyed making that
video we did a couple weeks ago about the parrot bbop and I want to make more
quad videos so here's my video about the Blade 350
qx3 a video about flying that should be
released around the time that I'm landing in Asia which is going to mean
some unusual content over the next little while
here Corsair h80i GT and h100i GTX all-in-one
liquid coolers make your system look better and run cooler too click my face
to learn more so let's start with the unboxing
experience something that normally isn't that relevant to a product review but in
this case really sets the tone for the rest of the video the first thing that
stood out to me was a wow horiz and hobby did a great job of packaging this
sucker all but the most determined parcel carriers would fail to break your
drone in shipping I'm sure and B I am
super impressed that all the parts even the doublea batteries for the
transmitter are included in the ready toly drone plus camera kit but Horizon
has some serious work to do on the user friendliness if they want to access the
same kind of customer that parrot is targeting with a product like the bbop
little details like the threepiece
battery charger versus parrot's friendly
socketed one and the three separate p pieces of documentation required to
actually use the product a quick start guide with the assembly pre-flight and
most of the inflight instructions another booklet with the interpretation
key for the LED signals that the 350 qx3
uses to communicate status updates and error messages to you and a third full
manual that isn't included in the box so you can only access it online and that
has no obvious reference made to it in the other documentation something that
was particularly frustrating for me since it's it's the only place you can
find some pretty critical information more on that later first we'll do a
physical tour of the unit the design is very different from the bbop it's
significantly larger for one thing and has a very hobbyist grade feel to it
every part goes together predictably and seems like it would be easily modifiable
or swappable out of the box it includes four brushless motors a controller and
receiver board onboard GPS with an antenna mask for better accuracy an
accelerometer compass and pressure sensor and if you get the AP or aerial
photography model an integrated 130° fov
12 megapixel camera that shoots 1080p 60fps video on a 3axis brushless
motorized gimbal with its own Wi-Fi hotspot for realtime firstperson
monitoring with a smartphone that you clip to the controller that promises
some seriously stable aerial footage so
for my first flight I went through the whole pre-flight routine including
compass and accelerometer calibration which involves toggling some switches on
the transmitter then flipping the Drone around until it makes happy noises at
you and lets you know everything is a okay I faced North for takeoff blah blah
blah blah and then I found myself wondering do I have to do this every
time Horizon tells me once I asked them
that it's only if you move geographically or change the weight of the unit for some of the calibrations
but I guess I've made my point now about what hobbyist grade means to the outof
Box experience so I'm not going to complain about the manual anymore but it wasn't in there so let's talk about
whether hobbyist grade flight characteristics make up for it I started
out with Smart Mode flight where you stand still and the right stick makes
the Drone move relative to the operator rather than relative to its own
orientation so forward means away from you as opposed to the front of the Drone
super duper boring so I switched to AP mode in like a minute but I can see how
smart mode would be handy if your drone was for example far away and you
couldn't properly see its orientation in spite of the LEDs on the Bott that
should be a pretty good clue as to which way it's facing I mean when it gets
really far away it's hard to see that um although if for whatever reason Smart
Mode doesn't work for that you can use return home which works really well you
just flip the switch and Boop it comes back as long as it hasn't lost its GPS
signal in AP mode I was able to have a lot more fun and I made some immediate
observations after my first flight the first of which being that flying it is
fun this thing is quieter thanks to its larger props and much more acrobatic out
of the box than the be Bop and if you have any RC experience at all you'll
really appreciate the way it allows you to take control during a turn or a
sudden maneuver rather than trying to compensate for you with an onboard
computer something that caused some scary feeling like I'm out of control
moments with the bbop where I was kind of fighting with the onboard computer
but the flip side of that is that the 350 qx3 helps you a lot less with things
like maintaining altitude while accelerating or turning in require Ires
you to manually compensate with the left stick to avoid smoking the ground if
you're flying low which sorry excuse
me now the next thing I noticed is that while the video feed range frankly
blows I tried to hold it together your smile is what did it the next thing I
noticed is that while the video feed range frankly blows chunks compared to
parrot's Sky controller with its baller antenna array thing the latency is is
much better and thanks to its real physical gimbal versus digital gimbal
it's much easier to fly firstperson view with the third is that a blinking RGB
LED on the rear bumper is not as good a
way to communicate with the pilot as a dedicated app so at about 13 minutes of
flying when it started to descend on its own it took me a second to realize that
the code on the back was letting me know that it was done good thing I wasn't
over a body of water at the time since I hadn't memorized all the bloody code yet
and finally I found myself missing the dedicated app again when I realized the
Drone wouldn't go higher than 20 M with the outof the-box configuration and I
had to go hook it up to a PC with the included USB dongle in order to
reprogram it a process that is only outlined in the online manual
fortunately the process is relatively straightforward and the app is
surprisingly intuitive and stable you can reconfigure your max range your max
altitude calibrate stuff and see some diagnostic data thumbs up so with that
fixed the rest of my flights let's talk about those once I figured out that the
protective housing comes off the camera for the gimbal to operate derp the
camera footage is really really really stable like awesome stable photos look
great and panning video shots that were basically unusable on the parrot look
fantastic its low light performance is also better than the bbops with less
blockiness and 60fps recording is a welcome upgrade for fast motion but for
$500 I am a little disappointed with the overall image there is so much
noticeable aliasing on straight lines that it almost looks like upscaled 720p
or even lower and I found myself wishing that there was an easy way to
Frankenstein a GoPro onto the gimbal even if it meant losing the live feed
which leads pretty well into the conclusion what do you get what does it
leave to be desired well what does it
leave you get a prosumer SL hobbyist grade
drone and everything that comes with that better modifiability than a
consumer targeted device more direct control of the hardware you're flying
but it also assumes that you have some prior knowledge that general consumers
are unlikely to have and is less forgiving of mistakes I crashed the bbop
more than half a dozen times dinking around with it because thanks to its
foam construction and lightweight it felt almost indestructible the 350 qx3
should be treated with much more care I cracked the landing gear and knocked the
camera off the gimbal on my first Crash from about 9 ft up so my final word then
is if you pick one of these up and treat it right it'll treat you right in return
oh and I'd also probably recommend checking out the two axis GoPro gimbal
Mount that I uh didn't get in time for this review but I'm hoping to check out
in the future speaking of deals our friends
over at mastop have a deal on a pair of headphones going on right now actually
lots of pairs of headphones but in particular these ones the Audio Technica
MSR 7s they feature 45mm true motion
drivers soft memory foam ear pads and the expected Audio Technica level of
quality they're available for a very limited time over on Mast drop and you
can check out the link in the video description or go directly to
dr.p s/ Linus techip whatever it's in
the video description to find out exactly when this drop ends if you don't
know about Mass drop then well let me Enlighten you there a site that
facilitates group buys on items that are selected by the community Through polls
you pick the product their experts Source the best possible deal on that
product and when more people commit to purchase the price goes down up to a set
minimum they have a wide variety of products available from audio file
equipment to PC Hardware like keyboards and key caps to tools like the
Leatherman Wave so if you create a new account through our affiliate link
you'll actually be entered to in a giveaway to win a pair of MSR 7s in
addition to all that other great stuff if you already have m m drop account
don't worry by the way you can enter too just by leaving a comment below this
video mentioning the product you want to see us review or if you want to you know
see a product that is on Mast drop that you can buy at a reduced price you'll
also be entered to win all kinds of ways to win anyway guys thanks for watching
this video you're all winners to me like it if you liked it dislike it if you
disliked it leave a comment under it preferably at the link in the video video description unless you want to
enter that M drop deal uh if you have anything to say about the 350 qx3 or
whatever else also linked in the video description is a link to buy our sweet
t-shirts like this give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon
bookmark to one with our affiliate codes so whenever you buy whatever else it is
that you buy you we get a small Kickback that kind of thing helps us out a lot thanks again for watching and as always
don't forget to subscribe and follow and all of that
noise
he