Best Holy Stone F181W Wifi FPV Drone Review Guide For 2023-2024
This Best Holy Stone F181W Wifi FPV Drone Review Guide For 2023-2024 will take you to an in depth review of Holy Stone F181, best selling drone from that company. A low cost drone, the Holy Stone F181W has several different challenge levels to help you improve your skills with time. And I would say it’s one that is easy for anyone to start flying. So continue reading this Best Holy Stone F181W Wifi FPV Drone Review Guide For 2023-2024 to find out more.
In this case Holy Stone made one of the most trendy drones in it’s price range. When it was released a year ago it achieved great success worldwide. In fact, this model launched Holy Stone company to the western market. I would venture to say that its competing price tag must have played a huge role in its popularity.
I don’t believe tho that is was the only factor that made drone enthusiasts want to buy it. But I’ll talk more about that below. Let’s begin this Best Holy Stone F181W Wifi FPV Drone Review Guide For 2023-2024 with my opinion.
My Opinion:
If you want to practice new skills, or to learn how to fly a drone then this ready-to-fly starter drone is for you. You’ll discover the F181W low cost price is one of the best values for your money.
Safe and feature-rich the Holy Stone F181W RC quadcopter drone is an example of just how powerful starter drones are becoming. Beginning pilots can now enjoy great features like intuitive navigation and HD cameras. With the best part being they won’t have to shell out thousands of dollars for a DJI Mavic 2 Zoom Drone or the DJI Inspire 2 Also you can read the review on these drones at Best Camera Drone Review
The Holy Stone F181W comes with a wide angle 720p camera, advanced moves like 360-degree flip, live FPV viewing and weighs just 4.9 ounces. Beginners will find the best part abut the F181W is how easy it is to fly. Even a complete newbie will be able to use it because of it’s pre-programmed modes and several settings. Unfortunately, this drone doesn’t fly well in any kind of wind. And the live video can be a bit choppy.
Holy Stone F181 Specifications:
- Flight time : 8 minutes
- Battery type : 3.7 V 750 mAh
- Charging time : about 80 minutes
- Control range : up to 100 meters
- Camera : 2MP
- Features : one key return, headless mode, LED lights
FEW THINGS YOU GUYS SHOULD KNOW :
FAA registration is not require with this drone.
You will get 2 batteries. I had the option to replace the dead battery with a fully charged one and continue flying the drone. That is nice but please keep in mind drone motors can easily burn out when hot. To avoid that, I would give it 10 minutes to cool down before flying again with the new charged battery.
Ready To Fly:
The Holy Stone F181W comes ready to fly. But that does not mean you can fly it right out of the box. You just need to do a few final touches before firing it up. Don’t worry, it won’t take you longer than 3 minutes to launch it to the skies. Basically all you have to do is insert the battery, attach the propeller and attaching the camera with an SD card (card not included).
Packaging:
So, what’s included in the package?
- Holy Stone F181 drone
- 2.4G remote transmitter
- USB charging cables 2
- drone batteries of 3.7V 750mAh 2
- landing skids 2
- extra 4 rotating blades/propellers
- 4 protecting frames
- A screwdriver
- The user manual
You’ll need to assemble only few things before your first flight. Follow this steps and you shouldn’t have any problems with it:
- Attach landing gear using screwdriver you got in the package
- Attach blade protecting frames (this is not required but it’s highly recommended for all beginners)
- Make sure camera is connected, there’s camera slot on the bottom of drone
- Make sure battery is connected
Video
Here is a short video that provides a quick overview of the various features of the F181W:
A Note:
Furthermore I would like to make a note about the blade protection. Your not required to have these attached to your drone. Please listen to my advice if your a beginner and attach them. It’s a fact, you will crash your drone at least once. I do not know of any beginner who hasn’t crashed the drone at least once. If you crash your drone into a wall inside your home or a tree outside your home the propeller will break easily.
Design & Durability:
For a quadcopter the Holy Stone F181 design is quite common. I would be lying if I told you it’s the most beautiful drone I’ve ever seen or something like that. When you hold it you can feel it’s not some cheap toy. It looks good and I do like it. Also in my opinion the build quality is very good.
A common “feature” in all new drones is LED lights on the bottom and this one is no exception. Blue lights forward, and red lights backward. This will make your life much easier if you decide to fly at night. One more cool thing about F181 is the LED light on it’s nose, this should help you determine its position when flying it during day or night.
720P 120-degree FOV Camera
A 720p camera on a low priced drone is a great bargain. As a result your able to take snaps 720p resolution and record videos at 30 frames. I’ll try to explain as this probably doesn’t mean much to you. No way is this a professional camera. But that doesn’t mean it’s no good, truth be told it’s really a nice drone for fun purposes. For this drone price range it’s not better nor worse than all the others.
You can still take some videos and pretty crisp pictures even without a 4K DJI camera drone. Before taking a picture I recommend engaging the hover mode. For the reason that, the images will be a bit blurry. You’ll find the camera’s sensor is not fast enough to keep up with the speed of a moving drone.
A 120-degree Field Of View
This camera has a 120-degree field of view, allowing you to take videos from above and also panoramic shots. Unfortunately, you cannot angle it or rotate it to create fancy camera effects or to get a wide view. If you want to take a picture from an angle, you have to yaw of the drone itself, and manipulate the pitch, which can be challenging for beginners.
Furthermore, this is not even close to what you would get with a camera set up on a higher priced drone. But if you don’t have the money to spend it’s perfect cheap drone camera to have fun with. I would say it’s also great for anyone who wants to get into cinematography or professional aerial photography.
This camera, limited as it is, will give you some practice on shooting from above before you graduate to proper camera drones.
Videos and photos are stored on the default 2GB SD card which comes included in the package. 2GB should be enough for all your needs. In case it’s not, you can easily insert SD card with more storage space
(4/8/16GB).
Controller:
F181 comes with a very nice controller. It resembles a typical XBox or PlayStation joystick. Since most of us are familiar with joysticks it’s very comfortable to hold. Before you can turn it ON you’ll need to insert 4 AA batteries. First of all, you’ll have to buy them separately as the batteries are not included in the package. If you buy good ones they should last for a month minimum.
You have a little display on the top. In this case to see the live feed from camera on that display. It’s used only to display some crucial information such a signal strength, LED lights status (on/off), drone speed and battery status. There is no way to make it receive live feed from camera.
Flight Performance:
If your just starting out you’ll probably find it very difficult to fly in “speed” mode. Fight speed range of 30-50% is what I would recommend your first flights to be in. But if you’ve flown drones before and your already experienced, I believe you’ll be find using the high speed mode. As this is a medium sized drone, you can easily fly
it outdoors. It’s not very wind resistant so be very careful of that. Because the F181 is a stable flyer it’s a good drone for flying outdoors or indoors. I myself prefer night time flying in my yard as I love to see the LED lights above my house.
Flight Time & Control Range:
For this price range, the average flight time will be somewhere about 6-7 minutes. While control distance is under 100 meters. Depending on the environment the Holy Stone F181 has a little better flight time. 7-9 minutes, while control range is between 50 and 100 meters.
I feel that for drone in this price range these are more than good characteristics. Remember, you can basically fly 2×8 minutes with the extra battery included in the package. That’s more than enough in my experience. After you gain some flying skills, you should be Ok taking off the propeller protectors and removing the landing gear.
By doing this you’ll reduce the total weight of the drone. In turn you’ll increase total flight time and improve it’s motility. But don’t do this until you feel comfortable enough to land drone without landing gear.
Easy Maneuvering for Beginners:
It takes a lot more skill to fly the more expensive professional drones that, require more practice and experience. Than these small beginner drones which are easier to fly. To help beginners get started they are packed with so many easy-fly and safety features.
To help you fly it safely the controller has all sorts of controls and buttons. The motors respond very well to the throttles. The drone immediately lifts off the ground as soon as you tilt the throttle upwards (with the motors already switched on). It responds swiftly to directional changes when in the air.
To bring the drone back to position if the drone starts tilting left or right when flying. There are two trimmer buttons for left and right adjustment. Comes also with a flip button that allows you to flip the drone 360 degrees. It’s a cool jet fighter-like maneuver. While you may hit a few branches the first time you fly, most users say they learned quickly.
I believe you’ll be able to do most of the basics by your third fly. Basics like lift the drone off the ground, fly it to the end of the yard and bring it back. The drone is sturdier than you expect even if you crash it a few times.
Something else I should mention: The drone has to operational modes simply named Mode 1 and Mode 2. In Mode 1, the throttle is controlled by the right stick, and in Mode 2 the left stick is the throttle. Mode 2 is the recommended option.
Safety:
To help you avoid crashing into things or people there are a few safety controls. The emergency stop procedure is the most important one. Use the control sticks to stop the drone if it’s too late to veer away from a potentially dangerous situation. Pushing the right stick to the bottom right and the left stick to the bottom left will immediately stop the motors. And the drone will come crashing down. Of course you’d only want to use this option only in emergencies to avoid damaging your drone.
The headless/one-key return mode is another really helpful feature. It doesn’t matter where the drone is facing in this mode. The drone will go backward if you push it back and forward if you push the direction stick forward. For beginners who want to avoid a flyaway this is a great feature. The only downside when the drone in mid-flight this mode cannot be activated. In fact, you have to engage it before you even pair the drone with the controller.
This mode also serves as a one-key return function. When you push the direction stick backward, the drone will come directly back to where you are. That’s why the manual recommends you stay in the same position and face the same direction when in headless mode. You can easily fly the F181W without crashing into everything in your path even tho you don’t get any navigational GPS or obstacle-detecting sensors. Just a couple of practice lessons and you’ll be on your way to becoming a pro.
So don’t be afraid that you can’t fly a drone that you’ll crash it as soon as it is in the air. The F181W is an easy machine to handle.
Speed Levels:
This drone has several speed levels. You can switch to a higher speed to challenge yourself, as you practice and get better at maneuvering. There are four speed levels; low, medium, high and expert.Practice the basics by starting on low. Then gradually try flying faster.
You can try some fancy aerial maneuvers or FPV racing when you get to the expert level. Don’t worry about outgrowing the F181W. It will take you some time before reaching the level where you want to try your hand at one of the more expensive heavyweights.
More Fun & Features On The App:
The Holy Stone F181W works with the DeercFPV smartphone app. It’s available free for both Android and iOS. The manual has clear instructions for linking the app to the WiFi camera on the drone. You can take photos and record videos using the app.
Before you start using the app make sure you have installed a memory card on the camera module. All the photos and videos you take will be stored on the memory card.Then use a memory card reader to transfer the photos to your computer.
By just using the Gravity Sensor Mode you can control the drone. Note that there may be a slight response lag when using your phone. Also, make sure you have switched the controller off before using your smartphone.
Conclusion:
It’s ready to fly right out of the box.Easy to fly even for beginners. Plenty of safety features. And a fairly good camera. So with that said I hope you enjoyed my Best Holy Stone F181W Wifi FPV Drone Review Guide For 2023-2024 Check out my Best Camera Drone Review
