so ive been watching fpv content for probably like 6 months now and im finally pulling the trigger on getting into it. my budget is somewhere around 400-500 dollars and ive been going back and forth on whether to just grab something prebuilt like the dji avata 2 or the holy stone whatever, or actually learn to build something from scratch. people keep telling me different things.

the thing is i dont really have anyone local who flies so if i crash and burn (literally) i need to be able to figure stuff out on my own which makes me lean toward prebuilt, but then i see builds on youtube that seem way more capable for the same money. also confused about the whole digital vs analog thing because betaflight setups seem to mostly run analog goggles still? im probably getting some of that wrong. any actual advice from people who have been through this would be appreciated

honest answer is that the avata 2 is a completely different product than what most people mean when they say fpv. its more like a camera drone with fpv-ish controls, the flight envelope is pretty locked down and youre not gonna be doing anything too aggressive with it. if your goal is cruising around and getting nice footage its fine. if you want to actually rip around and feel what fpv is about, its kind of the wrong tool.

for 400-500 building your own 5 inch is absolutely doable and youll end up with something faster and more configurable than any prebuilt in that range. the tradeoff is time. betaflight has a learning curve, soldering has a learning curve, and your first few builds will probably have some frustrating debugging sessions. but that knowledge pays off forever because you can fix anything yourself. i started on a babyhawk years ago and honestly wish id just gone straight to building, would have saved money in the long run.

analog vs digital is a whole other rabbit hole. analog is cheaper and has lower latency which some people still prefer for racing but the image quality is rough compared to wtf or dji o3. most people building for freestyle right now are going o3 or walksnail if budget allows.

i was in basically the exact same spot last year and went prebuilt first, got a geprc mark5 hd and honestly dont regret it as a starting point even though i eventually started building my own stuff. it got me flying and crashing without having to diagnose whether the problem was my soldering or my flying lol. that said the mark5 isnt cheap so maybe not exactly your use case

the holy stone stuff id steer clear of for actual fpv, those are more toy grade and wont teach you anything transferable