Overview of the Quadrocopter Syma X5UW

Introduction

A nov­el­ty from a well-known brand in the field of house­hold radio-con­trolled UAVs is the Syma X5UW quadro­copter. The man­u­fac­tur­er tries to keep up with the times and from time to time offers mod­er­ate­ly priced UAVs, which, in turn, com­pete freely with oth­er equal­ly well-known brands.

Peculiarities

• 0.3MP Wi-Fi video cam­era
• Smartphone/Remote Control/Smartphone + Remote Con­trol (via “Syma Go” IOS/Android app)
• 6 axis gyro­scope
• Flight Plan Func­tion
• FPV
• Auto takeoff/landing
• Alti­tude Hold (Barom­e­ter)
• Flips 360º
• Head­less Mode

Equipment

• Quad­copter Syma X5UW
• Bat­tery 3.7V 500mAh LiPo
• 0.3MP Wi-Fi video cam­era
• 4‑channel 2.4GHz con­trol equip­ment (pow­ered by 4 × AA bat­ter­ies sold sep­a­rate­ly)
• smart­phone hold­er
• 4 × rotors
• 4 × spare rotors
• Rotor pro­tec­tion
• 4GB mem­o­ry card
• card read­er
• Screw­driv­er
• USB cable (for drone bat­tery charg­ing)
• Instruc­tion (in English/Russian)

Specification

Brand:

Syma

Mod­el:

X5UW

Col­or:

Red

Cam­era:

0.3MP

Stor­age (cam­era):

MicroSD 4GB (includ­ed)

Radio fre­quen­cy:

2.4GHz

Video fre­quen­cy:

2.4 GHz over Wi-Fi

Trans­mit­ter Pow­er:

4 × AA

Sta­bi­liza­tion:

6 axis gyro­scope

head­less mode:

Yes

Auto takeoff/landing:

Yes

Height hold:

Baro­met­ric sen­sor

Bat­tery capac­i­ty:

3.7V 500mAh LiPo

Charg­ing time:

130 min

Back­light:

LED

Flight time:

≈ 7 min

Range of flight:

≈ 70m

Fly­ing envi­ron­ment:

Indoor/Outdoor

Exe­cu­tion mate­r­i­al:

ABS

The weight:

127gr

Age lim­it:

12+

Appearance

Motors

The Syma X5UW quad­copter is equipped with gear-dri­ven com­mu­ta­tor motors. The poten­tial is enough for a con­fi­dent flight. Due to the con­sid­er­able rotors, the thrust force is increased, which adds dynamism to the quadric.

Camera

The Syma X5UW quad­copter is equipped with a 0.3MP cam­era that takes photos/videos in below aver­age qual­i­ty. It con­nects via a 3‑pin con­nec­tor, as well as a lock­ing mech­a­nism on the quad and cam­era. In order to improve the qual­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al being shot, the stock cam­era can be replaced with a bet­ter ana­logue, which can be found on the open spaces of well-known Inter­net trad­ing plat­forms.

FPV

The flight from the first per­son for this mod­el is imple­ment­ed via Wi-Fi at a fre­quen­cy of 2.4 GHz using a video trans­mit­ter work­ing in tan­dem with the on-board cam­era. The out­put of the pic­ture is car­ried out through the free mobile appli­ca­tion “Syma Go” (on IOS / Android). The broad­cast qual­i­ty leaves much to be desired, in gen­er­al, due to the large video sig­nal delay, the time of which increas­es in pro­por­tion to the dis­tance of the quad from the mobile device, but this will be enough for the first acquain­tance with FPV flight.

Battery

The Syma X5UW quad­copter is equipped with a 3.7V 500mAh lithi­um poly­mer bat­tery. Pro­vides con­tin­u­ous flight with­out a cam­era for about 7 min­utes, with a cam­era for 5 min­utes. It will take about two hours to ful­ly charge the bat­tery. I was pleas­ant­ly pleased with the process of installing the bat­tery in the quad­copter, no wires or plugs, just put it in and that’s it, like on all mod­ern expen­sive UAVs.

Control

The kit comes with a stan­dard 4‑channel con­trol equip­ment for this series oper­at­ing at a fre­quen­cy of 2.4 GHz. The Syma X5UW can be con­trolled using a smart­phone via Wi-Fi, via the down­loaded “Syma Go” appli­ca­tion, a remote con­trol (in this case, not all quad func­tions will be active) and the most prac­ti­cal way to con­trol is a smart­phone + remote con­trol com­bi­na­tion. With this con­trol method, the pilot will be able to use all the quadro­copter chips.

Note that in FPV mode, the con­trolled removal dis­tance is notice­ably reduced.

Test Drive

In the test Syma X5UW showed good per­for­mance of the 6‑axis gyro­scope. I didn’t have to get used to the con­trols, the response to the work of the sticks is pre­dictable, begin­ners will appre­ci­ate it. 2 activ­i­ty modes are avail­able: “Low” and “High”. Flaw­less­ly ful­fills flips, auto-take­off / land­ing, hov­er­ing. Fly­ing along a pre­de­ter­mined route sur­pris­ing­ly works. The devel­op­ers sur­prised with their inge­nu­ity. The fact is that Syma X5UW has no nav­i­ga­tion at all, but this does not pre­vent it from fly­ing along a pre­de­ter­mined route.

This oppor­tu­ni­ty gives the drone the appli­ca­tion “Syma Go”. To per­form the func­tion, the quadro­copter is launched into the air in the Alti­tude Hold mode. After that, the “Flight plan” func­tion is acti­vat­ed. A map with a zoom slid­er will be dis­played on the gad­get’s dis­play (the appli­ca­tion has access to the smart­phone’s loca­tion). Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the map, the left side of the screen will be occu­pied by one dig­i­tal stick respon­si­ble for con­trol­ling the drone (left, right, for­ward, back­ward).

The pilot, by touch­ing his fin­ger on the smart­phone screen, draws the future flight path based on the ter­rain map (the tra­jec­to­ry is drawn with one touch). As soon as the pilot’s fin­ger stops touch­ing the dis­play, a dot will appear on the tra­jec­to­ry indi­cat­ed by him (in the place where the pilot began to draw the tra­jec­to­ry) which will inde­pen­dent­ly begin to move strict­ly along the drawn line. Syma X5UW will dupli­cate dot move­ments. As soon as the quad­copter starts fly­ing along the route, the video image from the drone’s cam­era will be dis­played in real time.

The exe­cu­tion of the func­tion is best done in an open area free from peo­ple, ani­mals, etc.!

At the end of the tra­jec­to­ry, the quad will hov­er in the alti­tude hold mode and will wait for the next com­mands from the con­trol equip­ment. The pilot is advised to con­stant­ly mon­i­tor the qual­i­ty of the Wi-Fi con­nec­tion. when the con­nec­tion is lost, the quad­copter crash­es.

Price

On well-known trad­ing plat­forms, the Syma X5UW quadro­copter is sold at an aver­age price of $50.

Conclusion

SYMA X5UW $fifty

Func­tion­al­i­ty

7/10

Flight time

5/10

flight qual­i­ties

5/10

com­pact­ness

6/10

Equip­ment

5/10

Reli­a­bil­i­ty

5/10

Price qual­i­ty

9/10

pros

• Design
• flight prop­er­ties
• Auto takeoff/landing
• Alti­tude Hold
• head­less mode
• Flight along the drawn route
• Does not require reg­is­tra­tion
• Ready to fly out of the box

Minuses

• The cor­rect oper­a­tion of the “Flight along a giv­en route” func­tion direct­ly depends on the qual­i­ty of the Wi-Fi con­nec­tion
• The appli­ca­tion does not load the map of the area, which sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pli­cates the process of lay­ing the route
• Crash­es when con­nec­tion is lost
• Cam­era (cap­ture qual­i­ty)
• FPV (lag time)
• Noisy (gear­box­es)
• Flight dura­tion

It has the func­tions of mod­ern drones, which makes it stand out among bud­get com­peti­tors. All the above plus­es are over­shad­owed only by the inflat­ed price. The drone will be ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed by novice pilots as the first UAV who want to com­bine in one expe­ri­ence both the acqui­si­tion of pri­ma­ry pilot­ing skills and adap­ta­tion to first-per­son flight. Age lim­it 12+.

A photo

Pho­to with quadro­copter Syma X5UW.

Video

Video with quadro­copter Syma X5UW.