By Kevin Kimmel
As the holidays approach, lots of drone options will become available for all those well deserving, children, grandchildren and kids at heart! After my drone presentation to the Tech Club this past September, I thought it would be a good followup to post a few links to some decent drone holiday gifts.
If you're looking for outdoor flight options with high level video and photography, I strongly recommend any of the dji products. Their flight control systems have been perfected and they are rock solid flyers - if you READ THE DIRECTIONS and follow the recommended preflight preparation!!!
For the young (or old) pilot in training and you just want to have some fun indoors, I recommend some of those very small mini copters. Search Amazon using the phrase “Drones for kids indoors” and you’ll be overloaded with options. They are so small and so light that they can crash into things and usually come away without damage. Because when you are learning, you WILL crash into things. Indoors and outdoors. It’s not a question of “have you crashed” it’s more like “How long has it been since your last crash?”
For little ones (children) that have not developed fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination of older adults something like the hand motion controlled indoor drone below would provide some fun. I would recommend that any indoor drone definitely include a safety cage around the blades. The drone and your household will last much longer than without the cage and those little blades may look harmless but they can hurt little (or big) fingers that get in their way.
I do not have direct experience with any of these products so I recommend you read the reviews and see how they hold up. Like any electronic toy, they have a limited lifespan in a child’s hands (or an adult that thinks like one) so don’t expect them to last for months.
There are combat drones for more than one person operation or racing drones. Racing drones can be fun for 10 yr olds and above but I recommend racing in a room or rooms with the least amount of breakables. While they are small and light, they can really gain speed.
I recommend Amazon as a purchase platform, because you can read the reviews and if you are a Prime member, get free shipping.
You can attempt to go to a toy store (Walmart) but I prefer reading about things before purchasing.
If you want my opinion on a future purchase, shoot me an email with a link to the product. I will review it and tell you if I think it’s worth the effort or what to expect.
Happy Holidays and Happy Droning!
