Blade 350 QX3 Quadcopter Drone from Horizon Hobby
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,987 words · ~9 min read
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buy popular demand okay no one actually requested this but I enjoyed making that
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video we did a couple weeks ago about the parrot bbop and I want to make more
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quad videos so here's my video about the Blade 350
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qx3 a video about flying that should be
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released around the time that I'm landing in Asia which is going to mean
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some unusual content over the next little while
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here Corsair h80i GT and h100i GTX all-in-one
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liquid coolers make your system look better and run cooler too click my face
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to learn more so let's start with the unboxing
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experience something that normally isn't that relevant to a product review but in
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this case really sets the tone for the rest of the video the first thing that
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stood out to me was a wow horiz and hobby did a great job of packaging this
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sucker all but the most determined parcel carriers would fail to break your
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drone in shipping I'm sure and B I am
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super impressed that all the parts even the doublea batteries for the
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transmitter are included in the ready toly drone plus camera kit but Horizon
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has some serious work to do on the user friendliness if they want to access the
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same kind of customer that parrot is targeting with a product like the bbop
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little details like the threepiece
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battery charger versus parrot's friendly
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socketed one and the three separate p pieces of documentation required to
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actually use the product a quick start guide with the assembly pre-flight and
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most of the inflight instructions another booklet with the interpretation
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key for the LED signals that the 350 qx3
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uses to communicate status updates and error messages to you and a third full
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manual that isn't included in the box so you can only access it online and that
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has no obvious reference made to it in the other documentation something that
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was particularly frustrating for me since it's it's the only place you can
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find some pretty critical information more on that later first we'll do a
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physical tour of the unit the design is very different from the bbop it's
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significantly larger for one thing and has a very hobbyist grade feel to it
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every part goes together predictably and seems like it would be easily modifiable
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or swappable out of the box it includes four brushless motors a controller and
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receiver board onboard GPS with an antenna mask for better accuracy an
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accelerometer compass and pressure sensor and if you get the AP or aerial
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photography model an integrated 130° fov
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12 megapixel camera that shoots 1080p 60fps video on a 3axis brushless
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motorized gimbal with its own Wi-Fi hotspot for realtime firstperson
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monitoring with a smartphone that you clip to the controller that promises
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some seriously stable aerial footage so
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for my first flight I went through the whole pre-flight routine including
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compass and accelerometer calibration which involves toggling some switches on
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the transmitter then flipping the Drone around until it makes happy noises at
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you and lets you know everything is a okay I faced North for takeoff blah blah
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blah blah and then I found myself wondering do I have to do this every
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time Horizon tells me once I asked them
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that it's only if you move geographically or change the weight of the unit for some of the calibrations
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but I guess I've made my point now about what hobbyist grade means to the outof
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Box experience so I'm not going to complain about the manual anymore but it wasn't in there so let's talk about
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whether hobbyist grade flight characteristics make up for it I started
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out with Smart Mode flight where you stand still and the right stick makes
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the Drone move relative to the operator rather than relative to its own
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orientation so forward means away from you as opposed to the front of the Drone
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super duper boring so I switched to AP mode in like a minute but I can see how
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smart mode would be handy if your drone was for example far away and you
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couldn't properly see its orientation in spite of the LEDs on the Bott that
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should be a pretty good clue as to which way it's facing I mean when it gets
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really far away it's hard to see that um although if for whatever reason Smart
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Mode doesn't work for that you can use return home which works really well you
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just flip the switch and Boop it comes back as long as it hasn't lost its GPS
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signal in AP mode I was able to have a lot more fun and I made some immediate
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observations after my first flight the first of which being that flying it is
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fun this thing is quieter thanks to its larger props and much more acrobatic out
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of the box than the be Bop and if you have any RC experience at all you'll
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really appreciate the way it allows you to take control during a turn or a
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sudden maneuver rather than trying to compensate for you with an onboard
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computer something that caused some scary feeling like I'm out of control
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moments with the bbop where I was kind of fighting with the onboard computer
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but the flip side of that is that the 350 qx3 helps you a lot less with things
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like maintaining altitude while accelerating or turning in require Ires
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you to manually compensate with the left stick to avoid smoking the ground if
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you're flying low which sorry excuse
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me now the next thing I noticed is that while the video feed range frankly
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blows I tried to hold it together your smile is what did it the next thing I
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noticed is that while the video feed range frankly blows chunks compared to
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parrot's Sky controller with its baller antenna array thing the latency is is
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much better and thanks to its real physical gimbal versus digital gimbal
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it's much easier to fly firstperson view with the third is that a blinking RGB
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LED on the rear bumper is not as good a
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way to communicate with the pilot as a dedicated app so at about 13 minutes of
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flying when it started to descend on its own it took me a second to realize that
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the code on the back was letting me know that it was done good thing I wasn't
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over a body of water at the time since I hadn't memorized all the bloody code yet
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and finally I found myself missing the dedicated app again when I realized the
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Drone wouldn't go higher than 20 M with the outof the-box configuration and I
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had to go hook it up to a PC with the included USB dongle in order to
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reprogram it a process that is only outlined in the online manual
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fortunately the process is relatively straightforward and the app is
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surprisingly intuitive and stable you can reconfigure your max range your max
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altitude calibrate stuff and see some diagnostic data thumbs up so with that
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fixed the rest of my flights let's talk about those once I figured out that the
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protective housing comes off the camera for the gimbal to operate derp the
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camera footage is really really really stable like awesome stable photos look
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great and panning video shots that were basically unusable on the parrot look
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fantastic its low light performance is also better than the bbops with less
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blockiness and 60fps recording is a welcome upgrade for fast motion but for
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$500 I am a little disappointed with the overall image there is so much
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noticeable aliasing on straight lines that it almost looks like upscaled 720p
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or even lower and I found myself wishing that there was an easy way to
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Frankenstein a GoPro onto the gimbal even if it meant losing the live feed
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which leads pretty well into the conclusion what do you get what does it
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leave to be desired well what does it
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leave you get a prosumer SL hobbyist grade
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drone and everything that comes with that better modifiability than a
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consumer targeted device more direct control of the hardware you're flying
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but it also assumes that you have some prior knowledge that general consumers
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are unlikely to have and is less forgiving of mistakes I crashed the bbop
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more than half a dozen times dinking around with it because thanks to its
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foam construction and lightweight it felt almost indestructible the 350 qx3
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should be treated with much more care I cracked the landing gear and knocked the
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camera off the gimbal on my first Crash from about 9 ft up so my final word then
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is if you pick one of these up and treat it right it'll treat you right in return
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oh and I'd also probably recommend checking out the two axis GoPro gimbal
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Mount that I uh didn't get in time for this review but I'm hoping to check out
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in the future speaking of deals our friends
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over at mastop have a deal on a pair of headphones going on right now actually
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lots of pairs of headphones but in particular these ones the Audio Technica
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MSR 7s they feature 45mm true motion
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drivers soft memory foam ear pads and the expected Audio Technica level of
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quality they're available for a very limited time over on Mast drop and you
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can check out the link in the video description or go directly to
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dr.p s/ Linus techip whatever it's in
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the video description to find out exactly when this drop ends if you don't
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know about Mass drop then well let me Enlighten you there a site that
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you pick the product their experts Source the best possible deal on that
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minimum they have a wide variety of products available from audio file
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equipment to PC Hardware like keyboards and key caps to tools like the
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Leatherman Wave so if you create a new account through our affiliate link
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you'll actually be entered to in a giveaway to win a pair of MSR 7s in
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addition to all that other great stuff if you already have m m drop account
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don't worry by the way you can enter too just by leaving a comment below this
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video mentioning the product you want to see us review or if you want to you know
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see a product that is on Mast drop that you can buy at a reduced price you'll
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also be entered to win all kinds of ways to win anyway guys thanks for watching
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this video you're all winners to me like it if you liked it dislike it if you
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disliked it leave a comment under it preferably at the link in the video video description unless you want to
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enter that M drop deal uh if you have anything to say about the 350 qx3 or
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whatever else also linked in the video description is a link to buy our sweet
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t-shirts like this give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon
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bookmark to one with our affiliate codes so whenever you buy whatever else it is
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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
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don't forget to subscribe and follow and all of that
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noise
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he