Holy Stone HS710 Drones with Camera for Adults 4K, GPS FPV Foldable 5G Quadcopter for Beginners with Optical Flow Positioning, Auto Return Home, Follow Me, Brushless Motor, Easy to Fly

Great step up from entry level drone
I’ve been fly my drone for a few days now and I’m glad I made this purchase. This is my second drone. The first was extremely inexpensive and you get what you pay for – usually. I learned the basics of flying a drone with that first one and beat it up pretty badly. After feeling more confident I purchased the HS 710. The price was good and the list of features is excellent. I’ve tested the return to home feature and the follow me feature and they work great. I’m still playing with the point of interest feature but I’m getting better at it. I really like the one key takeoff/landing button. Like I mentioned, my first drone was very basic and didn’t have any bells or whistles like these. The pairing with my cell phone was quick and easy and the calibrating the compass is easy as well. The drone fold down to a small size and the carrying case is a good bonus. The drone is quick but easy to control. I’ve only crashed once during the first few days of flying and the drone fell about 12 feet on to my deck. There was no damage to the drone but I wouldn’t make a practice of doing this.The only negative I’ve found is the phone holder. It may just be me but it seems it could be a touch more sturdy. I have a thin case on my phone but I feel there is a better grip on the phone if I remove the case – which I’d rather not do.I’m happy I made the purchase of the HS710 drone and would recommend it to anyone who is ready to step up from the entry level no frills drone. I did and I’m not disappointed.

This is the first drone I ever bought and so far it’s great. All the features seem to work well. The drone is very easy to fly and stable. It is simple enough that a child can fly it. Setup was easy and had good instructions. My rating would be five stars but the phone holder on the remote is supposed to tilt and it doesn’t. I wouldn’t care about this but without tilting the antennas are in the way and the phone slips out of the holder.Editing review to five stars. Customer support got back to me and helped me resolve the issue. The phone holder takes more force to get all the way out than I was expecting. Works perfectly once all the way out and tilted. Hopefully it will loosen up a little with usage, but overall I’m very happy with the drone and all its features.

Full disclosure, I have had 4 DJI drones previously and bought this Holy Stone on sale to see what another brand had to offer. The short answer is that this drone has confirmed to me that DJI is a superior product (in my experience/opinion). The positives; well, this sub 250g drone comes at a good price point (bought on sale) compared to other similarly sized drones. It seems to be quieter than a comparably sized Mavic mini. When it arrived it looked like a decent drone (nice case, some spare parts, a detailed manual) but there were some surprises… it only comes with one battery and to get a second is over $50. The flight APP is over 4 years old and though simple enough to download on IOS. The hand controller is poorly balanced (front heavy due to the phone bracket) and plastic construction feels like it could break easily. The not-so-good… well, the picture quality of the camera is poor, there is a lot of “Jello” effect (with my apologies to the makers of Jello, which I do enjoy) on the video feed for the pilot from vibration of the drone which makes the video feed blurry. I would not even try to use the video from it for any filming (a common problem noted in other reviews as this is an unstabilized camera). Though the camera view width was reasonable from a piloting perspective the poor image quality from vibration precludes it from making decent video recordings though it might be OK for still images. The real UGLY part of this drone is its poor flight performance. On take-off it wanders several feet and is very hard to control requiring quick corrective control input. I was flying it in calm air with 16 satellites on GPS and still it wandered aimlessly close to 12 feet in diameter. In comparison, my DJI Mini 2 would wander only a few inches in strong winds and was rock steady in calm winds. My little Ryze Tello drone that has no GPS was far more stable than the Holy Stone. The Holy Stone required constant control inputs to keep it in a stable position and when in flight would wander about and appeared to have a mind of its own. I found it far more difficult to fly than any of my other drones and is not, by any stretch, a “beginner drone” as advertised. If you are looking for a beginner drone this is not a good choice as it requires a lot of pilot input. I’d recommend you get a little Tello… it doesn’t fly as far or as fast as the Holy Stone but is a great little beginner drone and in my experience a better platform for starting out. If you are looking for a better option in the under 250g category and willing to spend a bit more money get something from DJI. I realize that the newer Mini series (3 or 4) are far more money but the older 2 or 2SE are much closer in cost and are a far superior performing drone (much better camera and also better flight characteristics, in my experience). I was very hopeful that the Holy Stone would be a fun flyer and I wasn’t expecting much from the camera. What was so disappointing was the poor flight characteristics that made it an unenjoyable experience (unless you like fighting with the drone then this might be the one for you). I realize that this is an older drone design, on sale, and is a bit obsolete but just doesn’t fly well and based on that I’ve decided to return it and will stick with the DJI products for future purchases.

I’ve been flying a Holy Stone HS110D for a couple of years now. Multiple crashes and fixes but it still flying. Have replaced motors also as they wear out. And it’s still going strong. I’ve wanted a drone with GPS and brushless motors and decided on the HS710. Pricing was right at about $190 after the discount coupon.I received the drone the next day after ordering. Opened the box and everything looks great. Nice compact case for storing. Only one battery, but I can purchase a second if I need it. Charged up the drone battery and installed new batteries in the transmitter. Read through the documentation and went through the startup process. That’s where I hit the brick wall. I could not get through the compass calibration procedure. The app told me that the compass was “abnormal”. Tried it many times but no go. Couldn’t even get the propellers to start turning.Contacted Holy Stone technical support and provided them will all the data they requested. They told me to send the drone back to Amazon for a refund as defective and order a new one. They were no help to me on this problem. Arranged for a return and refund of the first drone. Ordered a new HS710 that morning and I received it that same day in the evening, many thanks Amazon.Unpacked the new drone, charged the drone battery and put batteries in the transmitter. Went through the startup procedure and ran into the same problem as the first drone. Could not calibrate the compass. Tried to figure out what I was doing wrong. While attempting to get things going with the newest drone I discovered something. At one point during the start up I was able to calibrate the compass. I found that if I start the drone and can not calibrate the compass I then turn off the drone and immediately restart the drone it might start up properly. Tried it multiple times and found that it took 1, 2 or 3 restarts for the drone to start up properly and allow me to complete the calibration routine.In the attached video you can see that when I first start the drone it appears to be in a faulty stated indicated by the RED flashing LEDs. They flash 3 times, pause, flash 3 times, pause, etc…. When it is in this state I can do nothing with it. I than turn off the drone and immediately power it back up again. After the second power up the LEDs continuously flash green (maybe yellow) and then I can calibrated the compass.Once I was able to calibrate the compass I was able to fly the drone. It flew nicely. I only flew it in the back yard for now, but I see it is quite stable when hovering. Imaging is nice also. Battery life also seems reasonable. I’ve only flown it a couple of time, but I’ll be using it more in the near future. It I have anything further to add, I will.I still had the old drone that will go back to Amazon and decided to try that drone to see if multiple power ups would bring it to a state that I could calibrate the compass. I did find that after trying anywhere from 2 to 5 power ups I was also able to get that drone in a state when I could calibrate the compass and fly the drone. It would appear that there is an inherent fault in these two drones where the drone may not successfully power up the first time, but after multiple power ups it may work.I also notices the date of manufacture for both drones was 2023/5/3. If the problem is batch related, It’s possible that drones in this batch may all be affected.So the first drone is going back to Amazon as defective since I have no faith it will power up properly in the future and my be unreliable. I’ll keep the second drone for now and give it more flying time. If the start up gets noticeable worse then I may be returning that to Amazon as well for being defective.If it were not for the power up issue, I would give this drone a 5 rating because when it’s up and running it’s very good, but it is only good for a 3 from me today. Also Holy Stone tech support really didn’t help at all.Edit January 3, 2024,Returned the second drone also. It takes anywhere from 1 to 4 or 5 power ups for the drone to power up properly. Also tested the GPS in an open field and found that with GPS on the drone would drift away. With GPS off, the drone actually fly well but once GPS was turned on again it would drift away. A little too unreliable for my liking.Edit January 16, 2024:Holy Stone reached out to me and offered a new drone free of charge which I accepted. On receipt I tested the drone and found the same problems. Does not always power up successfully and also tends to wander when flying with GPS on. Since it was a free drone I did some experiments and was successful.Problem 1 – Power up.I made an assumption that the power up problem may be due to a long power up voltage ramp. I found a rather large capacitor (150 uF) across the power in pins of the drone. When I changed that capacitor to a lower value (22 uF) the power up issue was gone. The drone powered up successfully first and every time. No more power up problems.Problem 2 – GPS on wandering.I made an assumption that there was interference on the GPS. I noticed the wires on the GPS module were about 2 inches long. I reduced that length by cutting out about 1 inch of wiring, wrapped some copper tape around the bundle and then reconnected. I also added copper tape around the inside shell to shield the electronics from the GPS module to ensure a good ground plane. After reassembly the drone was flown and I found it did not wander anymore with GPS on. I’ve only had about 4 short flights, but no sign of instability with GPS on.Problem 3 – Propeller replacementsI’ve noticed that replacement propellers are not available anywhere. I ordered some Mavic 2 mini propellers and they are a perfect replacement propeller for the HS710. They are also widely available and much cheaper.