It is no exaggeration, this is the best buy of the drone in 2019, and we will prove it in the article!

Introductory

When Hubsan’s new bird slowly appeared on the net half a year ago, the net was filled with articles that said a real DJI killer machine was born, plus a quarter compared to its big competitor. Maybe you can also feel that something is definitely wrong here, because a DJI Mavic or Air level machine can't be put together so cheaply. I’m shooting the joke, it really can’t be, but I still have to say that I’ve enjoyed flying and videotaping as much as I did with the Hubsan Zino for a long time!

Be prepared to go through the catalog data quickly, and then give you a much longer experience report!

If you want to read so much incs, you can find the test video I made at the end of the article. I hope you change your mind after watching it and read the article too!

Packaging and accessories

The Hubsan Zino box is really quality, in that sense it could even be a DJI. We get everything you need for your first flights, so we have a charger, a European power cord, a USB cable for charging and software upgrades, a small screwdriver to replace the paddles, cables to connect all kinds of phones and a package spare rotor. I could be very happy with the latter when I first encountered a rock, but about that later…

The point is, if you only order the basic set, that’s all you get. There are also more serious packages in the web stores, ones with a carrying case and an extra 1 or 2 batteries next to the machine. Now I strongly regret not ordering one because it would have been much cheaper than buying them separately, but for my defense, I didn’t originally want to keep it, I just bought it to write this article. Then life intervened, so now I have no idea how to get rid of it!

The machine

The Zino is the classic fold-out arm solution that has a clear DJI tap, but who cares? The point is that it is practical and can be folded a little! The total size is 304,6 x 252,4 x 90 millimeters anyway and the weight is 700 grams. It’s not too hard, but a small wind won’t blow it anymore.

The body of the machine is off-white, knocking, rigid plastic, which, as it turned out, can withstand the strata quite well, at least I didn't have a scratch on it, even though it would have been something. The battery is a 3000 mAh 11,4 volt piece that allows (would make) 23 minutes of flight on a single charge. Charging takes roughly two hours, at least on paper, for me it was always more. It will also be important that the connection between the remote control and the machine is wifis, I will discuss this a little later. The motors are, of course, carbon brush-free and strong enough to keep the drone usable in moderate winds. Speaking of strength, it should be mentioned that in sports mode, the flight speed can reach 60 kilometers per hour, so it doesn’t hurt to do a little practice before we start racing with the Zino!

Perhaps the most notable value on a bird is the camera and gimbal on which it peaks. The gimbal itself is a full-fledged, three-axis solution, meaning it’s not like the smaller Xiaomi FIMI, where we only get two physical and one electronic axes. The camera itself is a full-fledged 4K-capable solution. This is clearly no joke, as the sensor is a Sony IMX258 and the chipset is an Ambarella A12. These can also be found in many action cameras, a good pairing, although it should be noted that there are some better ones than the IMX258.

The remote control

The remote control seems like a cheap piece at first glance. Well, not like a $ 50-100 drone, because then we really get such vile pieces sometimes that I'd rather throw some of them out of the box right away. The controller that came with the Hubsan Zino isn’t great in terms of material usage, but it’s flawless in terms of the layout itself, the phone holder, the buttons and the scrolls anyway.

Many people say that the arms and the mechanics that go with them aren’t precise enough, I think they are, but why, I’ll talk about that later. The point is, on the remote control, you’ll find everything you need to fly and videotape, but there’s not a single stupid thing on it that we don’t need. A full-fledged piece, easy to use, I miss at most one thing that the arms can’t be unscrewed for transport. I could have been happy about that.

The software

In a previous Hubsan article, I had already written about X-Hubsan software, which is also available for iOS and Android. Then I mostly pointed out about it that the interface, the layout, is that it will be easy to switch from this program to the software of a more expensive machine later, because it is quite similar to the DJI solution, for example.

Now it’s time to put a whole serious machine under (or above, depending on where we’re looking from) the software. When Zino arrived a lot of options were still missing, so for example, we couldn’t set anything on the camera. This problem is now gone, we have the option of normal fine-tuning. Unfortunately, there are so many menus that I won't be able to put all the screenshots into the article, but I'll try to pack the more important ones here to see what I'm talking about!

Operation, experience

And then now comes the experience report, I try to go through every point, I’m going to try to convey the experience that Zino gives. I’m almost certain it won’t work, but it’s free to try.

Commissioning

The first thing a thorough drone user does is download and install the latest software, at least if the latest version doesn’t legendarily suck. In the case of Hubsan Zino, this is out of the question, and even if the version isn’t the latest, it still needs to be updated because there are plenty of extra settings.

The downloaded package includes three drivers (firmware). One belongs to the machine, the other to the gimbal, and the third to the camera. To keep things simple, all three need to be updated differently.

There is an update software in the download package, we will need this first. To update the machine, you need to connect the computer to the drone when it is turned off, load the latest firmware into the program, and start the update. The gimbal is also updated through the program, but it is also necessary to turn on the bird. To update the camera, you will need a memory card, copy the driver to the root, plug it into the Zino, turn on the drone, and wait until the little red indicator LED stops blinking. We have updated everything for this!

First flight

Of course, charge the battery, more precisely the batteries, because there is also something in the controller that deserves a big red dot, we don't have to bother with batteries! It is important to make ourselves aware that the Hubsan aircraft is not packed with sensors, so it will not avoid obstacles on its own, due to the lower camera and ultrasonic sensor, hitting the landing site on an automatic return will not be inches accurate. The machine does not detect the distance to the ground, it just relies on the not very accurate GPS and the built-in barometer. In practice, this means that you will not follow the rise of the ground up a mountain, but rather fly at it if we do not intervene.

So height and posture are the way they are, obviously not a needle-accurate DJI, but if you’re not used to it like I am, it won’t be a problem.

Before the flight, the departure process will be as follows. You turn on the machine, then turn on the remote control. When the blue LEDs on the controller agreed, he joined Zino. You then connect the phone running the X-Hubsan program, select your bird and the image is already on the screen. Oh no, he's not there. It’s a pretty silly thing, but you need to turn on USB debugging on Android phones in developer mode, otherwise it won’t work. If this is the case, the phone will recognize the remote control as a control device. So first turn on USB debugging, then start the program, connect to the remote control and you're done.

To the left of the software interface, automatic take-off (if you are flying, then landing) and flight modes are the most important points. For the latter, we can select super things like tracking, circling, en-route or something called Line Fly mode. The latter is the way the machine automatically rises and moves away with the camera facing us, cool!

You can choose to the right between shooting or video, but this is easier to control with the buttons on the remote control. More importantly, under the small slider pictogram, you can access the camera settings, within which you can adjust the resolution, number of frames, white balance, or choose from four color filters.

The gear icon takes us to the more detailed settings, where on the left we can carve out the settings of the virtual joystick, remote control, gimbal, map, and at the lowest point we can perform the water level and geomagnetic calibration.

Once we are familiar with the software, we have managed to assemble the machine, the remote control and the phone, then the flight can start!

Let's fly!

If your first machine is the Zino, it will definitely take longer to get to know me than I do, but I’m not writing out of bragging, about 5 minutes was enough to handle it with confidence. The machine is incredibly friendly, agile, strong, but not even rude to us. Of course, there is a sport where it is a bit, but this is not mandatory, it is not recommended to turn it on at first.

Since we also started the article on whether DJI is a killer on the drone, now I’m turning back here, comparing it to the Mavic Pro because I was lucky enough to own one.

The point is that this machine is by no means a Mavic Pro, up close it is even less so. The DJI machine is usually characterized in that you can record it as if it were followed by a complete video crew. His movement, his control is incredibly precise, and not only can he follow you, but he also recognizes that you are on his side or back or opposite. Incredible machine!

Well, Zino doesn't know that! Using the camera as an optical sensor, it tracks the target designated on the phone, doing so quite accurately, but it is still far from what I would dare call a complete staff. The precision of the recordings is also impaired by the lack of sensors, because floating in place is not as if the machine has been nailed into the air, there is always a slight sway. Of course, gimbal improves this a bit, but I'll talk about that a little later.

The bottom line is that after fixing the initial software problems, Hubsan Zino no longer starts writing meter circles instead of standing still, but it still moves a bit. This makes it impossible to record videos in tight spaces without using a remote control, because if space is tight, we are forced to constantly correct. Here I would like to return a bit to the one-kilometer range already mentioned above. This is not only the case with Hubsan Zino, but also with DJI Air, for example, so it’s not the fault of the machine, it’s more the fault of the technology. I note that with the exception of the DJI Mavic, there was no plane that would have flown me miles away, and even there only from brahi, because outside of that huge range, it doesn’t make much sense. When we videotape, we still film things around us, or a few hundred meters at most, in at least 500 percent of the cases. We can't ascend higher than 600 meters anyway, so a range of one kilometer is enough in this respect as well.

Now back to the complaint I read in a lot of Zino tests, which is that the arms on the remote control aren’t precise enough. I have to say that they would be completely more precise more unnecessarily. In the case of a Mavic, you can expect to make very fine movements of up to a few inches in the air, but in the case of the Zino, it makes no sense, because like I said, it’s just not as precise in flight as a multi-sensory DJI drone. So the precision that is plentiful is the same, you can drive the machine in the air with precision and beauty, and I will try to set an example of this in the test video. Yes, with due attention we can fly quite close to all kinds of objects, rocks, trees, but the point here is attention and precise maneuvering!

The lack of sensors was normally joked anyway. When I was planning the route for the first video, I loosely brought the machine into a covered area. This would not have been a problem for Mavic, but Zino got stuck in it. He lost the satellites and, in a desperate search, slammed himself nicely against a rock wall. Luckily, it didn’t happen high, it just dropped from a height of a meter and a half, so there was no problem. It’s important to point out that this case can’t be traced back to anything other than my own stupidity, I simply planned the route assuming Mavic’s knowledge, and that was a big mistake.

The point is that the Zino is essentially unusable indoors. If you’re planning on doing this, you’ll need to move up a minimum of two price categories, but I’ll talk about that at the end of the article.

How is the flight?

As I wrote above it is quite wonderful! I don’t know why, maybe I was more afraid of Mavic, but I never dared to let myself go completely. Okay, I flew a few miles for this, some for that, made some videos, but somehow I’ve always had the fear in me of falling, shattering, leaving. Well, in the case of the Zino, those fears didn’t come up, which is why flying with him really caused a cloudless good mood. As I wrote agile little structure, really strong, and if you blow a little wind, you can not even give it to him, let it blow.

A 23-minute flight available on a single charge seems like a lot, but not in the slightest, for several reasons. One is a small problem with the management software that prevents us from flying any further if the battery is below 20 percent. I attribute this to the fact that they are trying to design the machine foolproof, and since the price doesn’t include the luxury of roughly calculating how much energy it takes to get back, I’d rather say that 20 percent should still be enough, wherever or within a mile. So the plane catches itself, comes back, and then we can go home.

Another reason for brevity is much simpler. It’s just so good to fly with it that the 20 minutes, which was plenty enough for everything with other drones, doesn’t even seem to fly here for 5 minutes. I thought a lot about being able to describe exactly that feeling, but I’m not able to convey the thing normally in writing. It's just damn good. You let go, the feeling of flow comes, you don’t have to concentrate, you don’t have to measure, you have to go, you turn on the camera when you look beautiful. I don't even understand what made this machine so caught, because I didn't have a much better structure on a piece of paper.

Camera and Gimbal

There are plenty of presentations about Hubsan Zino, or articles with zero content called the test, that can be read online, from the pen of those who haven’t even picked up Zino, simply by expressing an opinion based on the specification. In these, we can also come across the DJI killer token, which, perhaps felt from what has been described so far, is net stupidity.

You need to know about the camera that it is a really good piece of paper. It knows true 4K resolution at 30 frames, which is an estimated performance (1080 FPS at 60p !!!). Both the sensor and the chipset are perfect, in the category we put the Zino in because of its price, this pair is quite outstanding.

When the sun is shining, there are no unexpectedly changing lighting conditions and the camera can take incredible quality shots. Detail-rich, color-correct videos in 4K resolution, so flawless quality. However, this camera knows nothing more than an $ 80-90 action camera. This pretty much means that rapid brightness changes are difficult to track, if you fly in a shady place, the images will burn out from the spelling sunlight on brighter surfaces. These are mistakes, but not overly big mistakes, but keeping them silent would not be a nice thing. There are a lot of test videos available on the net, and at the end of the article, there’s my own, proving that you can shoot great movies with Hubsan Zino, but they’re not as perfect as a $ 1200 DJI bird.

What is almost flawless, however, is the gimbal. Despite the fact that the position of the machine is a bit precarious, it moves back and forth, this is almost not visible at all on the completed shots. The picture does not vibrate, it does not shake, the landscape glides smoothly and beautifully under us, as if we were pulling the Zino on a rail in the air.

Overall, I have to say that the pair of camera and gimbal goes well beyond the price range this machine belongs to. This way, this form is not an exaggeration at all, you can live with its weaknesses, you can take stunning aerial shots with it, there will be a maximum of a little more detail that we will cut out in the post-production.

I hope my video at the end of this article helps you demonstrate your skills. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time lately to take long shots of beautiful shots, I had to take advantage of the 20 minutes between the two downpours.

Competitors and alternatives in the market

Hubsan Zino currently has a really serious competitor, the Xiaomi FIMI X3. They are at roughly similar levels in price, but FIMI knows less than Zino in essentially every area. The Gimbal is only dual-axis, the camera is only FHD, and its arms cannot be retracted. So no matter how much I'm a Xiaomi fan, the FIMI X3 is not a winner for me.

One class up, for $ 400, the Xiaomi FIMI X8 SE is already there. Its arms are foldable, the camera is 4K and an excellent piece, the gimbal has 3 axes, so in these features, if only a peasant hair, but better than the Hubsan. However, we get a range of 5 kilometers compared to 1 kilometer of the Hubsan Zino, we get a bottom camera and an ultrasonic sensor, which allows much more accurate floating, and it can also be used indoors, albeit to a limited extent, because no side or rear sensors are included. therefore, there is no praise for Xiaomit. I think the price these days should have included at least one front optical sensor, or if it didn’t, it could have been added $ 20 more expensive to fit.

Even one weight group up, already around D $ 700, there’s the DJI Mavic Air, packed with sensors and camera modes. Super small machine, but it has been priced properly. As for the bad point about it, the wifi connection should be mentioned as a bad point, but I have already written about this above.

Even the first edition of the DJI Mavic Pro is available, by now the price has gone down, I’ve seen it for $ 8xx, if you have that much money on it, it’s a bit of a good buy. (if you need to add a coupon!)

Finally, the Mavic Pro 2 and Zoom, the latter for over $ 1100 and the former for over $ 1200. Every drone’s dream, you just have to collect a lot of it from your salary.

Summary

I admit, this article has come a long way from being a regular test, but I feel like I have to finish the word throw slowly because the story goes too long. I could write long pages, but I think the point is “paper”.

And the point is, I have a drone again, and I don’t even want to get rid of it. The DJI Mavic came on the market because I was sorry that a 300 forint drone was dusting in the closet. I just didn’t have enough time to fly with him. You may also get less Hubsan Zino than you would like, but it really doesn’t matter if my money is in a $ 1200 or a $ 250 machine. On top of that, for the time being, I feel that for the purposes for which I use a drone, my knowledge of both flight and camera quality is ample.

I am not exaggerating when I say that this machine goes beyond its own price range in all its capabilities. Flying capabilities, remote control and software capabilities, camera and gimbal pairing, portability, practicality don’t all belong to a $ 250 machine, we wouldn’t have loosely added $ 500 for these capabilities recently, and we wouldn’t have overstated the price. The fact that we only have to leave half of that amount at the checkout is a real miracle. 

Hubsan Zino, so he's not a DJI killer, but I don't think he wants to be. He is none other than his best drone in 2019 in the $ 200-300 price range. Moreover, not only the best of 2019, but the best of all time, because I have never seen such a super machine at such a low price, and it is suspicious that I will not find any other similar competitor for a while.

So if you, like me, want an enjoyable, powerful but easy-to-control drone that can make great videos, but you don't want to leave your pants at the checkout, I say don't hesitate! If you buy it now, you can already arrive for the holiday, and from now on you can take your videos from a completely different perspective, you can photograph the sights than before.

The original price of the Hubsan Zino is $ 299,99, but I just found a coupon to buy it for $ 254,99 ($ ​​75). If you listen to me, you will immediately get at least one spare battery!

Here you can buy the Hubsan Zino H117S drone in the coupon sale:

Hubsan Zino H117S - Coupon: BG15H117S

Finally, I recommend the 4K resolution test video I made!