This is a review of the LAUMOX SG907 GPS Drone with 4K HD Adjustment Camera Wide Angle 5G Wi-Fi FPV RC Quadcopter Professional Foldable Drones E520S E58 sold by AliExpress.
It's a low-cost drone which features a 4K camera and GPS, which I thought wasn't bad for the princely sum of NZD$207, and that included 3 batteries and a bag.
So, what do you get?
In the bag, you have the drone, the controller, 3 batteries, a spare set of rotor blades, a charger for the batteries, and the manuals. The drone itself is quite compact and the arms fold out with the rotors on them. Likewise, the controller has spring clip-in arms that fold out above it to hold your mobile phone, so you can see video and pictures in real time.
The app for the iPhone is reasonably good. I was pretty impressed, to be honest – it has a lot of functionality for the price, including the ability to set GPS waypoints and a follow-me function. You can even use gestures for it to take photos!
The flight controller feels reasonably intuitive once you get the hang of it. The manual isn't the best, as you can probably guess from a cheap Chinese bit of kit – reading the manuals completely a couple of times over is helpful. The main issue with the supplied controller is the batteries: it takes 4 AA batteries. I'm using rechargeables because it was starting to add up, but they drain pretty fast.
The app is where the thing really shines. It's really good and I actually prefer it over the controller, plus the iPhone 11 Pro Max battery lasts for a lot longer.
The drone itself is quite good. The batteries last about 10–15 minutes each, and it feels quite stable when it's hovering – it can even cope with a bit of wind. One annoying thing is the camera doesn't seem to rotate 90 degrees anymore. This could be because I crashed it a couple of times, but it's disappointing nonetheless. I can manually adjust it before taking off.
The drone reaches a really high altitude – an advantage of my location is that I have 3.5 acres to fly around and I'm not that close to an airport.
I flew it over Missy Moo (our cow) and her pet ram (they are inseparable). She didn't get too upset by it, but she did moo at it a lot. I gave her a carrot to apologise afterwards, and she's all good.
It's a great low-cost introduction to drone technology. You can't argue with the price of it – a lot cheaper than the DJI drones. It's not perfect, but a good 'starter' drone, that's for sure.
My mate Paul liked it, and he's played around with a few drones and RC devices over the years, so I bought him one to play with as a thank you for all the cabling work he did for me. I think he's crashed it and broken one of the landing feet off, but hey... that's life.
Do I recommend it? For a first 'starter drone', absolutely – it does a lot more than anything I've seen locally. If you are experienced with drones and want to do some 'real' video work and photography, it's probably better to spend the money and get the DJI drone from PB Tech, but it's going to cost more.
Exploring new worlds!
Kirk out.
