been flying a self built 5inch for about two years, running a pretty standard stack, nothing fancy. the frame finally cracked bad enough that im thinking instead of rebuilding the same thing i might just grab a prebuilt and have a backup quad ready to go faster. i know i know, building is part of the hobby etc etc, ive heard it, i still like building but right now i just want something flying quickly.

anyway ive been going back and forth between iFlight and Diatone. my buddy has an iFlight Nazgul Evoque and its been solid for him but i feel like Diatone doesnt get talked about as much anymore and im not sure if thats because theyre actually worse now or just less marketing or what. used to see Diatone frames everywhere a few years back. the MXC Taycan was super popular. did something change or am i just not in the right corners of the internet

also not married to either of these if theres something else in the $200-280 range for a prebuilt 5inch that people actually like

Diatone is still around and still making decent stuff but yeah they kind of lost mindshare to iFlight, i think part of it is iFlight just does a better job of getting their quads in front of youtubers and the community. the actual hardware difference between a mid tier iFlight and a comparable Diatone is pretty marginal honestly, its more about support and parts availability at this point and iFlight wins there just because more people have them so theres more info when something goes wrong.

the Nazgul Evoque your buddy has is genuinely a good quad, the frame design is nice and the components they ship it with are reasonable for the price. if hes had it for a while with no major issues id probably just go that route and not overthink it

slight tangent but have you looked at Flywoo at all? the Explorer LR and some of their 5inch stuff has been getting good feedback and they tend to use pretty solid motors. not sure exactly where they land pricewise for what youre looking for but worth a look. i made the mistake of buying a prebuilt once just going off specs on paper and the motors were genuinely awful out of the box, had to replace them within a month. so id pay attention to what motors actually come on whatever you get, some of these brands will slap their own brand on rebadged motors that are just not great