been thinking about getting into drones for a while, mostly just to film some outdoor stuff when im hiking and maybe just mess around. my budget is like 300-400 bucks but i keep seeing people say you should start with something cheaper to learn on so you dont wreck an expensive drone. but then other people say just buy the good one because the cheaper ones fly differently and youll have to relearn anyway.

i genuinely dont know which advice to follow. theres a holy stone and an eachine something or other in my price range but i have no idea if those are actually good or just garbage that will frustrate me. anyone gone through this and have an opinion

the "learn on a cheap drone first" advice is kind of outdated at this point imo. the thing is, those cheap ones you mentioned fly terribly compared to something with proper gps hold and obstacle avoidance, so youre not really learning transferable skills, youre just fighting bad hardware. with a mini 2 or even the mini 3 you can find used for reasonable money, the drone is stable enough that you can actually focus on learning to control it rather than just trying to keep it from drifting into a wall constantly.

that said if your budget is genuinely tight and you want something to beat up while you figure out the basics, a tiny whoop or something like that indoors is actually pretty useful. different thing entirely but good for hand eye coordination stuff.

i went the cheap route first and honestly regret it a little. the holy stone i had just felt floaty and weird and i thought i was bad at flying when really the drone just wasnt holding position well. switched to a mini 2 used off ebay and it was like night and day, suddenly i could actually practice things without the drone doing random stuff on its own. so yeah id probably skip straight to something decent if your budget allows it