Fimi X8 SE: Absolutely Perfect

We rec­om­mend that you pay atten­tion to the mod­i­fied ver­sion of the drone. Details about the Fimi X8 SE 2020 quadro­copter in our review!

Introduction

Less than a month after the release of FIMI A3, the devel­op­er qui­et­ly announces its first fold­able drone — Fimi X8 SE. Based on the tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tion of a portable drone, the nov­el­ty will be able to com­pete with such best­sellers as Par­rot Anafi, Yuneec Man­tis G and Hub­san Zino. As they say, time will tell, but for now we offer you to get acquaint­ed with the details of the new mod­el and, as usu­al, let’s start with the key fea­tures.

Peculiarities

• Portable and fold­able design
• Posi­tion­ing GPS + GLONASS + new visu­al posi­tion­ing sys­tem con­sist­ing of the main cam­era, low­er opti­cal and ultra­son­ic sen­sors
• 2 × EMU mod­ules
• Brush­less pow­er plant
• Noise reduced by 7dBm com­pared to Mi drone 4K
• Quick release fold­ing rotors
• 12MP 4K 1/2.3″ CMOS cam­era pow­ered by Ambarel­la ISP proces­sor
• Pix­el size 1.55µm
• 3x dig­i­tal zoom
• Image sta­bi­liza­tion: 3‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal
• F‑Log and DNG RAW modes
• Max. bitrate 100Mbps
• Video stream­ing through the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion TDMA HD dig­i­tal sys­tem at a fre­quen­cy of 5.8 GHz
• 720p video qual­i­ty
• Max. removal dis­tance 5km
• Max. flight alti­tude 500m (elec­tron­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed)
• Max. flight speed 65 km/h
• Max. flight time 33 min
• Slid­ing design of con­trol equip­ment with remov­able sticks, allow­ing instal­la­tion from a smart­phone to a tablet the size of an iPad mini
• 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
• SAR mode
• Con­trol of “No-Fly” zones
• Weight 790gr
• Ready for FPV flight out of the box

Equipment

1. Drone Fimi X8 SE
2. Accu­mu­la­tor bat­tery
3. Slid­ing con­trol pan­el
4. 4 × rotors (2CW/2CCW)
5. 2 × spare rotors (1CW/1CCW)
6. Charg­er
7. Pow­er cable for charg­er
8. 3 × Lightning/Micro USB/Type‑C OTG cables
9. Quick Start User Guide

Specification

Drone

Brand:

Xiao­mi FIMI

Mod­el:

X8SE

Col­or:

White

Dimen­sions in flight con­di­tion:

20.4×10.6×7.26cm

Diag­o­nal size:

372mm

The weight:

790gr

Max. take­off speed:

18 km/h

Max. sink rate:

14 km/h

Max. hor­i­zon­tal flight speed:

64.8 km/h

Max. flight alti­tude:

500m

Max. flight time:

33 min (with­out wind at a sta­ble speed of 28 km/h)

Wind resis­tance:

≤ 14 m/s

Satel­lite posi­tion­ing:

GPS + GLONASS

Posi­tion­ing in the room:

main cam­era + low­er opti­cal and ultra­son­ic sen­sors

Posi­tion hold­ing accu­ra­cy:

Ver­ti­cal­ly:
± 0.1m (sup­port­ed by ultra­son­ic sen­sor)
± 0.5m (when satel­lite posi­tion­ing is active)
Hor­i­zon­tal­ly: ± 1.5m

Food:

3S 11.4V 4500mAh 51.3Wh

Oper­at­ing fre­quen­cy range:

5.725 — 5.850GHz

Work­ing tem­per­a­ture range:

0 — 40°C

Control equipment

Dimen­sions:

20.38×9.1×4.66cm

The weight:

370gr

Oper­at­ing fre­quen­cy range:

5.725 — 5.850GHz

Max. FPV Removal Dis­tance:

5km

Food:

3.7V 3900mAh Li-ion

Charg­ing port:

Micro USB

suspension

Con­trolled swiv­el range:

0° to ‑90°

Sta­bi­liza­tion:

3‑axis mechan­i­cal

Angle Con­trol Accu­ra­cy:

± 0.004°

Camera

Matrix:

1/2.3″ CMOS Sony IMX378

Lens:

FOV 78.8°

Zoom:

3 × dig­i­tal

Diaphragm:

f2.2

Focal length:

4.73mm

Equiv­a­lent focal length:

26mm

Eff. pix­els:

12 mil­lion

ISO range:

video: 100 — 3200
a pho­to: 100 — 1600

Shut­ter speed:

8 — 1/8000s

Max. bitrate:

100Mbps

Pho­to res­o­lu­tion:

12MP 4000×3000

Video res­o­lu­tion:

4K: 3840 × 2160 @ 24/25/30 fps
2K: 2560 × 1440 @ 24/25/30/50/60 fps
FHD: 1920 × 1080 @ 24/25/30/50/60/100 fps
HD: 1280 × 720 @ 200 fps

File sys­tem:

FAT32/exFAT

Pho­to For­mat:

JPG; JPG+DNG

Video For­mat:

MP4

Mem­o­ry card:

Micro SD (U3 or high­er) with a capac­i­ty of 8 — 64GB (rec­om­mend­ed San­disk, Kingston U3)

Charger

Rat­ed out­put pow­er:

13.05V 3A

rotors

Removal mech­a­nism:

quick release

Length:

8.5 inch­es (21.59cm)

Appearance

Motors

Fimi X8 SE is equipped with brush­less motors. At the moment, the devel­op­er does not spec­i­fy per­for­mance infor­ma­tion. The pow­er plant is adapt­ed for quick-detach­able fold­ing 8.5 inch rotors.

Camera

On board the X8 SE is a 12MP 4K cam­era built on a 1/2.3‑inch Sony IMX378 CMOS sen­sor (Pix­el size = 1.55µm) with f/2.2 aper­ture and pow­ered by an Ambarel­la ISP proces­sor. Installed in a 3‑axis mechan­i­cal gim­bal with an angu­lar con­trol accu­ra­cy of ± 0.004°. Pro­vides sta­bi­lized video record­ing at max­i­mum res­o­lu­tion: 3840 × 2160 at 24/25/30 fps. Record­ing at 100Mbps. Max. pho­to res­o­lu­tion: 4000 × 3000. The footage is stored on a pre-installed microSD card with a max­i­mum capac­i­ty of 64GB.

The new F‑Log mode, as well as DNG and RAW for­mats, will save more details for fur­ther pro­cess­ing of the mate­r­i­al.

FPV

The first-per­son flight for the X8 SE is real­ized through a sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion TDMA HD dig­i­tal sys­tem at a fre­quen­cy of 5.8GHz. The pic­ture from the cam­era in real time and with the least delay is trans­mit­ted to the dis­play of the paired smartphone/tablet (IOS or Android). The qual­i­ty of the video stream is 720p. The max­i­mum video stream trans­mis­sion dis­tance is 5 km.

smart modes

At the dis­pos­al of the user are 5 modes of var­i­ous pur­pos­es that allow you to eas­i­ly receive cin­e­mat­ic con­tent from the air:

Cine Shot

The mode offers the user 4 options for per­form­ing autonomous 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.

smart tracking

Offers the user 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

flight planning shooting

Way­point flight 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 cam­era will focus when per­form­ing the planned flight.

panoramas

In auto­mat­ic mode, it takes 3 options for panoram­ic shots:

1. Pano-180°
2. Pano Hor­i­zon­tal
3. Pano ver­ti­cal

Time Lapse

Allows you to real­ize pro­fes­sion­al time-lapse shoot­ing in one tap with­out the need for post-pro­cess­ing. Includes three options:

1. Free
2. Focus
3. Way­point

SAR mode

SAR (Search and Res­cue) — Pro­vides access to 3x dig­i­tal zoom and real-time GPS coor­di­nates of the air­craft’s cur­rent posi­tion. In com­bi­na­tion with a flight dura­tion of up to 33 min­utes and a flight range of up to 5 kilo­me­ters, it allows the drone to be used in search and res­cue activ­i­ties.

Positioning system

In addi­tion to GPS and GLONASS satel­lite posi­tion­ing, the sys­tem includes a visu­al posi­tion­ing com­plex con­sist­ing of a main cam­era, an opti­cal and ultra­son­ic sen­sor. Togeth­er they pro­vide accu­rate hov­er­ing, even in the absence of satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

The devel­op­er clar­i­fies that when the drone is launched from the take­off site, the posi­tion­ing sys­tem will not only record the coor­di­nates of the take­off site, but also take a pic­ture, there­by ensur­ing an accu­rate land­ing right in the cen­ter of the site.

No-Fly zone control

The drone will auto­mat­i­cal­ly hov­er in close prox­im­i­ty to no-fly zones and warn the pilot about this by a mes­sage on the dis­play of the paired device.

Food

The Fimi X8 SE quad­copter is equipped with an intel­li­gent 3‑cell (11.4V) lithi­um-poly­mer bat­tery with a capac­i­ty of 4500mAh 51.3Wh. Pro­vides a max­i­mum flight time of 33 min­utes. The drone elec­tron­ics mon­i­tors the cur­rent bat­tery charge in real time and prompt­ly warns of the need to return. And the return to home (RTH) func­tion will allow you to quick­ly return the drone to the take-off point and land auto­mat­i­cal­ly.

The pilot can also force the drone back to its take­off loca­tion by tog­gling a but­ton on the con­trol equip­ment.

Control

Drone con­trol is imple­ment­ed through the includ­ed con­trol equip­ment, which received a slid­ing struc­ture and remov­able sticks. The slid­ing mech­a­nism allows you to install in the con­sole from a smart­phone to a tablet with a max. diag­o­nal — 20 cm. Pow­er is sup­plied from a built-in lithi­um-ion 1S (3.7V) bat­tery with a capac­i­ty of 3900mAh. Oper­ates in the fre­quen­cy range: 5.725 — 5.850 GHz. Pro­vides a max­i­mum dis­tance of 5 km.

Price

The Fimi X8 SE quad­copter is avail­able for pur­chase on var­i­ous Inter­net mar­ket­places for a price of $499.

Conclusion

Fimi X8 SE $500

Func­tion­al­i­ty

10/10

Flight time

10/10

flight qual­i­ties

9/10

com­pact­ness

6/10

Equip­ment

10/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

10/10

Price qual­i­ty

10/10

pros

• Exe­cu­tion qual­i­ty
• Portable (fold­ing arms and props)/Props with quick release mech­a­nism
• Pow­er­ful, qui­et pow­er plant
• Con­trol­la­bil­i­ty and posi­tion­ing accu­ra­cy
• Image quality/F‑Log and DNG RAW modes/Bitrate 100Mbps
• Auto flight and shoot­ing modes
• FPV flight up to 5 km
• Slid­ing remote design with remov­able sticks (for smartphone/tablet)
• SAR mode
• Price

Minuses

• Does­n’t fly around obsta­cles
• No 4K at 60 fps
• Bulky remote

Based on the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed, the nov­el­ty deserves atten­tion. We hope that the devel­op­ers will not dis­ap­point and pre­pare high-qual­i­ty soft­ware for the hard­ware of the drone. Indeed, as prac­tice shows, it is soft­ware that becomes the prob­lem of new­ly-made high-tech devices. Oth­er­wise, the poten­tial of the drone will be ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed by lovers of high-qual­i­ty aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy, for whom the cri­te­ri­on of porta­bil­i­ty is no less impor­tant when choos­ing a UAV. Also, due to the flight dura­tion, dis­tance, SAR mode, Fimi X8 SE will be indis­pens­able in search and res­cue oper­a­tions, emer­gency sit­u­a­tions, dis­as­ter dam­age assess­ment, inspec­tion and mon­i­tor­ing.

We rec­om­mend that you pay atten­tion to the mod­i­fied ver­sion of the drone. Details about the Fimi X8 SE 2020 quadro­copter in our review!

Video

Com­par­a­tive review of FIMI X8 SE 2020 vs FIMI X8 SE.

Prob­lem soft­ware.

The video shows bugs in the oper­a­tion of the drone that arose after the next soft­ware update. In this con­nec­tion, the author warns the own­ers of the mod­el that before updat­ing the copter firmware, you need to make sure that it works, for exam­ple, through Google.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBwE39NXl8U

Video from Fimi X8 SE quad­copter.

Video review Fimi X8 SE.

Fimi X8 SE shoot­ing qual­i­ty test video.

Video of the test for the flight range of the Fimi X8 SE quadro­copter.