asking for myself, im a disaster. dropped my phone twice this week. i want to get into drones but im being realistic that im probably going to crash the thing at some point, maybe multiple times. so whats a good starter drone thats either cheap enough that i dont cry when i break it or durable enough to survive a guy who has no business operating machinery

seen the holy stone ones mentioned a lot, are those actually decent or is that just because theyre everywhere on amazon. also does DJI have any kind of crash replacement thing or is that a scam

DJI Care Refresh is actually worth it imo, its not a scam. you pay like 49 bucks a year on a Mini 3 and get two replacements. had a flyaway situation where my drone went into a tree and came down hard, sent it in and had a replacement back in like a week. that said you still have to buy the plan upfront when you register the drone so dont forget to do it right away.

holy stone stuff is fine for bouncing around indoors or learning the very basics of orientation but the cameras are pretty bad and the flight time is short. if you think you'll stick with this hobby i wouldnt spend money on one just to "practice crashing" because the flight characteristics are so different from a real GPS drone that youre not really learning transferable skills anyway

the DJI refresh thing is genuinely good, wish i'd gotten it my first year. also worth mentioning that most beginner crashes arent actually as catastrophic as people think, a lot of the time youre just breaking a prop and those are like 10 bucks. the real danger is water or flying it into something at speed. just start slow and low and youll probably be fine honestly