my nephew wants to get into flying drones, hes 19 and has zero experience. im thinking of getting him something for his birthday but i dont know if i should grab one of those cheap Amazon ones for like 80 bucks so he can crash it without feeling terrible, or if thats actually a waste and he should just start with something decent. ive heard people say learn on cheap gear but also heard people say cheap gear teaches bad habits because it flies so differently from real drones. genuinely dont know which way to go here. hes not going to be doing photography or anything serious, just wants to fly around and have fun i think

the cheap Amazon drones are kind of a trap imo. they feel nothing like flying an actual GPS-stabilized drone, the controls are twitchy, the range is garbage, and half the time the app barely works. your nephew will either get frustrated and quit or develop habits that dont translate at all when he eventually gets a real one. id say go refurbished DJI Mini 2 if budget is the issue, you can find them under 200 sometimes. that thing is sturdy enough and the stabilization means he can actually learn the fundamentals without fighting the aircraft the whole time

eh i dunno, i started on a cheap Syma thing back in the day and it was fine. got me used to the sticks and crashing didnt hurt at all financially. but yeah GPS modes werent really a thing on those so the jump to my first real drone was a bit of a shock. i guess it depends on how serious he is about sticking with it. if hes the type to give up when something gets hard then maybe dont spend 300 bucks on somthing that ends up in a closet after a month