ok so this is kinda a weird comparison but hear me out. i live in an apartment and obviously flying outside is getting more complicated with regulations here so ive been messing around with tiny whoops mostly. have a tinyhawk 2 that ive been on for ages and im thinking about upgrading but im torn

the Aquila16 looks really solid on paper, the f4 FC is nice and the motors seem decent for the size, but ive seen some people mention the stock tune is pretty mushy out of the box. the tinyhawk 3 on the other hand i know emax generally ships things reasonably well tuned but the power system feels a bit dated to me based on specs

has anyone actually flashed betaflight on either of these and dug into the pids? im comfortable in betaflight, done plenty of tuning on my bigger builds, just wondering if the small FC on the aquila handles filtering and pid changes the same way or if theres some weird quirks with the hardware. also does the tinyhawk 3 even run betaflight or is it locked to something proprietary, i honestly cant remember

tinyhawk 3 runs betaflight, its not locked down. i have one and flashed the latest bf on it no problem. the default tune is honestly not bad for cruising around but yeah if you want any kind of snappy response for freestyle indoor you'll want to bump the P and D terms up a fair bit, the stock filtering is pretty agressive which makes it feel sluggish. takes maybe an hour of tweaking to get it feeling good

havent touched the aquila so cant compare directly but from what ive seen in videos the thrust-to-weight on it looks better which probably helps the tune feel more responsive even if the defaults arent perfect

tbh for indoor apartment flying i wouldnt overthink the tuning side too much, both will fly fine in a living room. the bigger deal imo is prop guard design and whether you care about HD video or not becuase the camera quality difference is pretty significant between those two. if youre just flying for fun analog on the tinyhawk is fine but if you want to record anything watchable the aquila wins easy