JJPRO X5 Quadcopter Review: Definitely a People’s Favorite

Today we will look at a promis­ing drone from the man­u­fac­tur­er JJPRO — X5.

Packaging and equipment

There is no pro­peller pro­tec­tion includ­ed, so you should be extreme­ly care­ful when fly­ing indoors. It is worth not­ing that there is also a pack­age with three bat­ter­ies and a car­ry­ing bag on sale (I rec­om­mend tak­ing just such a pack­age).

Instruc­tions in com­pe­tent and under­stand­able Eng­lish, with illus­tra­tions (elec­tron­ic ver­sion can be down­loaded here). In addi­tion to detailed brief­in­gs, there is a table with an expla­na­tion of the sound and light sig­nals of the remote con­trol and the drone. There is also a brief guide to oper­at­ing the drone, which I strong­ly rec­om­mend that you read before fly­ing.

Characteristics

• Bat­tery: 1800mAh (7.4V)
• Charg­ing time: 4 hours
• Flight time: 16–18 min­utes
• Con­trol method: remote control/WiFi
• Flight range: 500–600 meters when con­trolled by remote con­trol and 200–300 meters when con­trolled via WiFi (5G) con­nec­tion
• Body Mate­r­i­al: ABS
• Drone dimen­sions: 35x35x9.5cm (diag­o­nal length — 28.5cm)

Peculiarities

• GPS posi­tion­ing sys­tem;
• brush­less motors;
• 1080P Full HD cam­era with 1‑axis gim­bal (remote angle adjust­ment);
• Real-time image trans­mis­sion 5.8G WiFi (FPV);
• Modes: alti­tude hold and head­less (when ori­en­ta­tion is turned off fore/aft);
• Return to Home (RTH) func­tion;
• Take­off and land­ing on 1 but­ton;
• LEDs for evening flights;
• Con­trol range up to 600 meters;
• 2.4G remote con­trol with dual anten­na sys­tem & LCD screen;
• About 16~18 min­utes flight time.

The body of the quad­copter and the remote con­trol are made of plas­tic, the build qual­i­ty is excel­lent. The plas­tic from which the body of the quadric is made is very reli­able and durable — even after 3 seri­ous falls (one of which was from a height of more than 100 meters), the quadric remained intact (includ­ing the blades). Video of falls — in the video review, start­ing at 2:14.

There are 4 fake but­tons on the remote con­trol, that is, for beau­ty. It runs on 4 AA bat­ter­ies (fin­ger-type).

The following information is displayed on the remote control screen

• sig­nal lev­el of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the drone;
• GPS mode;
• the num­ber of satel­lites found;
• remote­ness from the launch site of the quad­copter in height/distance;
• auto­mat­ic return option;
• head­less mode;
• shoot­ing video / pho­to;
• con­trol mode (for right-han­der­s/left-han­ders);
• remote control/drone bat­tery lev­el.

Before each flight, you must do the fol­low­ing steps (you can see in the video review, start­ing from 55 sec­onds):

1. Hold down the red but­ton on the remote con­trol and turn it on (this is how we enter it into the drone search mode);
2. Insert the bat­tery into the drone, put it on a flat sur­face and wait about 8 sec­onds for the drone to estab­lish a con­nec­tion with the remote con­trol;
3. Cal­i­brate the drone’s com­pass (turn it sev­er­al times in a hor­i­zon­tal posi­tion coun­ter­clock­wise, — upon com­ple­tion of the pro­ce­dure, the diodes with yel­low blink­ing will blink green; turn it clock­wise sev­er­al times in a ver­ti­cal posi­tion (cam­era up), — upon com­ple­tion, the diodes with blink­ing green col­or will steadi­ly shine red and green);
4. “Unlock” (start) the drone — you can do it in two ways: press the red but­ton on the remote con­trol or move the left and right joy­sticks to the low­er right and left cor­ners, respec­tive­ly. “Lock” (turn off the oper­a­tion of the pro­pellers) can also be done in two ways: hold down the red but­ton for 3 sec­onds or low­er the left joy­stick down for 3 sec­onds.

You can lift the quadric into the air either man­u­al­ly (using the joy­stick) or press the but­ton on the remote con­trol and it will fly up to a height of 1.5 meters. You can also land a drone in one of these ways.

The con­trol pan­el is cal­i­brat­ed at the fac­to­ry, how­ev­er, if nec­es­sary, it can be cal­i­brat­ed again. Also, if nec­es­sary, you can cal­i­brate the drone’s gyro­scope.

There are 2 con­trol modes: for right-han­ders and left-han­ders.

The drone has one flight mode (there is no divi­sion into “smooth” / “frisky”). It is respon­sive, sta­ble and mod­er­ate­ly frisky (you can watch the flights in the video review, start­ing at 1:11). Holds alti­tude very well, espe­cial­ly if it works with GPS turned on. Can’t do flips. There is also a “head­less” mode, in which the drone focus­es sole­ly on the sig­nal from the joy­stick, and not on where its head is look­ing (in this mode, you need the drone to be launched with the front for­ward).

When fly­ing with the GPS posi­tion­ing sys­tem turned on, it is rec­om­mend­ed to take off when at least 7 satel­lites are dis­played on the remote con­trol (GPS ini­tial­iza­tion takes up to 2 min­utes; it finds 7–13 satel­lites in open space, at least a few could not be found indoors). In this mode, the drone remem­bers the start­ing point and can return to it when the but­ton is pressed (when return­ing to the start­ing point, you can use the joy­sticks to avoid col­li­sion with obsta­cles, you can also can­cel the return to the start­ing point and con­trol the drone again in “free” mode). This func­tion works auto­mat­i­cal­ly if the sig­nal with the remote con­trol was lost and was not resumed with­in 6 sec­onds (in this case, the drone can­not by itself pass obsta­cles on the way, how­ev­er, if the con­nec­tion with the remote con­trol is restored, it can be con­trolled), if the GPS sig­nal is weak (less than 7 satel­lites), the air­craft will not be able to return to the start­ing point and will slow­ly land on the ground, after land­ing, the pro­pellers will lock (turn off). The auto­mat­ic return to the start­ing point func­tion also works if the drone’s bat­tery is run­ning out (two bars), it is at an alti­tude of more than 100 meters and the dis­tance is more than 300 meters; or if the bat­tery lev­el is one bar, the height and dis­tance are more than 15 meters (if the height and dis­tance are less than 15 meters, the drone will auto­mat­i­cal­ly land), in this case, it is impos­si­ble to resume con­trol of the drone. The auto­mat­ic return func­tion works accu­rate­ly, the devi­a­tion is up to 1–1.5 meters.

The drone cam­era records video in Full­HD res­o­lu­tion (29fps) and takes pho­tos in 2mp res­o­lu­tion. You can take pho­tos while record­ing video. The video is writ­ten with­out sound. If nec­es­sary, the cam­era can be detached. In addi­tion, the cam­era angle can be adjust­ed (with­in 90°) using the remote con­trol. Exam­ples of video footage can be viewed in the video review, start­ing at 2:40.

Photo examples

The quad­copter can be con­nect­ed to the phone via Wi-Fi (the con­trol remains the remote con­trol). The delay in trans­mit­ting images from the cam­era is min­i­mal (less than 1 sec­ond), so the quad can be used for FPV flights (not rac­ing) with­in a radius of up to 300 meters. Among the inter­est­ing things in the appli­ca­tion, I note the func­tion of fly­ing behind the pilot, fly­ing around a giv­en route and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of 3D view­ing. I liked the fact that the appli­ca­tion is well opti­mized, every­thing works prop­er­ly, with­out any bugs and errors.

Application screenshots

autonomy

The quad­copter is equipped with a bat­tery with a capac­i­ty of 1800mAh, which is enough for an aver­age of 16–18 min­utes of flight. It takes 4 hours to charge.

Dur­ing charg­ing, the red diode is on and the green one is flash­ing, upon com­ple­tion, both diodes glow steadi­ly.

Video review

Results

Sum­ming up, we can say with con­fi­dence that at the moment this is one of the best (if not the best) quad­copter in its price range. The clos­est com­peti­tors include JJRC X7, JJRC X8, JJRC X9, MJX Bugs 5W, MJX B2SE, MJX Bugs 3 Pro, Hub­san X4 H502S, SYMA X8 Pro and oth­ers. All these quad­copters can be viewed and pur­chased here

pros

• excel­lent build qual­i­ty with durable plas­tic;
• brush­less motors;
• GPS nav­i­ga­tion;
• Head­less mode, Fol­low Me func­tion and auto­mat­ic return to the start­ing point, flight along the spec­i­fied path;
• good appli­ca­tion opti­miza­tion;
• flight time 16–18 min­utes;
• cam­era with sta­bi­liza­tion;
• the pres­ence of a com­plete set with 3 bat­ter­ies and a car­ry­ing bag;
• excel­lent val­ue for mon­ey.

Quad­copter can be pur­chased here:
Gearbest Bang­good Offi­cial store on ALIEXPRESS