Force1Scoot Hand Operated Drone for Kids or Adults - Hands Free Motion Sensor Mini Drones, Easy LED Indoor Rechargeable UFO Toy Flying Orb Ball Drone Toys for Boys and Girls (Red)

My son fell in love with this toy when we visited his cousin's house, so we HAD to get one for him. Unfortunately, the original drone that we got stopped working after one use. I reached out to the company with pretty low expectations since the drone was so inexpensive, but they were SO RESPONSIVE. I got a response email within a few hours with some troubleshooting tips that did not work. When I responded again, they told me that they would be happy to send a replacement, which they did in remarkably quick fashion.My three year-old son LOVES this toy, which he refers to as his "flyer". It is very easy to use and I find it very safe to use in a variety of spaces in our house, both big and small. There are lights on the top that create cool patterns on the ceiling when the drone gets high enough.The only knock on the drone is that the battery runs out fairly quickly (around 7-8 minutes) and takes some time to fully recharge (~an hour). But given the very reasonable price point (we paid $25), this felt like a very fair trade-off.Honestly, I would recommend any products from Force1RC because their customer service is amazing and responsive. I feel like companies have gotten significantly less responsive, so Force1RC's support was a breath of fresh air.

Fun and kids love it. Easy to use and lasts

I bought this for my 4 year old, figuring he'd play with it also with my almost 6 year old. Neither of them is particularly good with video game or RC style controllers yet so this seemed like a good solution to still have fun with a "drone".Charging is easy - it has a USB with a charging light and a tiny barrel connector on the other end. When the light goes out, the drone is fully charged and ready to go. This seems to take around 30 minutes plus or minus. The drone itself has a center light that doubles as a status indicator. Flashing red and green means it's calibrating itself. Solid green means ready to fly. Blinking red means it needs to charge. The unit itself is fairly small, maybe the size of a DVD and a few inches thick. The entire thing is caged so it's safe to hold and be near when flying - it's not going to nick anybody and you can't easily get your fingers in a prop (even if they're little fingers). It's surprisingly lightweight and feels a bit delicate but not flimsy.The actual flying is super easy. You really can just drop or toss it and it'll right itself and start hovering. My 4 year old had no problem getting it started. The drone seems to rotate slowly when flying which gives a cool UFO effect with the outer lights. It will sort of meander around the room changing height and direction by itself if you don't interact with it. It does a pretty good job of avoiding objects and when it does bump into things, it's pretty gentle and just lightly bounces off. We had a couple crash landings and could just pick it up and toss it to get it flying again. When flying, it does make a loud angry mosquito noise, which is pretty typical for any smaller quadcopter.There are a few negatives, as with most products. The flight time is only around 5 minutes, and the battery is not swappable, so you can play for 5 minutes and then have to charge for 30 to fly it again. This isn't terrible but it really limits your interactions with the drone since there's literally no way to play with it for longer, and I worry it may be forgotten about or set aside before long. The battery must be really tiny given the overall light weight. The flight is kind of erratic at times and on our first flight, the drone wandered into a small bathroom, crashed, tried to fly behind the toilet, and popped off a propeller. We had to rescue it and it wasn't immediately obvious a propeller had come off. It would then flip upside and fly in one direction only and was pretty much unusable. After studying it closely, we noticed the missing prop and I went to track it down (it's small!). My wife was able to repair it and we were back in business. The motion sensors work well and you can "push" the drone back and forth which is fun but it doesn't always do what you want. There's a bottom sensor you can use to make the drone go up and my kids chasing it around tends to make it rise out of their reach (they're short) so instead of controlling it, it kind of flies away from them, which is still fun but doesn't make them feel like they're in control of it.I still think the price and simplicity here are a total win for young kids. They can do it without help and it's amazing and fun to watch it really fly around and the cage and obstacle avoidance makes it pretty safe. You could argue it's not a "real" drone like the more advanced quadcopters because you only sort of control this one, but it's about all kids in the preschool-ish age range can handle. I wish it had more battery life and that the sensors were more effective but I'd expect to pay twice as much. A drone exactly like this but much larger (say 12-16" diameter) would be hilarious fun.

Starts of great but within a few hours I couldn't ignore all these issues.Safety: This is the biggest issue for me with these. The fans on this might seem enclosed but that only barely works for Adult sized fingers and my fingers easily slip through the slats. Any kid's finger will easily fit between them and mine got cut immediately when they caught it. Cue the tears and band-aid. They could have used a mesh instead especially as it requires you to constantly be picking it up or touching it while it is on. If it lands upside down, it will keep spinning until you pick it up and rotate it.Breaks easily: Mine cracked one of it's four stands instantly. But that was not the biggie here.Repairs R Us: After the first 4 flights of this, it started acting strange. It wouldn't fly and would simply flip over and manically thrash around and I would have to carefully pick it up for it to turn off (again watch your fingers). I immediately knew that it meant that 1 of it's 4 rotors was compromised. Get your tiny screw driver sets ready. I removed the case and was able to access the rotors and sure enough, two of the rotors had a strand of hair wrapped around their base. I removed those and it started to fly again but was back to misbehaving again almost immediately due to the same issue.So 1 strand of hair will bring this bird down or stop this from working. Yep!After my third hair removal service, I gave upThis might be fun to start with, but my experience was to shelve it within a few days of use as it was just frustrating.

Charges quickly but doesn’t have a very long running time. Happy with the build, it kinda has a flexible “cage” around it to protect it.Fun to use, flys well. We got this for my sons birthday present. It was the present everyone wanted to play with after all the presents were opened.

I gave it 3 stars because it's a fantastic toy but has some chronic flaws. Every Christmas I buy one for my grandson knowing that it'll last only a few days before it breaks, but always hoping it doesn't. So we have fun with it while it lasts. Not a single one of the 5 that I have purchased from various sellers has lasted longer than 3 days. They've died for all different reasons. This latest version seems to be upgraded and improved. It handles, responds, and flies much better than prior models, but unfortunately, the lifespan hasn't improved. I'll probably continue to buy one every year just because they're so much fun