so ive been watching fpv content for like 6 months now and i finally want to pull the trigger on actually flying instead of just watching. my budget is somewhere around 300-400 dollars for a first quad, not counting the radio and goggles since i already sorted those out (RadioMaster Boxer and a pair of Skyzone 04X i borrowed from a friend to try).

the thing im stuck on is whether to just grab something like a Diatone or BetaFPV prebuilt and start flying, or go the custom route from the start. everyone online seems to have a really strong opinion one way or another and i genuinely cant tell if the prebuilt hate is just hobbyist gatekeeping or if there are real reasons to avoid them. i dont mind soldering, ive done some basic electronics stuff before, but id be starting from zero on knowing what parts actually matter.

anyone gone through this recently and regret one choice over the other?

honestly the prebuilt hate is like 60% gatekeeping and 40% legitimate. the legitimate part is that some of the cheaper prebuilt stuff uses whatever ESCs and FC they could source cheaply and you end up fighting the tune or having a random component fail early. BetaFPV in particular has had some quality control stuff that people complained about, though their more recent 5inch stuff seems better than it used to be.

that said if i were starting over i probably would have bought a prebuilt first just to learn to fly without also trying to learn how to build and troubleshoot at the same time. those are genuinely two different skill sets and combining them when youre new is a lot. Diatone has decent build quality for the price point, and their Roma series was pretty well regarded. just make sure whatever you get has Betaflight support thats current and you can actually flash it yourself if needed, some of the cheaper chinese prebuilts lock the firmware and thats annoying.

i went prebuilt first (BetaFPV 5inch) and then built my second one and honestly building was way more satisfying but i crashed the prebuilt so many times learning that i was glad i didnt have a custom build to destroy lol. so there is that angle to consider. the prebuilt took a lot of abuse.