Looking at the iFlight Nazgul Eco at around $200 vs building a custom 5" quad for roughly $230, I'm torn on which route to take. The days when BnF drones were significantly more expensive and lower-quality are gone - these are as good as anything even the best builder would build themselves, and because the manufacturer benefits from economies-of-scale, they're often less expensive too. The Eco's Xing-E Pro motors have hollow steel shaft instead of titanium alloy shaft, so they might be slightly less durable, and comes with a slower ATF435 processor instead of the F722. Has anyone done a direct comparison between the two? Are the component compromises in the Eco noticeable during actual flight?

Eventually, you're going to have to learn how to repair your drone, and the best way to learn to repair your drone is to build it yourself. The Nazgul Eco is solid but when you crash (and you will), you'll be sending it back to iFlight or paying someone else to fix what could be a $5 component replacement.

I went with the Nazgul Eco and couldn't be happier. You can get decent stacks for just under $70 making it one of the best value available, but the time saved on assembly and knowing everything works out of the box was worth it for me. The ATF435 processor handles everything I throw at it just fine.

Today, buying a quad can be as cheap as building, but without knowing how to troubleshoot and fix your quad, you will spend money on unnecessarily more quads instead of simple fixes and upgrades. Started with a BnF, crashed it twice, bought another one. Now I build my own and a crash costs me $15 in parts instead of $200 for a new quad.