so ive been building my own quads for about 3 years now and honestly im just tired of the whole process lately. soldering irons, stack alignment, reordering parts that are out of stock, you know how it goes. i want something i can just flash betaflight on and go fly without spending a weekend on it first.

been looking at the diatone roma f5 because a buddy of mine had one a while back and said it flew great out of the box, but i dont know how old that info is and whether its still a solid pick. also looked at the iflight nazgul evoque and the BetaFPV 5 which honestly i know nothing about. my budget is somewhere around 200-250 for the frame/build minus the receiver since ill be adding my own crossfire.

mainly flying freestyle, occasional light racing at a local track but nothing competitive. anyone running one of these or gone through this same decision lately?

the nazgul evoque is probably what you want tbh. iFlight has gotten a lot better about their BF tunes out of the box, the f5 v2 in particular flies really well without touching much. i got mine running well with just a quick master multiplier adjustment and setting up my rates, like maybe 20 minutes of actual tuning. the frame is solid, props in props out options, and the stack they're shipping in those now is pretty clean wiring wise.

roma f5 is still decent but diatone's QC has been kinda hit or miss from what ive seen on the fb groups. not saying avoid it but just something to be aware of if youre not wanting to debug stuff right away which sounds like exactly what you dont want right now lol

had the nazgul evoque for about 6 months, came from building my own too. honestly the only thing i changed was the vtx settings and added crossfire just like you're planning. flew it basically stock otherwise for the first couple months and it was totally fine for freestyle. eventually went back and did a proper rpm filter tune and it got noticeably smoother but like it wasnt bad before either.

one thing nobody mentions is the canopy is a bit fragile on hard nose-ins, already cracked mine twice. iFlight sells replacement parts easy enough but worth knowing.