BLADE 350 QX3 Quadcopter (RTF) (Discontinued by manufacturer)

This is an amazing RC Aircraft for the price you get a aircraft with GPS, Compass and a Air Pressure Sensor. These all combine to give you a very easy to control aircraft. If you have tried flying RC Helicopters and thought it was too hard, this is for you. With Smart Mode a Newb could fly it.There is also AP mode which is more realistic but with the GPS and altitude hold feature, if you get into trouble just let go of the sticks and the craft will self level for you and stop (Wind Permitting).What I do is use a combination of the two modes, I take off in Smart Mode, switch to AP mode and fly. If I get disorientated, I switch to smart mode and bring it back to me, then switch back to AP once the craft is closer.Let me explain SMART Mode. One of the hardest things about flying RC aircraft is the fact that you are NOT onboard in the pilots seat, you are observing from a distance. This can cause you to loose orientation with the vehicle. Example when it is facing away from you NP, left stick input, the thing moves left, right it moves right. The problem comes in when it is facing you or sideways to you, if you don't have a lot of practice..Wham, you loose orientation and go left when you should have gone right....Crash and Burn!With Smart Mode, it does not matter which way the craft is facing, you push the stick left it goes left, right it goes right. The craft can be literally spinning and this will still work out to be true.With that said you should use AP mode so you can learn to fly it and you will have more fun.Did I also mention that this thing will fly back and land all by its self?!!! How cool is that, flip the switch to RTH (Return To Home) this thing using the GPS and other sensors will just come back and land for you. This is also good if you panic.Some other great features are, you can:* Connect it to a PC/Mac and set up a Geofence, basically limit it to how far it will go from the radio in your hand and how high it will fly.* In SAFE mode it will not let itself get closer to you than 15 feet, so you don't crash it into yourself. (You must stay where you were when you started flying for this to work.)Some Cautions: I have heard Go-Pro's with WIFi can cause RF Inference, in the box you get some foil to wrap the camera in. I did not use a GoPro but had a Mobius Camera on it, but put that in a little box wrapped in foil to be cautions. You don't want you toy to fly off and crash or hurt someone, cause damage etc.I also advise you to do the compass calibration process before each flight, it only takes one minute or so. Also for the final caution, make sure to allow the Aircraft to sit on the ground until you get a Solid Green GPS indicator.I highly recommend, this thing packs many of the features you find on Quads costing 3 times as much or more.I am also adding a CGo-1 camera that can stream video back to your smart phone to any device that can see the cameras Wi-Fi Network, this kind of gives you a view of what the craft is seeing, like First Person View (FPV). I will see how that works out, but again this is good step to get into the hobby and not spend more than $399 for a complete Ready to Fly Quad. Add a few hundred bucks for a CGO-1 Camera, a mount, a few extra batteries and you are only at about $600, that better that $1200, $1400 or more.There is a fancier package for this model for about $800 that comes with a gimbal mounted camera that does 1080P 60 FPS, you can also just buy the camera separately and add it later, I may do that for Xmas!Here is a flight video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDi_BDxW_SsYou may need to copy and past it into your browser.

Exactly what I wanted. This is my second quad and this one is very easy to fly. I have had the device for 1 month so far. No fly aways and no close calls.However, I do not like the fact that they did not address the GoPro issues. Using the included copper covering, sometimes, I still have trouble getting GPS lock. However, if I use the copper paper and aluminum foil over that, I have no issues. If you are going to sell a product that is advertised as supporting a Gopro, I believe that the advertisement should state the need for wrapping the camera in foil.The picture was taken in Oak Park, Michigan. You can see the city of Detroit if you look closely in the background. The picture was taken with the plastic Gopro mount that comes with this model. I use a GoPro3+.

The Good: Nice Stable flight and four different selectable modes from beginner to expert. packaged really nice with everything you need to get started with so you can take it out, charge it up and get in the air.The Bad: This is not my first quad and although I don't consider myself an expert pilot I'm not a beginner either. I Like the mast idea for the gps but looks easy to break and I have heard it was. I had about 10-15 flights on this quad before it killed itself, On about the 11th flight I was flying around and luckily was only about 10inches off of the ground when it decided on it's own to pitch right caught the landing skid and flipped over. Whew no damage thank goodness, so I got in about another 3 flights with no issues (keep in mind I do like Blade recommends and calibrate the compass every flight I also wait about 30 seconds after GPS lock to fly) so on the last flight she took I was about 1 acre from my house where I usually take off at, Flew it for about 5-6 mins doing fine then all of a sudden boom there she goes pitches right again from about 25 feet in the air slams right into the side of my brick house and falls about another 8 feet to the bottom of the outside basement steps. As you can imagine there was a little damage to the quad but to my surprise the mast survived. I did email blade along with various forums on what could be causing this. Blade did respond in a timely fashion with "Fly away from large metal objects, power lines, Wi-Fi or cell towers" Well I don't live in the middle of the desert so I can't rule out everything but the large metal objects but I do live on 3 acres and stay away from anything that might cause interference as much as possible. So they also said I could send it in for service evaluation but I don't really feel it's my responsibility to pay to have the thing shipped back to them. On a side note I think the qx3 is just a firmware updated qx2 the Styrofoam even says qx2 on it so save your money and just buy a qx2 if you can find it then update the firmware to version 3. The GUI also does not work for windows 10 so it is useless also I did have a old laptop with windows vista and still cannot get it to work. Come on Blade update the GUI to work with windows 10. All in all good price for a decent quad but If I could go back I would not buy another one of these so save a little money and either get a phantom or walkera.

Its amazing. I started with the blade nano qx and now i just cant get enough of this flyinh stuff haha. I almost gave it four stars because of the battery that came with it read error on the charger. Luckily i ordered two more with it and they worked fine i will update it if i recieve another or not. As far as flying it. Its amazing. So much fun. It looks amazing at night. All of the functions work perfectly. But be warned!!!!!!! If you live in a neighborhood with a lot of wifi leave and go fly in a field somewhere. I know this by reading other reviews and my own experience. This thing is very prone to outside electrical interferance(not sure i spelled that right) in short the best place to fly is somewhere away from everything. Its very reaponsive a d fast. Have fun and be safe and obey the height limit. 400ft folks!!