so ive been watching fpv content for like 6 months now and i finally want to pull the trigger on something. my problem is i cant figure out if i should just grab something like a dji avata 2 or one of those iflight prebuilts with the o3 air unit, or if i should just bite the bullet and learn to build my way from the start.

my buddy keeps telling me prebuilt is a waste of money long term because youre gonna crash and the parts are weird to source, but then again i dont even know how to solder yet so building from scratch seems insane. the whole ecosystem thing is confusing too like if i get locked into dji video link does that mean im stuck buying dji everything forever basically

budget is roughly 600-700 for the whole thing including goggles if thats even realistic, might be able to stretch a bit. mostly want to do freestyle in open fields, not racing

honestly the prebuilt vs custom debate is kind of overblown for beginners, at least in my opinion. the real question is whether you want to spend your first few months flying or soldering. i started on an iflight nazgul and yeah some of the component choices were a bit meh but it flew fine and i learned what i actually wanted to change before i ever touched a soldering iron.

your budget is a bit tight for dji o3 goggles plus a quad though, like the goggles alone are pushing 300-400 depending on which version. might be worth looking at walksnail avatar if you want digital video without being fully in the dji ecosystem, the avatar hd goggles have come down a lot and the image quality is honestly close enough that most people cant tell in a side by side. iflight and geprc both make prebuilts with walksnail already installed and they usually fly pretty well out of the box once you do some minor tune adjustments in betaflight.

dont let the solder thing stop you btw, you will 100% need to learn eventually but you dont need it day one

im kinda in the same boat as you were like 3 months ago lol. ended up going with a geprc mark5 hd with o3 and the dji goggles 2 and its been great but yeah the budget was more like 900 by the time i got everything. the dji ecosystem thing is real but honestly for a first setup i dont think it matters that much, you can always swap the vtx later if you care enough