Ruko F11MINI Drone with Camera 4K, Under 249g, 60 Mins Flight with 2 batteries, 5GHz Transmission, GPS Auto Return, Brushless Motor, Foldable and Lightweight, FPV Quadcopter for Beginner, Adults

The Short Story:This is a great drone, at a great price point. It has all the features you would expect. It's foldable, compact, and sturdy with a high build quality. GPS features such as return to home and follow-me work well. It's easy to fly, responsive to controls, stable hovering, batteries last up to 30 mins each (possibly more), and it handles wind reasonably well. It has a decent camera which you can pivot from 0-90 degrees via remote which is great. You can find package deals on Amazon that include an extra battery and spare propellers.It might not be a top-of-the-line DJI Air, but for less than $300 I'd argue you are getting more bang for your buck with the F11 if you are just a casual hobbyist drone pilot.-------------------------------------Warning - Long read below:This is my fourth drone overall. The first three were all the same model - HS110D by Holy Stone. That was a fantastic entry-level toy drone for less than $80, but after a few months of learning how to fly I was ready to step up to a more intermediate level model.What I was looking for in a new drone: more stability and wind resistance, GPS and related features, longer battery life, and an upgraded camera. So pretty much all the stuff you don't get with a $65 toy drone like the HS110D. After a month or so of comparison shopping on Amazon and YouTube I eventually pulled the trigger on the Ruko F11 Pro. It checked all of the boxes. I wanted to stay at or around $200 but all of the competing models at that price pount were missing one or more of my main criteria, and/or did not fare well in Amazon or YouTube reviews. Battery life was a common compromise for GPS drones under $200. The F11 lasts up to 30 mins per flight which is the best in its class (and it actually lasts longer if you don't record video or use FPV).The F11 Pro comes in a nice, compact, well-organized carrying case. The foam insert has precise cutouts for the drone itself, the controller, a spare battery, and replacement parts. It also has a zipper compartment for any other small items you want to carry. The drone is of great build quality and feels sturdy, it also looks quite nice. The foldable arms feel sturdy, and it takes a little bit of effort to slide them in/out and lock them into position which is great. The user manual is thorough and easy to read and understand - which can be hit or miss with other Chinese drone manufacturers. I had already watched several YouTube videos on the F11 so the manual was more of a refresher and I was ready to take it out for a flight within minutes after the first battery fully charged.Calibration is easy - spinning the drone around one rotation horizontally and once vertically. I've read in a few reviews and in the Q&A that the compass always needs to be calibrated for each flight (which sounds annoying) - but this is not my experience. I have been launching it only from my yard so far, and I rarely re-calibrate. Initiating operations such as compass and gyro calibration, motor stop/start is done by moving the thumb sticks simultaneously in a specific direction. For example, hold them both down and in at the same time to start the motors. The controller is pretty cool - very simple layout, four status LED lights, has fold out antennas, hand grips, and smart phone holder. The phone holder is a bit on the small side; I couldn't fit my Galaxy Note 10 without removing my bulky case first. I purchased a slimmer case and now it fits fine, but not much extra space.The SJ GPS PRO app is pretty good. Before launching it you need to connect to the Drone's Wifi network. It will tell you that the internet is not available - this is fine, since you just need it to connect to the drone. Once you launch the app, select the F11 pro from the drop-down and hit the 'controls' button to take you to the FPV/controls screen where it will display what the drone's camera is seeing. There are several on-screen controls you can use, such as selecting follow-me mode, return to home, etc., and also status info such as drone/controller battery life, as well as height and distance in meters. The settings gear icon will take you to the flight restrictions screen. This is where you can turn beginner mode on/off and change limitations on flight distance, altitude, and return home altitude. You will be in beginner mode by default until you go into the settings and turn it off. So you will notice a geo fence - when you fly more than 30 meters away or 30 meters high the drone will stop and not let you go any further. This is quite useful - I turned beginner mode off but I do keep limitations in place and only extend them if I need to, mid-flight.I have only one complaint with the app - it doesn't blink or beep when the battery starts running low. Yes the battery indicator turns to one red bar, and in the bottom left message section it tells you 'drone low voltage' in small text, but it is quite easy to overlook these when you are keeping your eyes on the drone. This has contributed to my only two crashes so far; I will discuss that in a moment.Taking off is easy - you can do it by activating the motors (thumb sticks down + in) and then using the left stick to manually take off, or use the one-button takeoff/landing. It will hover about 4-5 feet high. When the drone is in GPS mode, hovering stability is pretty impressive. I'm used to my lightweight non-GPS toy drone drifting all over the place, but the F11 will hover in a 2-3 foot radius even in moderate wind which is great. That's actually very useful if you want to put the controller down and let the drone film something from the air on it's own - like kicking a ball around with my daughter. You'll notice that in GPS mode the drone stops sharply when you take your thumb off the right stick. That's because it will stick to the GPS coordinates at the very spot where you let go of the stick. In non-GPS mode the drone will continue to glide for a bit after you let go of the right stick. That can give flying a bit of a 'sportier' feel, but you will not have any GPS functions available to you - most importantly the return to home function.The GPS features work pretty well. Sometimes the target tracking mode takes a few attempts to lock on to the target (by drawing a rectangle in the app) or it will lose the target if it moves too fast. Follow-me works well. Return to home is probably the most important of these features - it will prevent you from losing the drone if it flies out of controller range or if you just want it to come back ASAP for any reaason. It's pretty accurate - lands within a 5 foot radius from where it took off. One of the things I learned the hard way is that the drone will not rise to its return home elevation unless it's flying high/far enough away AND you press the return home button. Otherwise it will just head right back to the takeoff spot. I didn't know that, and when the battery ran low the drone just headed right back to the takeoff spot. That wouldn't usually be a big deal, but there happened to be a tree in the way. When the drone activates low battery return home you can no longer steer it. So since it was headed right for the tree and I couldn't control it I had to kill the motors mid-flight. It crash landed into (thankfully) a pile of leaves and twigs which broke the fall nicely. I emailed Ruko support and they got back to me the next morning explaining the the drone will not rise to return home altitude unless it is at least 20 meters away and you hit the RH button. This happened to me again a week later - I was flying the drone in my yard and didn't notice the battery had went low. The app doesn't blink or beep or anything to grab your attention. I had moved from the takeoff point while flying, so when the low battery return home kicked in it veered sharp right and I couldn't control it. This time I couldn't kill the motors in time and it crashed violently into my shed and landed hard on gravel. It sustained some superficial nicks on the body of the drone and on the propellers but after swapping in a new battery it was able to continue flying with no issue. I cringed when I saw how hard it crashed, but was glad to see that there was no real damage. So this drone is built solid and sturdy.I have gradually grown more confident in flying farther and higher, even in some wind (although I wouldn't recommend flying in 15+ mph wind) thanks to the dependability/stability of the drone. I would not dare to fly my previous drone higher than 50 feet or farther than 200 ft since it did not have GPS and as such was not stable, especially in any wind. The F11 has a solid camera, but no gimbal or EIS. So there will be some shakiness to your video and the image will tilt when the drone tilts. You can get reasonable smooth video in very low winds and while flying it at very low speeds. The video resolution is not 4K - according to the manual only still pictures are shot in 4K, video is in 1080p when stored to micro sd card. Only 32GB cards will work - I tried my 64GB and 128GB with no luck. The recorded video is reasonably crisp for a casual hobby drone. I might opt for a step up with my next drone purchase, with a true 4K video camera and gimbal/EIS. The F11 GIM has these features and I was considering it, but ultimately the lower price and slightly better battery life on the F11 Pro won me over. You can rotate the camera from 0-90 degrees via controller which is very handy. You can't zoom though, another feature available on higher tier drones.Flight controls are very responsive and accurate - the drone maneuvers quite well and is fairly fast and agile, especially at speed level 3. The FPV range is decent but nowhere near what they advertise, at least in my experience. I haven't lost FPV transmission yet but it does begin to lag pretty bad when farther than say 200 meters or so. To be fair, there are trees that might be getting in the way of the FPV transmission, so I will test this out when I take it for a flight in a completely open area. The battery life is outstanding. I timed it twice: the first time I flew it high and very far away, switching between medium and high speed settings throughout the flight, while taking video the whole time. It lasted over 28 minutes. The second time I let it hover in place, and minimized the video recording and FPV - over 32 minutes! So it might get close to 35 minutes with zero recording, no FPV, and hovering in place. But for practical purposes you will get very close to 30 minutes per battery which is the best you will find at this price point, and probably even if you go $200 higher.In summary, I am very impressed and satisfied with this drone and it has surpassed my expectations. I don't feel a need to upgrade anytime soon, and hopefully it will last at least 1-2 years. If you are looking for a beginner-intermediate level drone with the full suite of GPS features, decent camera, loooong battery life, long transmission range, solid build quality, and on the lower end of the budget spectrum then I don't think you will be able to find a better model than the F11 Pro.

I will preface the review and indicate that this is my third quadcopter drone, but I still consider myself a novice. My first was a Quark Micro Drone completely manually controlled drone. It is an indoor auditorium/gymnasium drone or possibly an outdoor drone if there is absolutely zero wind. Anything beyond that, mother nature controls your drone, you do not. It still functions to this day and never replaced a prop or broke anything. The second is a Potensic D85 drone. Definitely more than a step up. It has some quirks, especially during take off and the wind could drive it unpredictably some times. The return to home is pretty solid if you get into to trouble mostly. Trees are definitely your enemy. Don't take of near them. Think Charley brown and the kite eating tree. All of my crashes have been tree branch related, where I disregarded taking off close (within 30 feet) of any/all trees. All my crashes were wind related where the drone was being moved by wind currents. Ground level wind and above treeline/building wind are way different. Transitioning between them is always a challenge. Return to home is nice, but once in one of these challenging situations where your are suddenly restricted in your options, do use it. In almost all cases, it is better to just shut off all drone motors and let gravity take over to get you out of the situation than to press it. Get below tree branches or structures, then hit power and try to reduce the effects of gravity, if possible. Having props hit objects and sending it bolting in unpredictable directions will limit your options to a fragile pinball waiting for the scene of the crash. One of branch/prop hitting situations involved the D85. A solid drone, but from 30 feet high, an entire arm of the quad copter broke cleanly off. A few drops of Clear JB Weld later, and the same drone was back in the air flying like new. I didn't even need to replace the dinged up props. It flew predictably, but I still ended up replacing them out of an abundance of caution.That brings me to my third quadcopter drone The Ruko F11Gim drone. Everything about it including the case is professional, well made, and well thought out. It is a little trickly to pair depending on your device. If you have a table without 5Gig WIFI, forget trying to attempt to pair it. Pairing is a little finicky, you always have to do so in this order. Drone on flat surface, don't touch it. Turn on remote control next, Pair with phone next. Do these in any different order is an exercise in frustration. Nothing will be easy. Once paired, setting up the drone and calibrating the drone are a little order dependent and finicky (you will end up turning off the drone and starting over) but easy to get through again once you work through it once. Make sure the controller stays in its default "NORMAL MODE" (slower responding and more forgiving mode). First flight to around five feet was very stable and easy to maneuver and rotate with no issues. Don't let that fool you into complacency. The second maneuver is just going from a hover and simply sending up at increasing altitudes to see how things respond to the current weather conditions. Okay up to a point, until the drone decides to float in an uncommanded direction towards said trees, probably interacting with upper winds. This is where the easy way out should not involve return to home. Return To Home does two irreversible things. First, it sends it to an altitude higher that you are normally at, to basically attempt to put it above obstacles. It does absolutely nothing for you if there are any obstacles above said drone location, such as tree branches or out croppings. Second, it doesn't put you directly over your home position, but puts it in some circle away from your home location and slowly brings it back it. Neither of these are good for a tight landing location. If their are trees around your home location, Return to Home might as well mean send me to tree and hope for the best. My initial reaction to hit the Return To Home button to address the uncommanded drone movement (wind related) was a bad one. It sent it into the path of a tree, then up through its branches. No drone propeller likes branches nor can it fly stably through them. The Ruko F11 GIM is no exception. Return to home sent up through said tree branches, pinballing through said tree branches while attempting to stabilize itself as it fell and crashed atop my roof upside down. Not a good experience for rotating props that continued to rotate well after the crash. The Return to Home feature managed to keep the drone from falling all the way to ground level vs the top of my roof and some damage, but there was some damage. The drone arms are very solid and with stood the impact. One of the clear caps where the flashy red/blue lights was knocked off. A drop or so of clear JB weld solved that problem. What couldn't be solved was while the camera was not directly impacted, the shock of the impact damaged the panning up/down feature. It no longer moves vertically. In all other respects, the camera works fine, the zoom works fine, image is clear, no damage to lens, just no camera movement up or down. Not sure its camera is its best feature now, but still works and is fun to fly.As with most things, you learn more when things don't work right that when everything works perfectly, but any drone crash is unpredictable and is to be expected. There is no collision avoidance. Any feature used such as follow me will also mean follow me into a building, tree, or bridge (if driving in a car with follow me) if common sense is not used. Probably if you are in a car using follow me, you are not using common sense. How many YouTube videos are out there doing just that? Quite a few!!