Holy Stone HS110G GPS FPV Drone with 1080P HD Live Video Camera for Adults and Kids, RC Quadcopter with GPS Auto Return Home, Auto Hover and Follow Me Mode, Long Flight Time, Easy to Fly for Beginners

I previously reviewed Holy Stone's HS120D, and they asked me to review their HS110G. The HS110G is a substantial improvement over the HS120D. My review below will follow a similar format to my original review and I will point out the differences between the two drones to give some context to my thinking.Summary:This drone is a very good intermediate level drone. It has all of the cool features that expensive drones have like target following, GPS waypoint flight paths, and a VR option. I think the only thing you would get out a more expensive drone would be collision avoidance and better heavy camera options (like using a GoPro on a gimbal).What Comes With It:I found the user manual very easy to understand, while still being thorough. I highly recommend reading the whole manual before your first flight so that you know all the features that can help you be a better pilot.Everything you need (including extra propellers and landing gear) is in the box with the exception of a USB wall adapter. Optional equipment that is not included is a mobile device if you want to use the app, and a VR headset for your phone if you want to fly the drone that way. I found that my iPhone 6s Plus without the case easily fit into the holder on the transmitter.One thing that the HS120D came with that does not seem to be an option with the HS110G is a dual-battery charger, where one could charge two batteries at the same time. The battery for the HS110G is charged via a USB cable that plugs directly into the drone, so one could only charge a single battery at a time. That being said, I like the simplicity of only needing one USB cable to charge both the transmitter and drone battery (less drone equipment to keep track of).Calibration:Calibrating the drone is easy (if you have read the manual), but it does take about a minute every time you are preparing to take off. This a bit annoying, but I don't know of a GPS aided drone that does not make you do these preflight calibrations. I think this drone's calibration is relatively quick and is definitely worth it. The flight is very steady and the drone hovers in a stationary position even in a mild wind. I found with the previous drone I reviewed that after a crash, you need to pair the remote again and repeat these calibration procedures. With the HS110G the flight was so stable that I haven't crashed it yet, but I would assume the same procedure is required.Flight:As mentioned before, the flight is very stable. With the HS120D I noticed that sometimes the drone would lose altitude without user intervention. The HS110G seems to have completely corrected this. The drone went exactly where I expected it to, at the height I expected.As with all light weight drones, wind is a big factor. The drone will keep its position in light winds, but anything more will start taking the drone with it. That being said, I believe The HS110G did a far better job of maintaining its position in light winds than the HS120D. In fact in the videos I am including with this review, I was flying in what I would consider "gusty" conditions. You can even see the drone attempting to correct for the wind with the tilted camera angle.With the HS120D, I did not really notice any real change in the drone when I changed the speed setting from medium to high. With this HS110G however, there was a clear difference between the low, medium, and high speed settings.Takeoff and Landing:The automatic takeoff and landing feature works great. The return to home feature also seems to work well. The HS120D had a problem with not turning off the props when one landed manually, but the HS110G seems to have no problem with that. When I touch down and the drone is no longer loosing altitude with the throttle lowered, the props turn off just as one would expect. I also tested the low battery return to home feature, and the drone seemed to be very accurate in deciding when it could return to the launch point at a consistent altitude before totally draining its battery. For fun, I tested the failover mode, where I turned off the transmitter. The drone very cleanly returned to the launch point and landed with the lights flashing red.Virtual Reality View:I really like the VR feature. It is very fun to look through the eyes of the drone and fly around. I found that the the second flight mode (labeled MODE 1) is much more intuitive for VR flight. It changes the traditional drone controls so that the left joystick has forward, back, turn right and turn left and the right joystick has thrust and strafing right and left. Note: In flight MODE 1, to pair the transmitter with the drone, the right joystick is used instead of the left, which I did not see in the manual. Watching the camera screen or using VR can be a bit disorienting at low altitudes because the camera will point straight down at the ground when the drone moves forward. However, at higher altitudes this does not seem to be a problem.Camera:The video stream from the camera is very good. It is smooth and fairly fluent. The camera quality is not great. It is good for getting a general idea of landscapes, but do not expect high detail photos or videos. Facial features from just a few meters away are blurred.Battery:The battery is sufficient for a short recreational flight. The advertised flight time is 13 minutes, which was accurate for my flight. However, having a second battery on hand would probably be a good idea to make the experience "worth it" between charges. The HS120D would often loose altitude when it had low battery. I did not observe this behavior in the HS110G. It had steady flight all the way up to the point where it automatically returned to the launch point.Follow Me Feature:The follow me feature seems to work fairly well. The drone is fairly good at following a target, provided that target is moving at a casual to medium walking pace in a mostly straight line. If you move too quickly, or go to one side or the other, you may find the drone circling. I usually associate this behavior with a poor GPS coordinate lock (either on the drone's GPS or the GPS on the phone it's tracking). If you are looking to film some of those cool action shots that are in most drone commercials, you may need to find a route that is fairly linear, and take a few takes. It is unlikely that your first try will get a good looking video.I actually like the "Locked Follow" mode much better. It functions very well. Once you select your target, the drone will try to keep that target in camera view while remaining stationary itself. If you move too quickly, the computer vision being used to track you will fail, but even if that happens, you can always reselect your target fairly quickly.One thing I thought was really cool was that you could still control the drone in these Follow Me modes, so you could correct the camera angle, or move closer on your target, and then let the automatic flying take over again. I think the "Locked Follow" was much more fluid when doing this, as the "Follow Me" mode seemed to want to readjust the rotation of the drone when I released the controls. The videos I have attached demonstrate the Follow Me modes. Please see the video descriptions below for more details.Autonomous Flight:Setting waypoints for the drone to fly to seemed to work. The HS120D had trouble with maintaining altitude during this task, but the HS110G seemed to have no trouble at all completing multiple waypoints.Mobile App:Holy Stone seems to have read my previous review and fixed some of the bugs I found in their app. The app now works great! The only shortcomings I have found are: The "Learn to Fly" tutorial video is an ad, and not a tutorial. The other video links seem to be broken, and there is not a video for the HS110G. It was also not intuitive for me to know that when entering "Locked Follow" mode I had to highlight my target on the screen. I thought that it would follow the GPS of my phone like the other "Follow Me" mode did. That being said, the improvements to the app have really increased the quality of the experience.Video Description:These are both videos downloaded from my phone very easily using iPhone's airDrop built right into the app.Failed Bike Follow with Circling video.I included this video to demonstrate what happens when you move too fast and in a zig-zag pattern in "Follow Me" mode. The drone initially successfully follows me when I am riding the bike at a walking pace. However, when I turn the corner and start to pedal a little faster the drone starts to circle (at about the time when I look over my shoulder at the drone). I then pedaled just a bit faster hoping the extra distance would allow the drone to correct its (or my) GPS location, but it seemed content to circle around the point where I had started to speed up.Walking Follow and Locked Follow mode video.This video starts out with the "Follow Me" mode and me walking. The drone seemed to want to stay locked in a forward orientation when I was walking away. I tried to take over and correct the camera angle at 15 seconds, but the drone obviously only wanted to be oriented in the same direction as the "Follow Me" mode started in. I then walked a bit further until 30 seconds into the video, to show that the drone actually was following me fairly well (had I been in the center of the frame when I started recording).I then stop "Follow Me" mode, take over, and decrease the altitude at 39 seconds. At 53 seconds I select the "Locked Follow" mode and dragged a green box over my shirt in the app. For the rest of the video, I am watching the app to make sure that the drone still has my shirt highlighted by that green box. I move around, and even use the controls to move the drone around a bit, and my shirt is always in frame and highlighted in the app. During the "Locked Follow" mode I did not manually adjust the yaw (rotation) of the drone at all. Any adjustments were made because of the computer vision involved. Because of the ability to still move the drone, while keeping the target in frame, I would definitely use the "Locked Follow" mode instead of the "Follow Me" mode if I was trying to make a real video.The angle of the drone at the end of the video is it putting up a very good fight against the wind that was starting to pick up. Note the skinny tree in the background bending in the gusts of wind.Conclusion:This drone is very fun to play with. It has some really cool features that could make it useful for a bunch of different situations. I would say this drone is on the high end of an intermediate level drone. Definitely a fun purchase.

Honestly not bad quality for the price. We didn't use the video ability on it so I cannot speak on that. Battery time wasn't very long and after some light use something glitched on us and it shot away and met its demise on a tree.

I love the HS110G! I bought the model that comes without a carry case (which costs a few dollars more). I own an HS110D and upgraded to get the HS100G GPS capability. With six axis GYRO and GPS stabilization it is a dream to fly. Ten years ago a drone with this capability cost over $1000!The HS110D, HS 120D, and HS100G all use the same basic body. The HS100D has no GPS. The HS110G and HS120D have GPS, with the main difference being the movable camera on the HS120D.The HS110G comes with two 1500mah batteries, 4 spare propellers and 2 spare landing gear, but no Propeller guards. I use propeller guards on my HS110 but I don't think they are necessary for the HS110G because the GPS and six axis GYRO makes it very stable to fly. If you really want the propeller guards they are available as a separate purchase.The GPS and six axis GYRO require a stabilization procedure that takes about a minute and is not difficult. The propellers won't unlock unless you do the calibration, which is a good thing. READ THE MANUAL! It is not complicated once you have read the manual and done the calibration a couple of times. All sophisticated drones require calibration. If want a more toy-like drone for your child that doesn't require calibration, but the more simple HS110D, for the small price difference I absolutely recommend the GPS model HD100G which is easier to flu, and automatically return if it gets out of range. The cheaper HS100D can be lost if you allow it to fly out of range. Besides, the HS110G has a greater range and and a 1500mah battery for a longer flying time.The features of the HS110G are impressive, but rather than listing them all here I recommend you read the specs, and watch some you-tube videos.The quality of the Drone and controller are very good, but I must admit that I like the HS110D controller more. The reason is that the HS110G iPhone mount doesn't open wide enough to grasp my iPhone unless I take off the case. If you have a larger android or plus sized iPhone the mount can't handle it.A few words about how to use your smart phone with the HS100G. Free android and iPhone apps are available. One way to use the phone is simply as a screen that displays the drone's camera view to provide a FPV (First Person View) as though you are flying from inside the drone. But you can also use the smart phone as a controler, and nit even use the separate controller provided. I prefer the joysticks on the controller, but a lot of kid;s who grew up with smart phones may prefer the phone controller only.In summary, I am impressed and blown away by the features of the HS110G for only $99! While probably not suitable for commercial use, its a lot of Drone for the price! It doesn't have collision avoidance as a commercial drone does, but it also doesn't require a license to flu as they do.One last thing. The Holy Stone Customer Support is EXCEPTIONAL. I called several times and there was no wait to talk to a knowledgeable English speaker who solved my problem. In one case, they sent me a free replacement part that arrived quickly.UNQUALIFIED RECOMMENDATION FOR HOLY STONE HS110D and HS110G !!!!!!

As a resident of Indiana where the weather can become pretty cold in the winter, I stored my Holy Stone HS110G drone for the winter. In March we began having 60+ degree weather which seemed like a perfect time to charge the batteries and prepare to resume some drone flying. Guess what, neither of my two batteries would charge. I could not even get a light on the drone indicating there was a problem. I attempted to charge the second battery and got the same results. I reached Holy Stone support (Philippines) and after a thorough quizzing by the tech he said that it was not a battery issue but rather a problem that they were seeing within the drone itself. His recommendation was, do not buy a battery, that is not the problem but rather a problem within the drone that Holy Stone was aware of. He offered a 20% discount, and I could buy a new one. I felt that was an inadequate offer since Holy Stone was aware of a problem within the HS110G but appeared to have no real interest in serving the customer.Having gone through this only to be told by the company that I needed to buy a new drone I was extremely disappointed in Holy Stones support of their defective product. I would suggest to potential drone purchasers to avoid buying from Holy Stone as they do not appear to take an interest in serving their clients. Guess I will have to look for another brand of drone.