so my nephew wants to get into drones and asked me to help him pick something out. hes 19, not a kid or anything, just doesnt have a lot of money. i was looking at some of the stuff on amazon under like 100 bucks and honestly i cant tell if any of it is legitimate or just garbage rebranded from the same factory. some of them claim 4k video which seems impossible at that price point. is there anything in the like 80-150 range thats actually flyable and not going to completely fall apart, or should he just save up more and go for something like a dji at some point. i dont know anything about drones myself so im kind of just guessing here

the 4k claims on those cheap amazon drones are basically fake, its upscaled from a much lower resolution sensor and the footage looks terrible in practice. that said there are a couple options in the lower range that are fine for just learning the basics of flying, like getting used to orientation and hovering and not panicking when the wind picks up. the holy stone and potensic stuff isnt amazing but its not total junk either. real talk though if hes serious about it even a little bit, saving up to the mini 2 range is going to be a much better experience and he wont feel like he wasted money in three months

yeah the cheap ones are kind of a trap imo. i bought one of those 60 dollar things thinking id learn on it before spending real money and the gps was so unreliable it drifted like 10 feet in calm conditions. ended up just going ahead and getting a proper one anyway so basically wasted the 60 bucks. if hes on a tight budget maybe look for a used mini 2 or something, people sell them after barely flying them all the time