The nice people at Paramountzone sent me a Turbo Drone four channel remote controlled quadrocopter to review.
It’s 36cm across (including the rotors, which are 13.5cm each), making it just about small enough to fly indoors.
The 500mAh 3.7v li-po rechargeable battery makes it conveniently easy to get spares; I had the exact same battery laying around in another remote controlled chopper.
It takes 45 minutes to charge using the supplied charger, and gives about 10 minutes of flying time.
The red bit at the top of the remote control makes it look as though it’s going to be an infra-red job, but it’s actually 2.4 Ghz with (apparently) a 100m range. That’s pretty impressive,
It claims to be suitable for both indoor and outdoor flight (in ‘fairly calm conditions’) which, while I have yet to try it outdoors, I can definitely believe. Since my back garden is a terrifying tangle of trees I’ll probably be taking it to the local park to try out longer distance flight.
The remote has an excellent feature in which the level of responsiveness can be adjusted between four modes:
- 20% – good for getting started, but soon feels a bit sluggish
- 40% – responds a bit more quickly and feels more nimble
- 60% – twitchy fun. Probably about as high as you’ll go most of the time indoors
- 100% – insanity mode in which the remote beeps constantly, perhaps to remind you that any move of the right stick is going to make it instantly flip 360°
The Turbo Drone RC Quadrocopter is a seriously nice little toy, and you should seriously consider it as a Christmas present to yourself. It’s stable and responsive (with the adjustable sensitivity on the remote allowing you to choose exactly how brave you want to be) and I’m finding it more fun to fly than similarly sized co-ax helicopters. It’s also available from Amazon.