so ive been flying whoops for about a year and finally decided to do a proper 5inch build. been lurking here forever and thought i had a pretty good idea of what i was doing but now im knee deep in trying to pick a frame and i'm second guessing everything.

basically i narrowed it down to the ImpulseRC Apex or the TBS Source One v5. the Source One is way cheaper obviously but ive seen people say the arm thickness is an issue, like theyre a bit flexy? and the Apex seems bomber but its pushing my budget hard especially once i factor in everything else. running a 45x45 stack, haven't bought motors yet thinking the Xing2 2507s but open to suggestions there too.

also genuinely not sure if i should go analog first just to keep costs down or just bite the bullet and go DJI O3. i know everyone says O3 just do it but like... my budget is what it is. anyway yeah what would you guys do in my position

source one gets a lot of grief but honestly for a first 5inch its totally fine. yeah the arms are a bit noodly compared to something like the apex but unless youre sending it into concrete every session you wont really notice it in the air. the weight saving is real and the repairability is great, you can get replacement arms for basically nothing. i built mine on a source one v4 and it lasted way longer than i expected before i actually needed to swap arms.

on the O3 vs analog thing ? i went analog first and honestly dont regret it. learned the basics without crying about a broken vista. when i did finally switch to O3 i appreciated it way more and i wasn't crashing nearly as much so the unit actually survived. just something to think about. the Xing2s are decent motors btw, ran them on a 4s build for a while, nothing special but reliable enough.

im in pretty much the same boat lol. ended up going with the apex and honestly the price hurts but the thing feels like a tank. no regrets on the frame itself. went O3 though and between that and the apex and motors and a decent ESC stack i basically had to sell a kidney so... yeah consider your finances carefully haha