so my brother got a drone like two years ago and ive been wanting one ever since but i keep putting it off because i dont know where to start. theres like a thousand options and i dont want to spend a bunch of money on something that crashes on its first flight or whatever. my budget is probably like 150-200 dollars maybe a little more if its worth it. i mainly want to fly it outside in my backyard and maybe take it to the park but im not doing anything serious, no youtube channel or anything like that. do i go with a mini or one of those little toy ones from amazon, i genuinely have no idea what the difference is or if it even matters for someone just starting out. any help would be appreciated

honestly for that budget the DJI Mini 2 SE is kind of the obvious answer if you can stretch a tiny bit, but if 200 is hard then the Holy Stone HS720 or something in that range will work fine for learning. the thing is the toy drones from amazon are hit or miss, some of them fly great and some of them are just garbage that drift all over the place even indoors. i started on a cheap one and spent more time frustrated than actually flying. the DJI stuff just works, the stabilization is way better and it wont fight you every time there's a little wind. also worth knowing that anything over 250 grams needs to be registered with the FAA which is like 5 dollars and takes 10 minutes but still, the mini line is under that so no hassle.

yeah what he said but also dont overlook the Ryze Tello if you really just want something cheap to mess around with. i know people kind of dismiss it but for pure learning it flies super predictably and if you crash it into a tree its not the end of the world. i went through two of those before i felt confident enough to get my mini 3. no regrets doing it that way tbh