The Syma X400 Is a $55 Camera Drone That Fits in Your Palm
You can crash it with impunity
I’ve always wanted to buy a drone, but I could never justify actually doing it. Professional drones, like those from DJI, are expensive. To use one for work (I’m a photographer), I’d have to get a complex license from the FAA.
I’ve also always assumed that if I bought a drone, I’d crash it. At the start of the pandemic, my personal trainer told me that he found a broken drone in his apartment complex’s trash room. He lovingly restored it — adding new propellers, sourcing a remote online, and swapping out its depleted batteries. After a month of work, he finally took it out to fly. On his first flight, it sailed over a fence, landed in oncoming traffic, and got crushed by a car. That story didn’t inspire confidence in the benefits of drone ownership.
I was excited, then, to discover the X400 drone from Syma. The X400 has many of the features of its bigger, pro-quality brethren. But at just seven inches square (about the size of your outstretched palm) and with a retail price of $54.99, the X400 provides a cheap, low-risk way to test out drone flying. (Syma provided me with a review unit of the X400 to test).
Syma’s Amazon page for the X400 says that the drone has a “professional…
