Considering buying a micro drone? A lot of micro drones look like toys so in this article I’ll go through what a micro drone is, their pros and cons and show you what I look for using seven of the most popular micro drones on the market.
What is a micro drone?
Micro drones are between a mini drone and a nano drone in size. They’re popular to use as indoor racing drones, paired with FPV goggles and are some of the best drones for kids.
One of the really popular micro drones for adults is the Flywoo Firefly. These are FPV racing drones that come in a tonne of different options.
You’ll also hear drones in the micro drone category called woop drones, this is a specific type of drone. Woop drones are typically 6.5-7.5cm in diameter and have ducts. Drone ducts are the fixed propeller guards that sit around the blades protecting them from collisions.
Most woop drones have an adjustable camera that tilts upwards. Experienced drone pilots with good control can fly really fast which causes the front of the drone to tilt down so it flies on an angle.
Pros and Cons of Micro Drones
There are a huge range of micro drones but overall they’re most popularly used as an indoor racing drone or as a fun alternative to fly and master your drone piloting skills when the weather is bad out. The biggest ‘pro’ of micro drones is that they are zippy and highly responsive.
However, because of their small size, micro drones are limited to how much they can carry meaning smaller batteries and cameras. This is the major down side, or ‘con’ to micro drones.
PROS
- Fast
- Fun to race
- Light weight
- Cheaper than normal drones
- Most micro drones are very robust and designed to withstand collisions with walls and indoor flight
CONS
- Short battery life & flight time
- Limited quality camera
- Many cheap, poor-quality toy versions on the market
Micro Drones Reviewed
Here are the 7 micro drones reviewed in this article from most to least expensive:
 | ||
 | ||
 | ||
Drone  | ||
 | ||
 | ||
 |
The Best All Inclusive Micro Drone Kit
Emax TinyHawk 3
The Emax TinyHawk 3 is ideal for FPV indoor drone racing although it can be flown outdoors too. It comes in a kit with FPV goggles and controller which can also be paired with other drones.
I actually find it hard to choose between the TinyHawk 2 Freestyle and this version but you can read the whole review on these two models in this article on Tiny Hawk.
The Emax Tiny Hawk 3 is a woop drone so it has fixed prop guards (ducts), the plastic has a bit of flex in it making it less likely to break in a collision than cheaper brittle plastics.
I wouldn’t recommend this drone for kids or absolute beginners because there are many drones that are far simpler for getting started like the Tomzon micro drones. However, the multi-speed setting is good for developing your skill level if you’re interested in drone racing.
As you get better at controlling the drone at higher speeds the drone will begin to fly on an angle, this drone has an adjustable camera to accommodate for this but it is manual, not remote controlled.
A cool feature of the FPV headset is that the screen can actually disconnect from the face mask and connect to the controller. This means you don’t need to use your mobile to get a video stream, unlike many other drones. The connector between the screen and the control is also adjustable and rotates which is a nice feature that’s rarely seen on drone controllers.
Racing Micro Drone
BetaFPV Meteor65
The BetaFPV Meteor65 micro drone is designed for indoor drone racing. It has fixed prop guards in the typical woop drone style. However, this micro drone is also better suited to more advanced flyers, the camera is pre-set at 30 degrees to accommodate for the drone tilt when flying fast but the camera angle isn’t easily manually altered, unlike the Tiny Hawk – The hard case canopy makes moving the camera angle pretty tricky.
The canopy and prop guards are nice and thick though, making the drone body and props well protected.
This micro drone comes with two 300MAH batteries and has brushless motors. Brushless motors are longer lasting and you can generally switch out the battery on the drone and keep flying. Cheaper brushed motors tend to heat up with continual use which shortens their life span.
The little areal that sticks out the back of the drone is the signal receiver that talks to the remote. The BetaFPV micro drone tends to have smoother video transmission than the Tiny Hawk 3 which is important if you want to use these drones for the FPV experience.
LED Micro Drone
Tomzon A23 LED
Even though the Potensic LED drone is significantly cheaper than the TinyHawk and BetaFPV, it’s still a very agile and responsive drone. This is what a lot of drone enthusiasts start out with, it’s simple and straight forward to start learning to fly right out of the box. We don’t even need to download any apps or worry about camera settings (the lens looking device on the front of the drone is not actually a real camera).
The downside to buying cheaper micro drones, including Tomzon, is that they usually have brushed motors. Unlike the more expensive micro drones reviewed above, we need to be more conscious that they can overheat and become damaged with continual use. So, even though it some micro drones come with 3 batteries, we have to check the motors aren’t getting hot each time we switch out the battery to keep flying.
Save time when charging up the batteries for this drone by using the splitter, both batteries can be charged at once.
Brushed motors aside, this is a pretty quiet drone and can do super quick flips and tricks. We sometimes need to use the trim function on these cheaper drones to help with drift but overall this is a good budget version of a micro drone.
The Holy Stone Micro Drone
Holy Stone is a pretty well-known company in the toy drone market. I’ve written a full article on their drones and how their features compare in this Holy Stone Drone Review.
The HS210 micro drone is one of their cheapest models.
The batteries are 1s, 220MAH, 7.3 volt so they aren’t quite as powerful as the Tiny Hawk and BetaFPV but this drone is also a good alternative if your budget is tight. The flight time is about 5.5 minutes per battery and the indicator light gives a good amount of warning time before it goes flat. Once the battery starts becoming depleted we can’t do some of the high energy features like 360 flips.
This drone has some good features for beginners like headless mode, 3-speed settings, very simple calibration and gyro set up and auto landing.
However, fitting the battery is pretty fiddly making it not ideal for kids. It has a small plastic plug with 2 pins attached to the battery wires which need to be plugged into the drone to power it up, it doesn’t have an on / off switch.
Micro Drones For Kids
While micro drones look small and toy like, you’ll have noticed with my comments so far that they aren’t all suitable for kids. Here are a couple of micro drones that are both affordable and suitable for younger drone pilots!
Tomzon A31 (The Flying Pig!)
The Tomzon A31 micro drone is a flight only drone. Like it’s big brother, the Tomzon A23, the camera looking part isn’t a real camera. This is a really simple drone to get started with, when taking off it will auto hover until steered. The controller is also really compact, making it ideal for kids.
This drone has 3 speed settings and can actually get pretty fast, it can also do funnels. The Tomzon A31 has really good responsiveness for a cheaper drone and has next to no lag between the control and response.
The ducted woop design protects the rotors well and it’s a pretty robust little drone, but like the other Tomzon drone and the Holy Stone micro drone, it has brushed motors so make sure to let them cool down before switching batteries and continuing to fly.
Each of the propellors have an LED light underneath making it cool to fly in low-light environments. Fly it around the house in the evening and the LED lights project onto the white propellors. The LEDs can be turn on and off but by default they cycle through a light colour pattern automatically.
Holyton Micro Drone
The Holyton HS330 has a few cool extras that make it worth a recommended micro drone for kids. It has the throw-to-go function and hand control by using the infrared sensors.
To get started with the remote, just click the take-off button and it auto hovers in the air until steered. Landing is also simple, with the one-button landing command or emergency stop, then the drone can be switch off by flipping up side down.
To activate sensor mode and fly without a controller, flip the mode button on the bottom of the drone and click the power button twice then gently throw into the air. The drone fires up and is then guided by using your hands to guide the direction. This mode makes the Holyton micro drone one of the best options for young kids, it’s also got snap-in batteries which are much simpler for kids to set up.
The only down side I can really pick on this drone for is the short battery life. Even though the max flight time should be around 7 minutes per battery, they seem to deplete pretty quickly but overall this is a really clever micro drone at a very affordable price!
Wrap Up On Micro Drones
So, are micro drones a gimmick or great fun? Maybe I’m biased as a drone enthusiast but I think micro drones are great. Why? Because micro drones offer an alternative when the weather is bad out, we can race these little guys around indoors and set up obstacle courses to hone our piloting skills and if we hit a wall, these drones are built for it!
Heaps of middle range drones do a really poor job flying outdoors when there is wind but can’t be flown indoors because they rely on GPS and aren’t built robustly enough to handle crashing into walls!
The downside to micro drones is that there are a lot of cheap versions out there and they do have pretty short battery life because they are so small and light.
If you’re not going to go for one of the micro-drones on my list, be sure to look for brushless motors which tend to last longer and the option to buy additional batteries so you can fly for longer!
Related posts:
Flywoo Firefly Drones [Which Model is Best?]
DJI Mini SE vs Mini 2 vs Mini 3 Pro: What you need to know
The Best Mini Drone for Your Budget
The DEERC D20 Mini Drone Review: Is it worth it?
Tiny Hawk: The Perfect Beginner to Expert FPV Drone?
The Top 5 FPV Racing Drones To Take You From Beginner To Expert