SYMA X550 Military RC Helicopter, 4 Channel Remote Control Helicopter with High & Low Speed, Multiple Stunt Flying, Altitude Hold, Army Model for Display and Collectibles

Love it! Simple to control for my 5 and 8 year old kids. Would be great if it had a bit bigger battery, but it's perfect for the little trinket it is.

Overall fun and easy to learn to fly. I really like the aircraft platform. A bit overpriced for what it is, but for those wishing to start, it is a nice, non-simulator way of learning the flight controls. No full acro-mode. Just altitude hold mode. It can fly outside but only in no to little wind. It does have dual rates, so use the high rate for outdoors. It has plastic gears and brushed motors. In high temperatures and long operational use the gear teeth will chip. Also, the brushed motors will fail rather quickly. Don't attempt to repair this will void the 2 year warranty. But again, this wasn't designed to be repairable. Not customizable with BetaFlight. Cannot bind a third-party radio controller. Don't waste money on the "FPV" camera. The viewing angle isn't wide enough, the camera is mounted too low, doesn't pan up enough to look ahead in forward flight, and the camera can't be rotated to level the view ( tilted to right or left ) to the aircraft. Also, only googles like the discontinued Google Daydream would make this really FPV. Can't use DJI googles nor FatShark googles. SYMA should improve on this platform to better outdoor flight and make it repairable and full acro-mode and better FPV...bigger and heavier frame...brushless motors without a gearbox...maybe three bladed blades...programmable flight controller...OpenTx compatible receiver. Consider a 4DRC 4D-V10. It is less expensive with same feature. Or the Drone Hawk aircraft series.

This helicopter drone was my first attempt at buying and flying one! Guess what? It was EASY! This is so fun, cute, fast, and easy to fly. I could even do cool tricks. I did crash it into some trees and a wall while learning but the tuff and flexible plastic made it almost indestructible : ) I love the lights and all the extra parts and the second battery. It has a really long flight time on a charge and was very inexpensive. I completely recommend this for anyone (kids and adults).

My 7 yo grandson and I have both flown the 3.5 channel Syma 107 helicopters. I wanted to try a 4 channel so bought him a Syma X550 which is patterned after the Army V-22 Osprey. With the 4 channel system it has the ability to fly sideways which is the difference between the 4 channel vs the 3.5 channel which cannot fly sideways. It was opened on Christmas morning and flown in the house. I anticipated a learning curve as it would be more like a real helicopter with the 4 channel. I put on the prop protectors and would highly recommend using them. We started flying without reading any instructions. It needed some trim adjustments which we didn't figure out how to do until watching at several YouTube videos. Our learning curve was more complicated without better trim, but fun as we had multiple wrecks with no damage. The 3.5 channel relies on only the right stick for Left/right (=rudder) control whereas on this drone the left stick serves this purpose. The right stick tilts the drone to the left/right (=ailerons) allowing straight sideways flight. Being used to the right stick for turning, it required practice to acclimate to using both sticks together to get correct turns. My grandson and I were both having fun and were determined to get flight down. I would highly recommend being smarter than I was. Go to YouTube to learn how to adjust trim and flying will be much easier if it is trimmed out to begin with. For an absolute beginner or someone more easily frustrated I would stick with the 3.5 channel helicopters at least until one has some flying experience. One might learn on this model but it definitely requires more patience.

This was a big hit at Christmas. Although the model is smaller than I expected, it was easy to operate and had excellent battery life.