ok so this comes up every time we fly together. my buddy insists that any prebuilt under like $300 is a waste of money because the components are always slightly worse bins or the solder joints are garbage or whatever. and i get it, ive seen some rough quality control stuff come out of the bigger manufacturers. but also he has spent like six weekends trying to get his custom build to stop oscillating on fast rolls and im just out there flying.

i picked up an iFlight Nazgul5 V3 back in the spring, flashed it to the latest betaflight, did a quick RPM filter setup because the stock settings were a bit conservative, and its been pretty solid. replaced one motor after a bad crash which was annoying but not really a build quality issue, that was just me being an idiot near a wall.

is the whole prebuilt hate thing still valid in like or have the manufacturers actually gotten their act together. genuinely asking because i feel like the gap has closed a lot but maybe im just lucky with my particular quad

your buddy isnt totally wrong but hes not totally right either. a few years ago prebuilts were genuinely hit or miss, i got a bind and fly from a well known brand and one of the ESC pads desoldered itself on the third flight. but i think the big names have tightened things up. the issue now is less about quality and more about whether the tune matches your flying style. most prebuilts are tuned for a kind of average aggressive freestyle feel and if you fly differently you might find it just feels off even if technically everything is working fine.

also the component binning thing is a bit of a myth at this point for the top tier prebuilts. iFlight and GEPRC are using the same motors they sell separately, you can check the sticker on the bell. its not like they have a secret reject pile they stuff into prebuilts.

honestly the RPM filter thing you mentioned is the main thing i always do on any prebuilt straight away. the stock dynamic idle and rpm filter settings are almost always set super safe because they dont know what props youll put on it or whatever. once you dial that in and maybe run a quick blackbox log to check for noise the prebuilts fly really well these days. your buddy probably just hasnt flown a good modern one