so ive been watching fpv content for like 6 months now and i finally want to pull the trigger on actually getting into it. my budget is probably around $300-400 for the quad itself, not counting a radio and goggles which i know are their own whole thing.

the thing im stuck on is whether i should just grab something like a BetaFPV or Emax prebuilt to start flying and crashing, or if i should just learn to build from the start. i know the argument for building is that you learn how to fix stuff when it breaks, which apparently is all the time. but i also dont want to spend 3 weeks soldering something together just to crash it into a tree on my first flight.

also seen some people talk about iFlight prebuilts being decent quality out of the box ? anyone have actual hands on experience with those? the Nazgul series specifically. or is that more of a intermediate flyer thing

honest answer ? prebuilt is fine to start, the whole "you wont learn unless you build" thing is a bit overblown imo. you still have to learn to tune, fix props, re-solder motors eventually, configure betaflight, all that stuff. you dont need to have assembled every single component to understand whats going on inside the thing.

that said the iFlight Nazgul stuff is solid but maybe a bit much for a first quad if youre worried about crashing ? those are proper 5 inch rippers and will go faster than you expect really quickly. id honestly look at the BetaFPV Meteor or even a Tinyhawk 2 freestyle first just to get your muscle memory down without destroying expensive hardware on every gate clip. then step up when you know what youre doing a bit.

i started on an emax tinyhawk freestyle prebuilt about a year ago and it was pretty good for learning, crashed it probably 200 times and it mostly survived lol. eventually one of the motor arms cracked and i had to source a replacement frame which kind of forced me to learn how it all went together anyway. so like, you end up learning to wrench on it either way.

one thing nobody told me ? budget for extra props and motors before you even fly the first time. seriously just order a bunch of gemfan 5126 or whatever fits your build and have them ready. nothing more annoying than grounding yourself because you snapped your last prop