Blade 350 QX3 Quadcopter Drone from Horizon Hobby

The Drone's First Flight Experience

When I first started flying my new drone, the DJI 350 qx3, I was excited to see how it would perform. As I took off and began to ascend, I noticed that the drone seemed to be behaving erratically. At first, I thought it might be due to a technical issue, but as I continued to fly, I realized that the code on the back of the drone was guiding me through a process to calibrate its systems. The instructions were clear, and with each step, the drone began to stabilize and level out. As we reached a certain height, it started to descend on its own, taking me by surprise. Thankfully, the code provided guidance on what to do next, and I was able to adjust my course accordingly.

A Lesson in Drone Maintenance

After realizing that the protective housing came off from the camera for the gimbal to operate, I quickly adjusted my approach. The camera footage was surprisingly stable, and the photos looked great. However, when it came to panning video shots, I found that they were almost unusable on the Parrot drone. In contrast, the 350 qx3's low light performance was much better than its predecessor, with less blockiness and 60fps recording capabilities.

A Word of Caution: The Drone's Flaws

While the 350 qx3 is an impressive device, it also comes with some drawbacks. For one, the overall image quality is not as high as I had expected, with noticeable aliasing on straight lines that makes it almost seem like upscaled 720p or even lower. This was a disappointment, especially considering the drone's price tag of $500. Furthermore, I found myself wishing there was an easy way to attach a GoPro onto the gimbal, which would have improved the overall image quality.

Modifiability and Direct Control

One of the main benefits of the 350 qx3 is its modifiability and direct control over the hardware. As a hobbyist-grade drone, it provides more flexibility than consumer-targeted devices like the Parrot. However, this comes at the cost of being less forgiving of mistakes. In my experience with the BBop, I crashed it multiple times due to its foam construction and lightweight design, which made it feel almost indestructible. In contrast, the 350 qx3 requires more care and attention, especially when it comes to handling the camera and gimbal.

Conclusion: A Drone Worthy of Its Price Tag

If you pick up one of these drones and treat it with care, it will reward you with impressive performance. The DJI 350 qx3 is a prosumer SL-grade drone that offers more modifiability than consumer-targeted devices, as well as direct control over the hardware. While there are some drawbacks to consider, such as the overall image quality being less impressive than expected, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks for enthusiasts and hobbyists.

Additional Information and Resources

For those interested in learning more about the DJI 350 qx3 or finding deals on related products, our friends at M astop have a great selection of accessories and gear available. One product that caught my eye is the Audio Technica MSR 7s headphones, which feature 45mm true motion drivers, soft memory foam ear pads, and high-quality sound. As part of their latest group buy, these headphones are currently available for a limited time at a discounted price. Be sure to check out the link in our video description or visit M astop directly to learn more.

Giveaways and Contests

As a valued member of our community, we invite you to create an account through our affiliate link and enter to win a pair of MSR 7s headphones. Simply leave a comment below this video mentioning the product you want to see us review or if you'd like to see a product that's currently on sale at M astop. Your participation will also qualify you for other giveaways and contests, so be sure to subscribe to our channel and follow us on social media for more updates.

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"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enbuy popular demand okay no one actually requested this but I enjoyed making that video we did a couple weeks ago about the parrot bbop and I want to make more quad videos so here's my video about the Blade 350 qx3 a video about flying that should be released around the time that I'm landing in Asia which is going to mean some unusual content over the next little while here Corsair h80i GT and h100i GTX all-in-one liquid coolers make your system look better and run cooler too click my face to learn more so let's start with the unboxing experience something that normally isn't that relevant to a product review but in this case really sets the tone for the rest of the video the first thing that stood out to me was a wow horiz and hobby did a great job of packaging this sucker all but the most determined parcel carriers would fail to break your drone in shipping I'm sure and B I am super impressed that all the parts even the doublea batteries for the transmitter are included in the ready toly drone plus camera kit but Horizon has some serious work to do on the user friendliness if they want to access the same kind of customer that parrot is targeting with a product like the bbop little details like the threepiece battery charger versus parrot's friendly socketed one and the three separate p pieces of documentation required to actually use the product a quick start guide with the assembly pre-flight and most of the inflight instructions another booklet with the interpretation key for the LED signals that the 350 qx3 uses to communicate status updates and error messages to you and a third full manual that isn't included in the box so you can only access it online and that has no obvious reference made to it in the other documentation something that was particularly frustrating for me since it's it's the only place you can find some pretty critical information more on that later first we'll do a physical tour of the unit the design is very different from the bbop it's significantly larger for one thing and has a very hobbyist grade feel to it every part goes together predictably and seems like it would be easily modifiable or swappable out of the box it includes four brushless motors a controller and receiver board onboard GPS with an antenna mask for better accuracy an accelerometer compass and pressure sensor and if you get the AP or aerial photography model an integrated 130° fov 12 megapixel camera that shoots 1080p 60fps video on a 3axis brushless motorized gimbal with its own Wi-Fi hotspot for realtime firstperson monitoring with a smartphone that you clip to the controller that promises some seriously stable aerial footage so for my first flight I went through the whole pre-flight routine including compass and accelerometer calibration which involves toggling some switches on the transmitter then flipping the Drone around until it makes happy noises at you and lets you know everything is a okay I faced North for takeoff blah blah blah blah and then I found myself wondering do I have to do this every time Horizon tells me once I asked them that it's only if you move geographically or change the weight of the unit for some of the calibrations but I guess I've made my point now about what hobbyist grade means to the outof Box experience so I'm not going to complain about the manual anymore but it wasn't in there so let's talk about whether hobbyist grade flight characteristics make up for it I started out with Smart Mode flight where you stand still and the right stick makes the Drone move relative to the operator rather than relative to its own orientation so forward means away from you as opposed to the front of the Drone super duper boring so I switched to AP mode in like a minute but I can see how smart mode would be handy if your drone was for example far away and you couldn't properly see its orientation in spite of the LEDs on the Bott that should be a pretty good clue as to which way it's facing I mean when it gets really far away it's hard to see that um although if for whatever reason Smart Mode doesn't work for that you can use return home which works really well you just flip the switch and Boop it comes back as long as it hasn't lost its GPS signal in AP mode I was able to have a lot more fun and I made some immediate observations after my first flight the first of which being that flying it is fun this thing is quieter thanks to its larger props and much more acrobatic out of the box than the be Bop and if you have any RC experience at all you'll really appreciate the way it allows you to take control during a turn or a sudden maneuver rather than trying to compensate for you with an onboard computer something that caused some scary feeling like I'm out of control moments with the bbop where I was kind of fighting with the onboard computer but the flip side of that is that the 350 qx3 helps you a lot less with things like maintaining altitude while accelerating or turning in require Ires you to manually compensate with the left stick to avoid smoking the ground if you're flying low which sorry excuse me now the next thing I noticed is that while the video feed range frankly blows I tried to hold it together your smile is what did it the next thing I noticed is that while the video feed range frankly blows chunks compared to parrot's Sky controller with its baller antenna array thing the latency is is much better and thanks to its real physical gimbal versus digital gimbal it's much easier to fly firstperson view with the third is that a blinking RGB LED on the rear bumper is not as good a way to communicate with the pilot as a dedicated app so at about 13 minutes of flying when it started to descend on its own it took me a second to realize that the code on the back was letting me know that it was done good thing I wasn't over a body of water at the time since I hadn't memorized all the bloody code yet and finally I found myself missing the dedicated app again when I realized the Drone wouldn't go higher than 20 M with the outof the-box configuration and I had to go hook it up to a PC with the included USB dongle in order to reprogram it a process that is only outlined in the online manual fortunately the process is relatively straightforward and the app is surprisingly intuitive and stable you can reconfigure your max range your max altitude calibrate stuff and see some diagnostic data thumbs up so with that fixed the rest of my flights let's talk about those once I figured out that the protective housing comes off the camera for the gimbal to operate derp the camera footage is really really really stable like awesome stable photos look great and panning video shots that were basically unusable on the parrot look fantastic its low light performance is also better than the bbops with less blockiness and 60fps recording is a welcome upgrade for fast motion but for $500 I am a little disappointed with the overall image there is so much noticeable aliasing on straight lines that it almost looks like upscaled 720p or even lower and I found myself wishing that there was an easy way to Frankenstein a GoPro onto the gimbal even if it meant losing the live feed which leads pretty well into the conclusion what do you get what does it leave to be desired well what does it leave you get a prosumer SL hobbyist grade drone and everything that comes with that better modifiability than a consumer targeted device more direct control of the hardware you're flying but it also assumes that you have some prior knowledge that general consumers are unlikely to have and is less forgiving of mistakes I crashed the bbop more than half a dozen times dinking around with it because thanks to its foam construction and lightweight it felt almost indestructible the 350 qx3 should be treated with much more care I cracked the landing gear and knocked the camera off the gimbal on my first Crash from about 9 ft up so my final word then is if you pick one of these up and treat it right it'll treat you right in return oh and I'd also probably recommend checking out the two axis GoPro gimbal Mount that I uh didn't get in time for this review but I'm hoping to check out in the future speaking of deals our friends over at mastop have a deal on a pair of headphones going on right now actually lots of pairs of headphones but in particular these ones the Audio Technica MSR 7s they feature 45mm true motion drivers soft memory foam ear pads and the expected Audio Technica level of quality they're available for a very limited time over on Mast drop and you can check out the link in the video description or go directly to dr.p s/ Linus techip whatever it's in the video description to find out exactly when this drop ends if you don't know about Mass drop then well let me Enlighten you there a site that facilitates group buys on items that are selected by the community Through polls you pick the product their experts Source the best possible deal on that product and when more people commit to purchase the price goes down up to a set minimum they have a wide variety of products available from audio file equipment to PC Hardware like keyboards and key caps to tools like the Leatherman Wave so if you create a new account through our affiliate link you'll actually be entered to in a giveaway to win a pair of MSR 7s in addition to all that other great stuff if you already have m m drop account don't worry by the way you can enter too just by leaving a comment below this video mentioning the product you want to see us review or if you want to you know see a product that is on Mast drop that you can buy at a reduced price you'll also be entered to win all kinds of ways to win anyway guys thanks for watching this video you're all winners to me like it if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment under it preferably at the link in the video video description unless you want to enter that M drop deal uh if you have anything to say about the 350 qx3 or whatever else also linked in the video description is a link to buy our sweet t-shirts like this give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate codes so whenever you buy whatever else it is that you buy you we get a small Kickback that kind of thing helps us out a lot thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe and follow and all of that noise hebuy popular demand okay no one actually requested this but I enjoyed making that video we did a couple weeks ago about the parrot bbop and I want to make more quad videos so here's my video about the Blade 350 qx3 a video about flying that should be released around the time that I'm landing in Asia which is going to mean some unusual content over the next little while here Corsair h80i GT and h100i GTX all-in-one liquid coolers make your system look better and run cooler too click my face to learn more so let's start with the unboxing experience something that normally isn't that relevant to a product review but in this case really sets the tone for the rest of the video the first thing that stood out to me was a wow horiz and hobby did a great job of packaging this sucker all but the most determined parcel carriers would fail to break your drone in shipping I'm sure and B I am super impressed that all the parts even the doublea batteries for the transmitter are included in the ready toly drone plus camera kit but Horizon has some serious work to do on the user friendliness if they want to access the same kind of customer that parrot is targeting with a product like the bbop little details like the threepiece battery charger versus parrot's friendly socketed one and the three separate p pieces of documentation required to actually use the product a quick start guide with the assembly pre-flight and most of the inflight instructions another booklet with the interpretation key for the LED signals that the 350 qx3 uses to communicate status updates and error messages to you and a third full manual that isn't included in the box so you can only access it online and that has no obvious reference made to it in the other documentation something that was particularly frustrating for me since it's it's the only place you can find some pretty critical information more on that later first we'll do a physical tour of the unit the design is very different from the bbop it's significantly larger for one thing and has a very hobbyist grade feel to it every part goes together predictably and seems like it would be easily modifiable or swappable out of the box it includes four brushless motors a controller and receiver board onboard GPS with an antenna mask for better accuracy an accelerometer compass and pressure sensor and if you get the AP or aerial photography model an integrated 130° fov 12 megapixel camera that shoots 1080p 60fps video on a 3axis brushless motorized gimbal with its own Wi-Fi hotspot for realtime firstperson monitoring with a smartphone that you clip to the controller that promises some seriously stable aerial footage so for my first flight I went through the whole pre-flight routine including compass and accelerometer calibration which involves toggling some switches on the transmitter then flipping the Drone around until it makes happy noises at you and lets you know everything is a okay I faced North for takeoff blah blah blah blah and then I found myself wondering do I have to do this every time Horizon tells me once I asked them that it's only if you move geographically or change the weight of the unit for some of the calibrations but I guess I've made my point now about what hobbyist grade means to the outof Box experience so I'm not going to complain about the manual anymore but it wasn't in there so let's talk about whether hobbyist grade flight characteristics make up for it I started out with Smart Mode flight where you stand still and the right stick makes the Drone move relative to the operator rather than relative to its own orientation so forward means away from you as opposed to the front of the Drone super duper boring so I switched to AP mode in like a minute but I can see how smart mode would be handy if your drone was for example far away and you couldn't properly see its orientation in spite of the LEDs on the Bott that should be a pretty good clue as to which way it's facing I mean when it gets really far away it's hard to see that um although if for whatever reason Smart Mode doesn't work for that you can use return home which works really well you just flip the switch and Boop it comes back as long as it hasn't lost its GPS signal in AP mode I was able to have a lot more fun and I made some immediate observations after my first flight the first of which being that flying it is fun this thing is quieter thanks to its larger props and much more acrobatic out of the box than the be Bop and if you have any RC experience at all you'll really appreciate the way it allows you to take control during a turn or a sudden maneuver rather than trying to compensate for you with an onboard computer something that caused some scary feeling like I'm out of control moments with the bbop where I was kind of fighting with the onboard computer but the flip side of that is that the 350 qx3 helps you a lot less with things like maintaining altitude while accelerating or turning in require Ires you to manually compensate with the left stick to avoid smoking the ground if you're flying low which sorry excuse me now the next thing I noticed is that while the video feed range frankly blows I tried to hold it together your smile is what did it the next thing I noticed is that while the video feed range frankly blows chunks compared to parrot's Sky controller with its baller antenna array thing the latency is is much better and thanks to its real physical gimbal versus digital gimbal it's much easier to fly firstperson view with the third is that a blinking RGB LED on the rear bumper is not as good a way to communicate with the pilot as a dedicated app so at about 13 minutes of flying when it started to descend on its own it took me a second to realize that the code on the back was letting me know that it was done good thing I wasn't over a body of water at the time since I hadn't memorized all the bloody code yet and finally I found myself missing the dedicated app again when I realized the Drone wouldn't go higher than 20 M with the outof the-box configuration and I had to go hook it up to a PC with the included USB dongle in order to reprogram it a process that is only outlined in the online manual fortunately the process is relatively straightforward and the app is surprisingly intuitive and stable you can reconfigure your max range your max altitude calibrate stuff and see some diagnostic data thumbs up so with that fixed the rest of my flights let's talk about those once I figured out that the protective housing comes off the camera for the gimbal to operate derp the camera footage is really really really stable like awesome stable photos look great and panning video shots that were basically unusable on the parrot look fantastic its low light performance is also better than the bbops with less blockiness and 60fps recording is a welcome upgrade for fast motion but for $500 I am a little disappointed with the overall image there is so much noticeable aliasing on straight lines that it almost looks like upscaled 720p or even lower and I found myself wishing that there was an easy way to Frankenstein a GoPro onto the gimbal even if it meant losing the live feed which leads pretty well into the conclusion what do you get what does it leave to be desired well what does it leave you get a prosumer SL hobbyist grade drone and everything that comes with that better modifiability than a consumer targeted device more direct control of the hardware you're flying but it also assumes that you have some prior knowledge that general consumers are unlikely to have and is less forgiving of mistakes I crashed the bbop more than half a dozen times dinking around with it because thanks to its foam construction and lightweight it felt almost indestructible the 350 qx3 should be treated with much more care I cracked the landing gear and knocked the camera off the gimbal on my first Crash from about 9 ft up so my final word then is if you pick one of these up and treat it right it'll treat you right in return oh and I'd also probably recommend checking out the two axis GoPro gimbal Mount that I uh didn't get in time for this review but I'm hoping to check out in the future speaking of deals our friends over at mastop have a deal on a pair of headphones going on right now actually lots of pairs of headphones but in particular these ones the Audio Technica MSR 7s they feature 45mm true motion drivers soft memory foam ear pads and the expected Audio Technica level of quality they're available for a very limited time over on Mast drop and you can check out the link in the video description or go directly to dr.p s/ Linus techip whatever it's in the video description to find out exactly when this drop ends if you don't know about Mass drop then well let me Enlighten you there a site that facilitates group buys on items that are selected by the community Through polls you pick the product their experts Source the best possible deal on that product and when more people commit to purchase the price goes down up to a set minimum they have a wide variety of products available from audio file equipment to PC Hardware like keyboards and key caps to tools like the Leatherman Wave so if you create a new account through our affiliate link you'll actually be entered to in a giveaway to win a pair of MSR 7s in addition to all that other great stuff if you already have m m drop account don't worry by the way you can enter too just by leaving a comment below this video mentioning the product you want to see us review or if you want to you know see a product that is on Mast drop that you can buy at a reduced price you'll also be entered to win all kinds of ways to win anyway guys thanks for watching this video you're all winners to me like it if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment under it preferably at the link in the video video description unless you want to enter that M drop deal uh if you have anything to say about the 350 qx3 or whatever else also linked in the video description is a link to buy our sweet t-shirts like this give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate codes so whenever you buy whatever else it is that you buy you we get a small Kickback that kind of thing helps us out a lot thanks again for watching and as always don't forget to subscribe and follow and all of that noise he\n"