so my brother got a drone last christmas and ive been wanting to get one ever since but i have no idea where to start. i dont want to spend a ton of money on something i might crash into a tree the first day but i also dont want something so cheap it just falls out of the sky. my budget is probably like 200-300 dollars maybe a little more if something is really worth it. mostly want to fly outside, maybe take some video of hiking trips and stuff. any suggestions would be really appreciated, just dont know where to even begin looking

honestly the DJI Mini 2 SE is probably the answer if you can stretch to like 300. i know everyone says this but theres a reason everyone says it, its just really hard to crash unless youre being genuinely reckless. the stabilization does a lot of the work for you and the footage looks surprisingly good for the price. i started on some cheap amazon thing and wasted money, wish id just gone straight to something decent. under 250g so you also dont have to worry as much about registration depending where you are.

i got the holy stone hs720 as my first one because it was cheaper and tbh it was fine for learning but the camera is pretty meh and the wind resistance is not great at all. like anything above a light breeze and it starts drifting. if i was doing it again i think id save up a bit more and go for something from DJI even if its the oldest cheapest one they have. just my two cents, im still pretty new at this myself so take that for what its worth