Mini Drone GoolRC T100 RC Quadcopter with Gesture Control 3D Flips One-Key Motion Controlling Function Play for Fun Level

Initially, I wasn’t too impressed with the gesture control remote but part of that was certainly attributed to the brevity of the instruction manual. For me the breakthrough for how to fly this little rascal started with just making it fly out about 15 feet and then direct it back to me. To keep it simple, I didn’t make any elevation adjustments beyond the default elevation set when taking off. I learned rather quickly that there is no “One-Key Return” BUT there is a one-key landing feature. After about half a dozen battery charges, I noticed a few things. First, the blue lights seemed to be the front of the drone (little blue lights on top do look like eyes). I only say that because they dug into the air less than the side of the drone with red lights. The propellers on the side of the drone with blue lights rotate clockwise (symbol on propeller); whereas, the propellers on the side of the drone with red lights rotate counterclockwise (symbol on propeller). Second, I found that I could not consistently make the blue lights be the front of the drone. It quickly became apparent that I was going to need more backup batteries if I was ever going to learn how to fly this thing so I ended up purchasing the Powerextra 5pcs 3.7V 350mAh Lipo Battery for Hubsan X4 (H107C, H107D, H107L), Syma X11 X11C, TDR Spider,Holy Stone HS170,HS170C,F180W,F180C RC Quadcopter . These backup batteries had the highest mAh that I could find to fit the drone battery pocket. They fit very snug so the only modification that had to make was to place a 5” long piece of scotch tape along the full length of the battery such that the two ends of the tape ended at the wired end of the battery. The resulting tail helped when I needed to pull the battery out of the drone. These batteries will last about 10 minutes with the drone set on high speed. Several charged batteries later I figured out how to keep the blue lights in the front. All that I needed to do was point the blue lights in the direction that I wanted to be my fly zone in front of me and make sure that the front of the remote was pointing in the same direction before I pressed the power button to pair them together. Steps 1-3 of the manual implied that but ONLY if you establish which side of the drone is the FRONT. Even though the drone is “headless” the flight performance with the blue lights as your front of the drone is exceptional. This is really appreciated when you kick the speed up to the highest setting. With the ability to consistently place the blue lights in the front, I created some flight exercises inside a 15-foot by 15-foot square. As I stood at the corner of the square flight zone, I flew the drone back and forth in a straight line on low speed to get used to the control limits of the remote. Then I did the same exercise on diagonal lines so that I could get used to the remote. I then kicked the drone up to medium speed until I mastered that and then high speed. After some practice, I could adjust the direction the drone blue lights were pointing while hovering so that I could replace the manual pointing of the drone blue lights after landing. To do that while the drone was hovering I held the joystick of the remote toward me with my thumb and tilted my hand to the side. To point the blue lights of the drone back to the front when they were slightly to the left only required a brief tilt of my hand to the right. To point the blue lights of the drone back to the front when they were slightly to the right only required a brief tilt of my hand to the left. The tilt duration of your hand will determine how much the drone will turn left or right. Elevation control can seem inconsistent at times IF you don’t hold your hand level before initiating the elevation adjustment. Of course, that is easier said than done if the drone is not in a suitable position during midflight for you to hold your hand level to adjust the elevation to keep from hitting an obstacle. For that reason, I found the elevation control of the remote the least desirable attribute BUT with more practice I adapted to this limitation. It would be interesting to improve the gesture control remote by making the 360° flip function another separate button. That way the vacated joystick position could be used to increase elevation without hand gesturing. The original elevation joystick position would be reduced to only decrease elevation without hand gesturing. The result would provide improved midflight elevation adjustment much like the expected ability to reduce/increase speed during midflight. Overall, I had a ton of fun learning how to fly this affordably priced little drone inside the house. The solid fixed elevation midflight performance fun of the drone on its highest setting is very addictive. Odds and Ends: • The drone will move slightly forward when decreasing elevation and move slightly backward when increasing elevation. • In addition to memorizing the initial paired direction of the drone, the remote also remembers what speed setting you were on before landing or changing out the battery. • The product description implies headless is a mode the drone can operate under as though it is a setting the operator must set; however, headless seems to be the only mode of operation for this drone. Since the drone does not have a camera, it is not as important but it would be nice to be able to toggle headless mode on and off.

This little toy was quite fun to play with, and what attracted me most to it was the ease-of-use as compared to those that use joysticks as controllers. The drone is controlled via hand motion -- tilt forward, and it moves forward; tilt right, and it banks right. With that said, the drone does have its annoyances at times. PROS - Easy to control through hand motion (instead of joystick) - Inexpensive - Battery charges quickly via an included USB stick - Controls to perform flip acrobatics, in-place turning, up/down height adjustment, and speed CONS - Short battery life - Gets stuck when drone hits the ceiling, requiring me to send a command to have it land - Can fly out of control at times after it hits objects - When drone is out of control, there is no way to force it to power off TIPS - When the drone goes out of control, simply tell it to land. Then push the pair button on the controller to reset its orientation - Read the manual to see how to use the joystick to perform changes in height and speed, do acrobatics or make banking turns This is a good, inexpensive, beginner drone to play with If you found this review helpful, please hit the "Yes" button to encourage me to write more. Thank you!

Worked great for a day or two. My 5 year old was able to easily handle and steer the drone. Unfortunately it stopped responding to the controller. We contacted the company to see if there was something we could do to correct it. We were promised a response shortly after sending a video, but after weeks of waiting for a response decided to return it to buy another brand.

The motion-controlled remote takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it's so much fun! I will say it did take me a LONG time to get the hang of it. It's not super intuitive or precise in the steering. Having the extra blades is helpful as the learning curve is a little steep at first-- I busted one of the blades pretty quickly. The blade guards are also a nice feature considering the time it takes to get the hang of it. The red color makes it easy to find as well when you have an unexpected landing! It's light and delicate enough though so that you don't have to worry about flying it indoors and breaking things, yet durable enough to fly outside among the trees. 3 stars for the difficultly of steering.