Holy Stone HS210 Mini Drone for Children and Beginners, RC Quadcopter Drones with Automatic Altitude Hold, 360° Rolls, Headloss Mode, One Key Start Gift Toy for Boys Girls, Pink, C0

I got the drone for my daughter, thinking it’d be a decent toy to introduce her to flying drones, and it absolutely delivered, with a few small caveats. First impression: It’s a lot smaller than I expected. Think palm-sized. But that actually works in its favor, it’s light, safe to use indoors, and easy for little hands to control. The drone is very beginner-friendly, with intuitive controls and features like altitude hold, one-key takeoff/landing, and even flips. My daughter picked it up right away and had a blast learning to fly it. It does come with two batteries, which is great in theory… but in practice, each one lasts only about 5-6 minutes. You definitely need both batteries to get any decent playtime, and more would be even better. Charging time is also a bit long for such short usage. On the bright side, this drone is shockingly durable. It’s crashed more times than I can count (into walls, furniture, floors…) and keeps flying like nothing happened. The propeller guards are a great safety feature. Verdict: If you go in knowing it’s tiny and that battery life is short, it’s a fantastic little drone to get kids excited about flying. Safe, sturdy, and fun, just keep the charger handy.

I was debating whether to give this thing 4 or 5 stars. If it gives me any more problems, I'll knock it down to 4 stars. tl;dr -It requires maturity to get the thing flying stably, and the flight time is quite short (though, that is acknowledged in the product description). I've flown better quads that were $10 - $30 more expensive, so depending on who's buying, one could pay a little more for a better experience. For most kids, it will take adult supervision to set up, and an adult would get bored with this model fairly quickly. One thing to understand about quadcopters in general is that they need gyro calibration and trim adjustment before use - they won't fly with stability straight out of the box. So, you'll need the pilot to have reading comprehension skills (the instruction manual is decent), patience, a decent attention span, and the ability to stay calm while flying. (In other words, adult setup might be required). The trim is easy to adjust, but I've never been able to get it to hover stably with the controls at neutral. I've flown different brands at comparable price points where this wasn't a problem. NOTE: If you're having issues with the copter rotating with the sticks at neutral, then the gyro needs to be calibrated on a very very very flat surface. You'd be surprised at how many flat surfaces aren't really that flat.

Sometimes the drone would get out of control and go wherever it want which I didn’t like a lot but overall it’s pretty fun

Great fun, my granddaughter loves it

My little sister loved it for her birthday but it’s a little hard to control.