so my brother in law has one of those DJI ones and it looks amazing but its also like 700 dollars which i cant really swing right now. ive been looking at some cheaper brands, seen some ryze tello stuff and some holy stone things on amazon. are those actually usable or are they basically toys. im not trying to do professional video or anything just want to get a feel for flying before i maybe invest more later. also does it matter that i have no experience at all, like should a total beginner even bother with an expensive drone right away

the tello is actually made by ryze but DJI has a hand in it so its a bit of a different beast than the random holy stone stuff. decent little indoor flier, not great outside in any wind at all. the holy stones are... fine i guess for learning the very basics but the GPS on them can be sketchy and the video is pretty bad. thing is though, cheap drones can teach you bad habits because they handle so differently from something like a mini series. if you can stretch to a used DJI Mini 2 you'd probably be better off in the long run. they hold their value pretty well but you can find decent used ones around 200-250 sometimes

tbh i started on a holy stone and dont regret it too much, crashed it plenty of times and didnt feel bad about it. once i felt comfortable i moved to a mini 3 pro and the jump in quality is massive but at least i wasnt terrified of every gust of wind because id already broken the cheap one twice. so i dunno, depends how worried you are about wrecking your first one i guess. some people say just go straight to the good stuff and be careful, others say learn on something disposable. both approaches seem to work