been trying to understand this for a while and i feel like every time i read about it i get more confused not less. so i have a 400mw vtx on my 5 inch and im flying on 5.8ghz, getting maybe 400-500 meters before i start seeing breakup and that seems low to me based on what other people report. someone told me to upgrade my antennas before i even think about bumping the vtx power and someone else said just get a 1w vtx and stop overthinking it.

the quad is running a rushFPV tank vtx which i think is decent but im not sure about the antenna, its just whatever came with the vtx in the box. on the goggle side im using fat shark attitude v6 with the stock antennas still.

is the consensus actually that antenna quality matters more than raw output power or is that just something people say. like at some point doesnt more watts just win regardless of antenna efficiency

yeah the antenna on the goggle side is almost certainly your bottleneck. the receive side matters just as much as transmit and stock goggle antennas are notoriously bad. i was in the same situation, had a 600mw vtx and was getting meh range and then put a pair of axii 2 antennas on my goggles and the difference was significant, like went from getting breakup at 600m to flying comfortably past a kilometer.

the more watts argument isnt wrong exactly but its kind of a brute force approach and also has legal limits depending where you are. doubling your transmit power gives you like 3db gain which sounds decent until you realize a decent antenna upgrade can give you 5-6db on the receive end without any legal issues. also higher power vtxs run hotter and can cause interference with your gps or other electronics on the quad if youre not careful with shielding and placement.

tl;dr fix your receive antennas first, seriously

what mount are you using for the vtx and where is it sitting on the build? asking because ive seen people lose a ton of signal just because the vtx antenna is pointing straight down or is blocked by a carbon fiber arm. had a buddy with this exact problem, thought it was a weak vtx, turned out the antenna wire was routed under the battery and the battery was eating half the signal. moved it and his range basically doubled overnight without changing any hardware