11 Best Drones (Review) In 2021

One of the biggest draws of buying a drone is capturing amazing video footage from the air. Now, you can get a whole range of drones with cameras built-into the design. The SNAPTAIN S5C has a 720p HD camera attached to the body, so you can start drone filmmaking immediately. It’s one of the cheaper drones on the market, so you can’t expect professional quality footage, but it’s still a lot of fun.

The drone itself is easy to control. Simply press one button to make it take off, land, or return, control it with voice commands, and attach your phone to the remote control so you can see what you’re doing. This is one of the best drones with the camera attached for under $100 and it makes a perfect electronic gift for both photography and tech lovers.

The Syma X11 has long been one of the most popular beginner drones on the market. They’re not that easy to find any more, but if you can, they’re well worth the money. The product image is a bit misleading and is missing one of the best features – a protective guard surrounding the propellers. Even with this guard, the propellers are still liable to break.

One of the reasons that people love the Syma X11 R/C Quadcopter is that you can get replacement parts cheap. It’s almost worth buying spare motors, batteries, and propellers to get the most out of this drone. With the standard battery, you should get around 6-8 minutes of flight time. Since the batteries are easy to find and replaceable, you can buy a whole bunch of them and run them for hours. If you’re looking for a cheap, entry-level quadcopter, the Syma X11 is hard to beat.

Now we’re getting into some more serious drone equipment. If you’ve got money to spend and you want Hollywood-level drone footage, you’ve got to go for a DJI Phantom 3. There’s a slightly more advanced version of this drone (which we’ve featured later), but this one is still a serious bit of tech. The drone itself is stable, easy to fly, and can fly for up to 25 minutes off a single charge. Of course, that’s not the impressive bit.

Attached to the drone is an HD video camera capable of shooting 2.7K video. Attach your smartphone to the controller and you can watch a live video streamed from the drone up to half a mile away. That means you don’t have to worry about it falling out of the sky when you’re getting that perfect sweeping upshot.

If you don’t have the budget to spend on professional drones with camera attached, the Potensic Upgraded A20 Mini Drone is a great choice. It’s perfect if you want to impress your kids and get it as a Christmas gift this year. Within around 30 minutes of charging, your kids will be chasing this mini-drone around the house or garden.

Because it’s designed for kids, it’s been made super easy to fly. It has three features that make flying it super intuitive. Altitude Hold stops it from going too high, Headless Mode avoids confusion when you change direction, and One-Key Take-Off makes it simple to take off and land. It’s also absolutely tiny. It’s hard to see from the product pictures, but it’s not bigger than your average smartphone. That means it shouldn’t damage anything if it accidentally crashes.

The Force1 U45W brings the joy of drone filming but doesn’t come with a hefty price tag. For just over $100, you can pick up this easy-to-control drone with an HD camera attached. It’s not as good quality as the DJI Phantom 3, but it offers the same experience for a fraction of the price. You can easily attach your smartphone to the remote control and watch a live video stream from your drone.

It comes with three rechargeable batteries, which gives you 18 minutes of flight time. This is much better than most recreational drones and is a big reason to choose the Force1 U45W. They’ve also made it super easy to fly with technologies like Altitude Hold, Headless Mode, and 6-Axis Gyro. You can even make the drone do a 360º flip with the touch of a button. If you have a decent-sized budget, this is a great entry-level camera drone.

This tiny HUBSAN X4 Quadcopter offers customers something a little different. First off, it fits into the palm of your hand so you can fly it pretty much anywhere and go relatively unnoticed. Secondly, you don’t need a smartphone or app to control it. Instead, it has a built-in 480p camera and a small screen built into the remote controller. We’re amazed that they’ve managed to offer this and still keep the price down.

It will fly for about eight minutes on a 30-minute charge, so it’s not great for long missions. But, it charges with a USB cable, so you can take it pretty much anywhere. It also has an impressive range of 100 meters and will transmit live video up to this distance. You can then record the flight to an SD card and download it onto a laptop or desktop later.

If you’ve got a slightly bigger budget for your camera drone, the Potensic T25 is of the best drones around. One of the key selling points is the 1080p camera. It’s not quite as high-quality as the DJI Phantom’s camera, but it still provides crystal-clear HD footage. The other feature that we love on the Potensic T25 is the innovative GPS. It can send accurate positioning details to your phone, so you know exactly where your drone is at all times. This is especially useful because it can fly up to 300m away and still send live video to your phone.

It also has a feature called Follow Me Mode. The GPS connects up with your smartphone and the drone automatically follows and films you. In addition to that, it has Altitude Hold, Headless Mode, and One-Key takeoff and landing. If it had more than 6 minutes of battery life, this would be one of the best drones on the market.

The DJI Phantom 3 Advanced is a slightly updated version of the Standard we featured earlier in this list, but to be honest, it’s hard to tell them apart. If you drill down into the technical specifications, you can see that the Advanced version has some slightly updated automation features, making it slightly easier to fly. But, the camera is the same – it sends 720p live video to your smartphone and records in 2.7K.

The Advanced version provides better still photos, but only by .4 of a megapixel, so the difference is negligible. The main reason for buying the Advanced version is the Vision Positioning system, which makes it much better suited for indoor flying. When it detects a wall or hard object it automatically avoids it.

The Holy Stone HS720 is one of the best camera drones for people on the move. All four of the propellers fold in and it fits inside a travel case with the remote controller. You can chuck it into your travel backpack without worrying about it getting damaged. You might think that this foldable design would come at a cost in terms of design, but you’d be wrong. This is one of the best performing camera drones on the market.

It has a 2K FHD camera built into the drone with shock-absorbing technology, so your footage doesn’t come back all shaky. The other amazing feature is the long-life battery. It delivers 26 minutes of flight time off a single charge. And, the drone can fly up to 3000 feet away, so you can achieve some serious shots.

If you want the latest in recreational drone technology, you’ve got to go for the DJI Mavic Air Quadcopter. It feels pretty similar to the DJI Phantom 3 in terms of its flying capabilities, but there are some key bits of tech that make it worth the extra money. First is the fact that it’s foldable. The propellers fold into the body, making this one of the most portable camera drones around, which is excellent for filmmakers on the go.

The other impressive tech upgrade is the camera itself. It’s mounted on a 3-axis mechanical gimbal. This cancels out the sudden movements of the drone and makes the footage super smooth. In addition to the vibrant 4K footage, it can shoot in slo-mo and take amazing 180º panorama shots. It’s even got 8GB of storage built-in, so you can shoot for longer.

Last up, we’ve got another cheap drone for recreational use. Amazingly, you can get a drone like this for less than $50. It has a 480p camera that sends live video to the smartphone app. This technology is normally seen on much more expensive camera drones, so it’s cool to see at such an affordable price.

Admittedly, the footage on LBLA FPV Drone isn’t amazing quality, but you can see what’s going on, as long as the weather is solid. It even has the automatic flight features that we’ve seen on other drones, such as Altitude Hold, Headless Mode, and One-Key Return.