Review; I Bought a $60 Drone So You Wouldn’t Have To

There’s so much a 1.0 megapixel camera can do for you in this era, with most cameras spotting at least 18MP, its off putting to see a device marketed at professionals and ethusiasts doing anything else and that is exactly what the Emotion Hj30 does (Who names their production emotion anyways?).

So, I’ve always wanted to fly but I’m acrophobic so the closest thing to flying for me is with drones and since the super commercial drones cost a hand and three extra fingers, I decided to opt-in and get the recent Chinese knock off drones that have saturated the market to hone my skills because it’s easier to crash a $60 drone than start a ‘go fund me’ account because I crashed a $500 drone (I’m looking at you Mavic Mini). Recently, I got the Hj30 foldable RC drone from Jumia Global. It’s supposed to be an imitation of the DJI Mavic Air and the site boasted of the drone being capable of delivering 720p video resolution (which technically is Standard Definition) but after testing it out; there are no good words, absolutely no good words.

Build Quality of the Hj30 is not solid by the least of solid standards. The entire drone is made of cheap plastic, with no real weight to it. The foldable arms that hold the propellers feel really fragile with the wires that run from the drone to the propellers visible at its hinges. Merely holding the drone triggered part of my anxiety and I felt a little squeeze would break the arms in two.

Connecting the drone to a controller was no problem but from then onward, it seemed like the propellers were just a spin show meant to excite you and nothing more. The most this drone would lift was 1-3 meters off the floor before it came crashing down. There are several videos on the internet of this particular drone flying so it seemed this problem was particular to this drone hence we won’t dwell on that.

With regards image quality, the best I can liken the images to are images gotten from selfie cameras on smartphones in 2010. By 2020 standards, the image and video quality that this drone offers are just straight-up bad but at $60, it’s hard to expect more.

If I’d give my recommendations, do not buy these drones. They are other alternatives to learning to fly drones like DJI simulations app amongst other things but should you still opt to get one of these, fingers crossed with hopes that your story “doesn’t touch the heart”.