F196 FPV Quadcopter Review

• By William James on Jun 7, 2019

F196 FPV Quadcopter is a unique budget drone available in the most known online stores. In what lies it’s uniqueness? Well, it has many features that are special in this segment of quadcopters. First of all F196 FPV Quadcopter owns an optical flow technology. What does it mean exactly? F196 FPV has an optical sensor on the belly that is basically perceive the distance from the ground. In this manner the F196 FPV holding its position in the air, hovering perfectly. It senses when it’s moved by the wind and tries to maintain the distance from the ground. It does quite well, but don’t rush ahead too much. Let’s see in detail what are the advantages of this magnificent toy grade quadcopter.

Specifications

• Frequency: 2.4G
• Camera pixel: 720P
• Charging time: about 240 minutes
• Flight time: about 20 minutes
• Flight range: about 80m
• Image transmission distance: about 50-80m
• Drone battery capacity: 3.7V, 2200 mAh, lithium battery
• Remote control battery 3.7V, 390 mAh
• Remote controller charging time: about 50 minutes.
• Remote controller service time: about 3 hours.

In The Box

• 1 * F196 RC Quadcopter
• 1 * 3.7V 2200mAh Battery
• 2 * Spare Propeller
• 1 * Remote Controller
• 1 * USB Charger
• 4 * Protective Ring
• 1 * Instruction manual
• 1 * Screwdriver

The Looks

F196 FPV Quadcopter has a foldable design. It is very popular nowadays this kind of solution for portability purposes. The material of F196 FPV is lightweight and durable plastic that has a high impact resistant property. Speaking about light-weightedness, the F196 FPV weights only 130 grams.

The dimensions of this quadcopter are 29 cm long, 29 cm wide and 14 cm high, when it is unfolded. The folded version is 18 cm long, 14 cm wide and 4 cm high, which means it is truly a portable little machine. At first glance, you will discover at the front the camera. It is a basic 2MP camera that is manually tiltable. On the bottom of the drone’s body, you have the battery with a huge power capacity, but I speak about it later.

The Remote Controller

F196 FPV has a basic controller with a smartphone holder. You can control the drone with the remote controller or the dedicated application you have to install on your smartphone. The live FPV (First Person View) feed is viewable on your smartphone. The F196 uses 2.4Ghz WiFi signal to stream the video footage.

On the controller, you have the basic joysticks and some function buttons. On the left-hand side, up in the corner, you have two buttons: one for speed rates and the other is the one key return button. You have three-speed rates, the F196 FPV Quadcopter is not an agile machine. The one key return function works only as a funny flying backward function.

The quadcopter will fly in the opposite direction than it was pointed initially when it took off. Up, on the side, you will discover two more buttons. One is for Headless mode, the other is the One Key Take Off and Landing button. On the right-hand side, those two buttons are simply inoperative. Above the right joystick, you will see the video start and stop button and a button for taking photos. The foldable antennas on the remote controller are fake. It serves only for design purposes.

Features & Flight Performance

F196 FPV Quadcopter has many functionalities and interesting flying modes to experiment with. In the air, F196 FPV Quadcopter behaves stable. The optical flow sensor is really useful when you want to let go of the sticks, the quadcopter will maintain it’s position in the air. It is a perfect function for those who are new of piloting a drone.

F196 FPV has a headless mode, one key return function, one key landing and takeoff, speed rates and altitude hold with the use of the optical sensor. The optical sensor takes part in the follow me functionality. According to the manufacturer, in the follow me mode the drone tracks the specified target, but in reality, it seems that it does not work properly. The interesting functionalities are the gesture control functions. You can take photos and start a video recording using hand gestures. When you form a “V” with two fingers, the quadcopter will take a picture. When you use both hands and two fingers forming a picture frame, the quadcopter detects automatically that sign and start to record a video footage. Speaking of the camera, F196 FPV has a 2MP camera which is able to record 720p HD videos.

The other most important feature of the F196 FPV Quadcopter is that it has a 3.7V, 2200 mAh, lithium battery. It is not common to have such a powerful battery in this segment of drones. F196 FPV is able to fly around 20 min with a single charge. To charge up the battery you have to wait around 4 hours, to do it. The control range of the remote controller is about 80m, and the live image signal broadcasts in a range of about 50-80m distance.

Conclusion

Overall speaking F196 FPV has two main characteristics against its competitors. The first is the optical flow sensor, which is an innovative, yet useful position holding feature, that is useful for novice pilots. The second one is the long-lasting battery. 20 minutes of flight time is unbeatable in this price range. So the F196 FPV Quadcopter definitely worth the price.

If you are a first drone buyer and you want to try one, the F196 FPV Quadcopter can be a perfect option for you. It is a budget-friendly acquisition if you choose to purchase one. You can find it here at a very reasonable price, but depending on where you live you can purchase it here or here too.

If you like easy flying experiences and don’t want to mess up your drone piloting with unexpected crashes, maybe you want to check out some other smooth flyers, for your next piloting level.