Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is my second drone, my first being an F11 Pro which I LOVE!!! Since this is essentially an updated version of the Pro, rather than repeating that review (which you can find on the product page by searching “fun little drone!”) I thought I’d just cover the changes/improvements. The most noticeable difference is the changes to the camera. On the Pro model, the camera is attached directly to the body of the drone. While this doesn’t have much of an effect on taking stationary pictures, it does impact the video. Sudden movements make the camera bob (think of how hitting the gas or brake on a car causes your head to move), which at times made navigating by video a little disorienting. The gimbal setup on this model helps to counteract this so that you get a lot smoother video. One thing I think is worth noting is that gimbal can make the camera feel a bit flimsy as it lets the camera move freely (which is the entire purpose of the gimbal). When I first removed the camera cover, I thought I had broke it. In terms of the quality of the video feed, all I can say is WOW! I’m sure how to put it in words, but the best example I can think of is going from SD to HD TV: you don’t realize what you’re missing with standard tv until to see the capabilities of HDTV. As for pictures, the overall quality has also improved, although I didn’t notice as much of an improvement as I did with the video. I primarily only used the Pro’s camera to take pictures of my home’s roof to check for hail damage, so the camera was sufficient for me, but the photos did suffer from some fisheye distortion around the edges. The Gim’s camera no longer suffers from the fisheye effect. One nice addition is that the camera now has a zoom feature of up to 5x, meaning that you don’t have to fly as near to (and risk crashing the drone into) your subject to get a close up picture. While you can fly the drone with the controller alone, you will certainly want to use the companion app to get the best experience. Previously Ruko used a somewhat generic app that supported several different drone models, but now has its own branded app that exclusively supports F11 series drones. The overall interface looks essentially the same, but they have added a few new features like being to add music to your videos and filters to your photos. The app also has voice alerts that let you know things like if you drone is getting out of distance or the battery is running low. There are likely a few other new features in the app, but I haven’t had time to fully dive into it yet. The controller has been slightly redesigned. In my personal opinion I like the feel of the Pro controller better; however, the Gim controller offers some nice new features which more than make up for the it. Rather than just having a few indicator lights, the Gim’s controller has icons which match those used within the app. I found this to be pretty handy as it allowed me to quickly glance at the controller rather than having to find the icons on the phone screen which can be hard to see at times (no fault of the drone; sunlight just makes phones hard to see at times.) One thing they didn’t change is that the phone mount of the controller pushes the on/off button on the side of my phone. This is mostly a minor inconvenience as all you have to do is place the phone slightly off-center. In terms of performance, the Gim has a greater broadcast distance than the Pro. I can’t say for certain how much farther because I lost sight of the drone, but fortunately one press of the “Return Home” button brought it back. The drone’s top speed has also been increased. According to the specs the Pro’s top speed is 26.8 mph whereas the Gim’s top speed is about 33.5 mph. I don’t have a radar gun to verify these speeds, but I can easily tell that the Gim is faster. The maximum supported onboard micro SD card size has been increased from 32 GB to 128 GB. This wasn’t very important to me because I use an old cell phone to run the drone app and the pictures & videos are saved to phone’s memory rather than bother with an SD card, although now that I’ve seen what the camera it may come in handy as I do more recording and take a lot more pictures. One thing that hasn’t changed that I feel is worth noting is the instruction manual (which, by the way, you can download on this page). Although it explains the basics of how to do things, it doesn’t go into much detail. You’ll definitely want to check out some of the online videos; otherwise you’ll likely be like I was initially with the Pro and miss out on a lot of cool features. That pretty well covers the differences I noticed between the Pro and the Gim. So which one is right for you? That depends. If your budget is tight or you plan on maybe flying the drone a few times before it ends up in the closet collecting dust, stick with the Pro as it is still a fun little drone. Otherwise you’ll definitely want to go with the Gim as the new/improved features make for a far more enjoyable experience. Either way, in my opinion the F11 series of drones are a great entry into the world of flight.