FIMI X8 Mini: Start Flying Today

Introduction

Renowned mid-range UAV devel­op­er FIMI Tech­nol­o­gy Ltd has announced its first light­weight solu­tion to com­pete with hob­by UAVs such as the DJI Mini/Mini 2, which until now have been the only drones capa­ble of deliv­er­ing the poten­tial of full-size drones weigh­ing up to 250 grams. FIMI X8 MINI is a portable light­weight quad­copter, posi­tioned by the devel­op­er as an entry-lev­el prod­uct, designed pri­mar­i­ly for a novice con­sumer audi­ence for which, when choos­ing, the main cri­te­ri­on is the qual­i­ty of shoot­ing, flight time / range, weight free­ing the user from the drone reg­is­tra­tion pro­ce­dure and, of course, an ade­quate price . As usu­al, let’s start with the key fea­tures of the nov­el­ty. Let’s fly!

Peculiarities

• Flight weight (with stan­dard battery/Pro bat­tery) 258/245 grams
• Portable and fold­able design
• Posi­tion­ing GPS + GLONASS + Bei­dou + visu­al posi­tion­ing sys­tem con­sist­ing of two opti­cal and one laser sen­sors
• Brush­less propul­sion unit work­ing in tan­dem with fold­ing pro­pellers
• Lev­el 5 wind resis­tance
• Con­trol meth­ods: Sep­a­rate­ly by smart­phone (via Wi-Fi 5.8GHz) / Smart­phone + remote con­trol
• Spe­cial­ly designed for the Mini ver­sion of the drone, con­trol equip­ment with a slid­ing struc­ture, remov­able sticks and a mod­i­fied receiv­er
• 12MP 4K cam­era built on a 1/2.6‑inch CMOS sen­sor, work­ing in tan­dem with a top-end Hisil­i­con ISP chipset
• Pix­el size 1.55 µm
• 3‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal with 0.005° accu­ra­cy
• 3x dig­i­tal zoom
• F‑Log and DNG RAW modes
• Max. bitrate 100 Mbps
• HDR video
• Night shot mode
• H.264/H.265 video com­pres­sion for­mat
• Video stream­ing via 2nd gen­er­a­tion TDMA HD dig­i­tal sys­tem at 5.8 GHz
• Max. removal dis­tance 8 km
• 720p video qual­i­ty
• Max. flight alti­tude 500 m (elec­tron­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed)
• Max. flight speed 57.6 km/h
• Max. flight time (stan­dard battery/Pro bat­tery) 30/31 min
• 4 × pre-pro­grammed Cine shots
• 3 × Intel­li­gent Object Track­ing Modes
• Way­point flight mode with task sched­ul­ing
• 3 × panora­ma shot options
• 3 × Motion-lapse options that do not require post-pro­cess­ing
• The abil­i­ty to broad­cast video stream from the drone’s cam­era through all known social plat­forms
• SAR mode
• New mobile app Fimi Navi Mini (iOS/Android)

Equipment

FIMI X8 Mini is offered by the devel­op­er in a sin­gle con­fig­u­ra­tion, which will include:

1. Drone
2. Remote Con­trol
3. Accu­mu­la­tor bat­tery
4. 3 × OTG cables (Lightning/Micro USB/Type‑C)
5. 4 × spare blades (2CW/2CCW)
6. Cam­era trans­port pro­tec­tion
7. USB‑A ⇔ USB‑C cable
8. 4 × spare screws (for attach­ing the blades)
9. Screw­driv­er
10. User’s Man­u­al

Specification

Drone

Brand:

Xiao­mi FIMI

Mod­el:

X8 MINI (FMWRJ04A7)

Col­or:

White/Orange

Dimen­sions:

Ship­ping: 145×85×56mm
Flight: 200×145×56mm

Weight (with stan­dard battery/Pro bat­tery):

258/245 g

Max. take­off speed:

18 km/h

Max. sink rate:

10.8 km/h

Max. hor­i­zon­tal flight speed:

57.6 km/h

Max. flight alti­tude:

500m

Max. ceil­ing above sea lev­el:

4000m

Max. flight time (with stan­dard battery/Pro bat­tery):

30/31 min (no wind at a sta­ble speed of 28 km/h)

Wind resis­tance:

8–10 m/s (lev­el 5)

Satel­lite posi­tion­ing:

GPS+GLONASS+Beidou

Touch posi­tion­ing:

ultra­son­ic sen­sors

Work­ing range of sen­sors:

up to 30 m

Posi­tion hold­ing accu­ra­cy:

Oper­at­ing fre­quen­cy range:

5.725 — 5.825GHz

Work­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

0 — 40°С

Control equipment

Dimen­sions:

165×89×47 cm

The weight:

about 260 g

Oper­at­ing fre­quen­cy range:

5.725 — 5.825 GHz

Max. FPV Removal Dis­tance:

8 kilo­me­ters

Food:

3.7V 3500mAh Li-ion

Charg­ing port:

USB‑C

Camera

Matrix:

1/2.6″ CMOS Sony IMX378

Eff. pix­els:

12 mil­lion

Chipset:

Hisil­i­con ISP (lat­est gen­er­a­tion)

Lens:

FOV 80°

Diaphragm:

f2.0

Focal length:

3.54 mm

Equiv­a­lent focal length:

26 mm

ISO range:

video: 100 — 3200
a pho­to: 100 — 1600

Shut­ter speed:

32 — 1/8000s

Max. bitrate:

100 Mbps

Pho­to res­o­lu­tion:

12MP 4000×3000

Video res­o­lu­tion:

4K: 3840 × 2160 @ 24/25/30 fps
2K: 2716 × 1524 @ 24/25/30/50/60 fps
FHD: 1920×1080@24/25/30/50/60/90 fps
HD: 1280 × 720 at 100/120 fps

Video Com­pres­sion For­mat:

H.264/H.265

File sys­tem:

FAT32

Pho­to For­mat:

JPG; JPG+DNG

Video For­mat:

MP4

Mem­o­ry card:

Micro SD (U3 or high­er) with a capac­i­ty of 8 — 256GB (rec­om­mend­ed San­disk, Kingston U3)

suspension

Con­trolled swiv­el range:

0° to ‑90°

Sta­bi­liza­tion:

3‑axis mechan­i­cal

Angle Con­trol Accu­ra­cy:

± 0.005°

battery

Stan­dard bat­tery:

2S 7.2V 2400mAh 17.28Wh Li-ion

PRO bat­tery:

2S 7.7V 2200mAh 16.94Wh LiPo

Volt­age Lim­it (Stan­dard Battery/Pro Bat­tery):

8.4V/8.8V

Weight (stan­dard battery/Pro bat­tery):

102/86

Charg­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

5 — 40°С

Charger

Rat­ed out­put pow­er:

9V 3A

Mobile app

APP:

Fimi Navi Mini

Sup­port­ed oper­at­ing sys­tems:

iOS/Android

Lightweight solution up to 250 grams

In the class of GPS drones weigh­ing up to 250 grams, the first wor­thy com­peti­tor has appeared, the poten­tial of which is able to meet such mod­els dis­cussed in the hob­by as the DJI Mini / Mini 2. The FIMI X8 Mini is palm-sized, built on an ultra-light fold­ing frame. The min­i­mum weight in flight con­di­tion is 245 grams, which frees the user from the UAV reg­is­tra­tion pro­ce­dure, there­by allow­ing them to start fly­ing and shoot­ing imme­di­ate­ly after pur­chase.

Two battery options

The FIMI X8 Mini drone comes with one of two avail­able bat­ter­ies to choose from:

1. Stan­dard Bat­tery 2S 7.2V 2400mAh 17.28Wh Li-ion; Bat­tery weight: 102 grams; Max. flight time: 30 min.
2. PRO Bat­tery — 2S 7.7V 2200mAh 16.94Wh LiPo; Bat­tery weight: 86 grams; Max. flight time: 31 min.

We note right away that no mat­ter which bat­tery you choose, in prac­tice the max­i­mum flight time with a mixed style of pilot­ing will vary on aver­age with­in 23–25 ​​min­utes. Accord­ing­ly, the key dif­fer­ence when using one of the two bat­ter­ies in this case is only the final flight weight, where the drone with a stan­dard bat­tery will weigh — 258 grams, the weight of a tan­dem with a PRO bat­tery will be — 245 grams.

Type‑C Fast Charging

Good news for those who love speed, because the X8 Mini bat­ter­ies received a Type‑C charg­ing port and fast charg­ing mode. To charge the bat­tery, the pack­age includes a USB‑A ⇔ USB‑C cable that can be used in tan­dem with any charg­er (with a rat­ed out­put pow­er of 8V / 3A) that sup­ports charg­ing mode QuickCharge.

4K HDR video

FIMI X8 Mini inher­its the cam­era sys­tem of the FIMI X8 2020 full-size drone, which has proven itself in prac­tice. The video sys­tem sup­ports shoot­ing video in modes up to 4K at 30 frames per sec­ond in high dynam­ic range (HDR), which ensures the out­put is clear­er and rich­er frames. Also in the arse­nal is sup­port for the H.265 / HEVC codec and F‑Log and DNG for­mats. It fol­lows that the over­all pho­to / video poten­tial of the X8 Mini will allow you to eas­i­ly achieve high results both through pre­set set­tings and in the post-pro­cess­ing process, which makes this drone inter­est­ing for a wide range of con­sumers with dif­fer­ent lev­els of expe­ri­ence from begin­ners to advanced.

3‑axis mechanical gimbal

The FIMI X8 Mini cam­era works in tan­dem with a spe­cial­ly designed light­weight 3‑axis gim­bal, whose con­trol algo­rithms have achieved an expo­nen­tial angu­lar con­trol accu­ra­cy of 0.005 °, which deter­mines the best mechan­i­cal image sta­bi­liza­tion in the class.

Video quality

FPV

Devel­oped and test­ed on the FIMI X8 2020 drone, the sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion TDMA HD dig­i­tal sys­tem ensures sta­ble trans­mis­sion and opti­mized sig­nal sen­si­tiv­i­ty. In an inter­fer­ence-free zone, the max­i­mum flight range of the FIMI X8 Mini is an expo­nen­tial 8 kilo­me­ters.

It is worth not­ing that the declared max­i­mum flight range is usu­al­ly achiev­able only in a zone free from inter­fer­ence, which is often dif­fi­cult to ensure in our mod­ern world. There­fore, in prac­tice, the range of removal on aver­age will be from 3–5 km.

smart modes

At the dis­pos­al of the user are 5 modes of var­i­ous pur­pos­es, allow­ing you to eas­i­ly receive cin­e­mat­ic con­tent from the air.

Cine Shot

The mode offers the user 5 options for per­form­ing auto­mat­ic aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy with a cin­e­mat­ic com­po­si­tion in one tap:

1. Rock­et – the drone flies ver­ti­cal­ly upwards and shoots under itself.
2. Dronie — the drone takes off from the bot­tom up at an angle, focus­ing on the sub­ject for shoot­ing.
3. Cir­cle – the drone per­forms a cir­cu­lar flight around the object for shoot­ing.
4. Spi­ral – the drone per­forms a cir­cu­lar flight around a giv­en object for shoot­ing, mov­ing away along a spi­ral tra­jec­to­ry.
5. Tap-Fly- In this mode, all you need to do is tap on the screen of the paired smart­phone, then the drone will auto­mat­i­cal­ly fly to it, allow­ing the user to focus only on con­trol­ling the cam­era.

Follow modes

The user has 3 options for track­ing an object for shoot­ing:

1. Trace – tracks an object from dif­fer­ent angles
2. lock – tracks an object from a giv­en angle
3. Pro­file — fol­lows an object par­al­lel to its move­ment

Waypoint flight

The “Flight plan­ning shoot­ing” mode with the abil­i­ty to plan tasks allows the user to plan not only the flight, but also set points of inter­est (POI) on which the drone’s cam­era will focus when per­form­ing auto­mat­ic flight.

panoramic shooting

There are 3 options for panora­ma shoot­ing in auto­mat­ic mode:

1. Pano-180° (180° panora­ma)
2. Pano Hor­i­zon­tal (Hor­i­zon­tal panora­ma)
3. Pano ver­ti­cal (Ver­ti­cal panora­ma)

Time Lapse

The mode allows you to real­ize pro­fes­sion­al time-lapse shoot­ing in one tap with­out the need for post-pro­cess­ing. Three ver­sions are avail­able:

1. Free
2. Focus
3. Way­point

Night shooting

Like the full size X8 2020 mod­el, the FIMI X8 Mini drone is equipped with Hisil­i­con chipset and pow­er­ful AI algo­rithm to pro­vide the best noise reduc­tion, retain­ing vivid details in every shot, so you can safe­ly take the drone with you to cap­ture the beau­ty of the night.

Control

X8 Mini con­trol can be imple­ment­ed in two ways. The first way is clas­sic — through spe­cial­ly designed con­trol equip­ment in tan­dem with a smart­phone, which received remov­able sticks and a slid­ing design for greater porta­bil­i­ty dur­ing trans­porta­tion, which has already become a hall­mark for FIMI remotes. To pair devices, you will need to install the new Fimi Navi Mini (iOS/Android) mobile app. This method will be rel­e­vant for long-dis­tance flights, since only thanks to the remote con­trol the drone is able to pro­vide the declared flight range of up to 8 km.

The sec­ond way is anoth­er small but very sig­nif­i­cant plus that adds up to the over­all porta­bil­i­ty of the device — con­trol via one smart­phone with the new Fimi Navi Mini (iOS / Android) mobile appli­ca­tion pre­in­stalled on it. This method will be more rel­e­vant than ever when the X8 Mini is used as a self­ie drone. For suc­cess­ful pair­ing, it is impor­tant that the Wi-Fi mod­ule of your smart­phone sup­ports oper­a­tion in the 5GHz fre­quen­cy band. With this con­nec­tion method, the max­i­mum flight range will not exceed 100 meters, which in gen­er­al will be enough for a fly­ing self­ie cam­era.

Mobile app

A new mobile appli­ca­tion Fimi Navi Mini has been devel­oped for the X8 Mini. With a com­plete­ly redesigned user inter­face, it’s more intu­itive. To pair with a drone with­out equip­ment, it will be enough to con­nect to the drone’s Wi-Fi point and launch the appli­ca­tion. To pair with the remote con­trol, sim­ply install your smart­phone into the equip­ment and con­nect the devices to each oth­er with the includ­ed OTG cable. Then start the drone, remote con­trol, mobile appli­ca­tion and wait for the screen of the paired smart­phone to dis­play the real-time image from the drone’s cam­era.

Precise positioning

GPS and GLONASS satel­lite posi­tion­ing sys­tems allow the drone to hov­er accu­rate­ly and quick­ly posi­tion. In tan­dem with or with­out a satel­lite sys­tem, a sen­sor posi­tion­ing sys­tem also works, which includes a cam­era and ultra­son­ic sen­sors that ensure the drone hov­er­ing at a height of up to 30 meters. Addi­tion­al­ly, to ensure an accu­rate land­ing, the drone sys­tem uses the low­er cam­era, through which the take-off loca­tion will be record­ed.

SAR mode

SAR (Search and Res­cue) — Pro­vides access to 3x dig­i­tal zoom and real-time GPS posi­tion of the air­craft’s cur­rent posi­tion. Cou­pled with a 30-minute flight dura­tion and a flight range of up to 8 kilo­me­ters, if nec­es­sary, the drone can be used in search and res­cue activ­i­ties, which in gen­er­al will nev­er be super­flu­ous.

Safety features

To ensure the safe oper­a­tion of the drone as much as pos­si­ble, the devel­op­er has added all the fun­da­men­tal func­tions:

• Auto return home when con­nec­tion is lost (RTH/Return to Home)
• Low bat­tery mon­i­tor­ing and warn­ing
• Auto­mat­ic reset when the bat­tery is low
• Satel­lite track­ing drone loca­tion
• No-Fly Zone Con­trol
• Track­ing and warn­ing of exces­sive wind force

Price

The devel­op­er sells the drone at a price of $319 (exclud­ing tax­es and ship­ping). On var­i­ous Inter­net trad­ing plat­forms, FIMI X8 Mini is offered at a price of $ 330–420

Conclusion

Xiao­mi Fimi X8 Mini from $319

Func­tion­al­i­ty

8/10

Flight time

9/10

flight qual­i­ties

8/10

com­pact­ness

10/10

Equip­ment

10/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

9/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Flight weight 249 g
• Fold­able design
• Pow­er­ful B/C motors
• wind resis­tant
• 4K cam­era (HDR video; Night Shot; F‑Log; DNG RAW; Video com­pres­sion for­mat H.264/H.265)
• Max. removal dis­tance 8 km
• Auto­mat­ic flight and shoot­ing modes
• SAR mode
• The abil­i­ty to broad­cast video stream from the drone’s cam­era through all known social plat­forms
• Price

Minuses

• The defect pre­vails, which affects the over­all per­for­mance and func­tion­al­i­ty of the drone (requires a per­for­mance check on the spot)
• Frag­ile
• Insuf­fi­cient bat­tery poten­tial (lim­its flight range)

Friends, after almost a year, we, as promised, returned to the con­clu­sion of our FiMi X8 Mini review to shed light on the actu­al per­for­mance of the mod­el, since at the time of release, if any­one is not in the know, the drone showed for the most part a com­plete dis­crep­an­cy between the declared func­tion­al­i­ty of the due to the banal “damp­ness” of the prod­uct at the soft­ware lev­el.

In the list of the main bugs iden­ti­fied by almost all the first users were:

• Over­heat­ing dur­ing firmware update
• Vibra­tion sys­tem alerts prompt­ing the user to stop fly­ing and inspect the air­craft body for mal­func­tions
• Fill­ing the hori­zon with a cam­era sus­pen­sion
• Jel­ly­ness in video footage
• Incor­rect col­or repro­duc­tion
• Aut­o­fo­cus not work­ing prop­er­ly
• Incor­rect oper­a­tion of auto­mat­ic flight and shoot­ing modes (Smart Track/QuickShot)

For max­i­mum objec­tiv­i­ty, in addi­tion to our own expe­ri­ence of own­er­ship, we had to look at the lion’s share of avail­able reviews from around the world, dat­ing back to the present. Thus, at the cur­rent moment (03/04/22), we can con­clude that, to a greater extent, the devel­op­er elim­i­nat­ed all of the above bugs by updat­ing the firmware, how­ev­er, neg­a­tive reviews, in which all the same short­com­ings are not­ed, take place, which can only indi­cate lack of prop­er qual­i­ty con­trol dur­ing pro­duc­tion.

In this con­nec­tion, we strong­ly rec­om­mend that you pur­chase this quad­copter exclu­sive­ly with­in the place of res­i­dence and only from those sell­ers who guar­an­tee the pro­vi­sion of after-sales oblig­a­tions, cou­pled with war­ran­ty con­di­tions, so that in the event of a mar­riage, you can eas­i­ly exchange the goods or return mon­ey, or repair it free of charge . By the way, among oth­er things, it turned out that there are very few spare parts on the glob­al mar­ket. parts. Giv­en the gen­er­al fragili­ty of the com­po­nents of the mod­el, this should be con­sid­ered before buy­ing!

Now about the ben­e­fits of a ser­vice­able FiMi X8 Mini. In prac­tice, the copter showed a good flight range (it con­fi­dent­ly cov­ers a dis­tance of 3–4 km), which in fact turned out to be lim­it­ed by the poten­tial of the bat­tery. Fur­ther, we can note the exem­plary work of the onboard video sys­tem, which, togeth­er with the avail­able auto / man­u­al cam­era set­tings, pro­vides the qual­i­ty of pho­to / video shoot­ing cor­re­spond­ing to the declared spec­i­fi­ca­tion.

The auto­mat­ic flight and shoot­ing modes work more or less nor­mal­ly, how­ev­er, it is worth not­ing that the “Fol­low Me” mode is still not able to track fast mov­ing objects, which is gen­er­al­ly the norm for a drone in the $300+ price niche. And final­ly, the final advan­tage of this mod­el is its auton­o­my. With a mixed style of pilot­ing, the flight time will be about 25–28 min­utes.

I would like to sum­ma­rize all of the above as fol­lows. FiMi X8 Mini is cur­rent­ly the best solu­tion for its mon­ey and is per­fect for the role of the first GPS drone. How­ev­er, if your bud­get allows you to turn your atten­tion to more tech­no­log­i­cal mod­els, then we strong­ly rec­om­mend that you famil­iar­ize your­self with all the con­tenders of our rapid­ly devel­op­ing hob­by. That’s all for us, we hope that our review allowed the read­er to min­i­mize the time it takes to search for the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion in order to make the right choice lat­er. Fly safe­ly. Peace and good­ness to all!

Video

Best reviews from the developer and users

Shoot­ing qual­i­ty. RAW video.

Expe­ri­ence using FiMi X8 Mini. Review after 3 months of use.

Flight test at ‑15°C.

One of the many neg­a­tive reviews about FiMi X8 Mini.

Unbox­ing and com­pre­hen­sive flight review.

Com­par­a­tive flight test for the max­i­mum range of Fimi X8 Mini vs DJI Mini SE.

Load capac­i­ty test.

Unbox­ing, Inspec­tion, Acti­va­tion, Soft­ware Update, X8 Mini vs DJI Mini 2 Drone Com­par­i­son (Part 1).

Flight test.

Flight test for range in windy weath­er. The drone was able to con­fi­dent­ly cov­er a dis­tance of 3.9 km, and then return in auto mode to the take-off point with a resid­ual bat­tery charge of 14%, which is very indica­tive for prod­ucts from this UAV niche.

A quick test of all basic func­tions (flight / image qual­i­ty / com­par­i­son test of image qual­i­ty with DJI Mini 2 / auto modes) on a stan­dard bat­tery.

Unpack­ing, flight prepa­ra­tion and first flight.

An overview of the most pop­u­lar drone flight fea­tures.

Unbox­ing FIMI X8 Mini.