FPV Drone Shopping List

Curious about FPV and looking at getting started with drones!? If you share this interest in drones with me and need to know what to buy, consider using these links!

written by Justin Murdock, on Jan 3, 2021

FPV

First things first, I will mention the least-expensive options that I have found after many, many hours of FPV drone gear research. The goal is to put on VR goggles, be connected to a quadcopter, and fly around like a bird. The cheapest all-in-one solution I found was this TinyHawk drone which included a pair of low-end goggles and a controller:

$165 Ready-To-Fly “TinyHawk” 1 inch propellors, 1S battery, with Controller and Goggles

I was shocked to find a system where all 3 components (the drone, the goggles, and the controller) were included for that price.

Typically, you buy your drone, goggles, and controller seperately. There are hundreds of options and millions of combinations of options for that, and so to make the process easier I’ve selected the most affordable/best options if you wanted the real deal for your controller and some better goggles.
Once you have a good pair of goggles and a good controller, you can use those to fly any drone. In my opinion, when you are starting out, the best thing to invest in is the goggles and the controller. You don’t just want a racing drone with 5 inch propellors powered by a 6S battery unless you generally know how to fly it already.
These cheap goggles do not have a DVR function and the drone does not have a microSD card slot, so you would not be able to record footage with it.
You get what you pay for, the controller looks like its for a gaming console and its not a “serious” controller, but overall it would provide a “first experience” in flying and would be fun.
Another option at a similar price point would be the Tinyhawk 2, which has exposed propellors and would not be as good for flying inside.

$190 Ready-To-Fly “TinyHawk 2” 2 inch propellors, 2S battery, WITH Controller and Goggles

Next are the cheapest and best combination of components that I could find to purchase separately. These are still budget options, but much better if drones are something you are seriously interested in.

*(1/3) $218 FPV CONTROLLER: Taranis X9D*

*(2/3) $219 FPV GOGGLES: Fat Shark Scout*

Total $540 before tax. The drone should come with a couple batteries and a charger. This is a very good controller (professional), the best of the cheaper style of goggles(box goggle), and a cheapo drone just to have something to fly. More drones are linked in the drone section of this page. You would probably want a good controller and goggles before you got a good drone, so flying a starter drone - a 1S battery class tiny drone - I think is a good move.

The three items above are a combination of: (1) a radio controller to fly your drone (2) VR Goggles that connect to your drone’s camera, and (3) a tiny drone to fly. I have found that the above products would be basically the most reasonable (least expensive while still being good quality) getting-started shopping list for FPV droning. The controller above has a charging port which allows you to charge it rather than deal with removing the battery from the controller to charge it, a little more expensive but I think worth it.

Can be ~$200 cheaper with $125 FPV CONTROLLER: Taranis Q X7 and $119 FPV GOGGLES: Fat Shark Recon instead.

Total would be $345 with the same cheap Mobula6 drone. With either of theses setups ($345-$540), you would be able to record footage in two ways: with the goggle’s DVR function, or you can put a microSD card into the drone.

Drone setups become a lot more expensive when you try to make them capable of going 100MPH+, add GoPro cameras to your drone shopping list or try to make a drone have a range of 4+ miles with a long range Crossfire VTX (video transmitter). Your controller and your FPV Goggles will be able to connect to any FPV drone. That’s why I put the real deal for the controller and goggles but a simple, $100 drone (in the “tiny whoop” category of drones) for my recommended beginner setup. Every time you crash your $400 custom built drone, you risk needing to replace a motor or propellors. The inexpensive and semi-crash-resistant tiny whoop is a great learner’s drone.

That concludes the abbreviated shopping list. The rest of this page will discuss different options for different drones, different controllers and different goggles. Thanks for reading! If you use any of the links on this page to purchase a drone/controller/goggles of your own, a special thanks to you! Click here to skip to the summary.

I am extremely interested in flying Freestyle FPV and Racing, so I have put a lot of research into how to get started with that.
I have the DJI Mavic Air 2 which is an awesome drone for what it was designed for; read more about it on the DJI website. However, it is not an FPV Drone because you do not wear FPV goggles.
The world of freestyle FPV and drone racing is a completely different world compared to the type of flying a Mavic does. Your goal as an FPV pilot is to get as close to your subjects as possible and do flips and acrobatics.
You may have seen JohnnyFPV on YouTube – that style of flying looks like so much fun and it just isn’t possible to do with the Mavic.
The Mavic doesn’t allow itself to become upside-down (something that happens halfway into a flip). My Mavic Air 2 automatically stabilizes very well, and it is simply impossible to do flips. This is perfect for a lot of situations, especially photography.
Flying Freestyle FPV you are guaranteed to crash your drone. You are almost guaranteed to crash your drone multiple times per “session”, while flying freestyle or racing.

It is helpful to understand your goals with drones in order to know which drone is best for you. I was initially surprised to learn that there really is no such thing as one drone that “does it all”.

FPV Shopping list

There are many, many different options when it comes to controllers, goggles, and drones.

FPV Controller:

There are a few components to an FPV setup. The first that comes to mind for me is the controller, also known as the radio.

Typically, an FPV controller is different than the Mavic-style controller, because the left stick is not centered. On FPV the left up-and-down stick movement controls throttle, not altitude, so by default the left stick on an FPV controller stays all the way down because the throttle defaults to off.
The left stick on the Mavic controller controls the altitude and the stick centers itself in the middle similar to a joystick on an Xbox/PS controller. You can move the stick up or down to increase or decrease altitude, respectively, it is very simple. A Mavic is always holding position.
The FrSky Taranis X9D is the controller I think I would purchase.

This controller is one of many controllers that are fully integrated with the Drone Racing Simulator, so I can practice flying my drone without flying my drone - and risking consequences of flying a physical drone in the real world (crashes that damage the drone). The Drone Simulator uses real physics for its game engine - it is a game on PC, it connects to any real Drone Controller to the video game and with using real physics, it feels like almost the real thing, especially when you also have your FPV Goggles connected to the game as well.

The Taranis Q X7 is cheaper but does not include a battery or have a simple plug-to-recharge function which made me feel like the extra $100 for the X9D was worth it for ease-of-use. There are several brands for controllers I just get the impression from Taranis and the silver X9D especially that that is a serious down-to-business drone controller.

*Drone Racing League Simulator on Steam*

The Drone Simulator is an excellent way to practice. You could virtually practice flying your tiny-whoop or practice flying a racing drone with your real controller. You can also virtually fly at night and when it is cloudy, allowing the option to practice 24/7. This controller connects to any drone as well as any flight goggles. The Taranis X9D is fully featured… My favorite feature of the X9D over the Q X7 is that you can simply plug in the controller to charge it, whereas the Q X7 you must remove the battery and charge/swap the batteries for the remote control. That sounds like way too much of a pain, and the Q X7 remote doesn’t even come with it’s own battery.
Many racers are using Taranis and they have has been around a long time - there are many mods available for it and there’s a huge community to support their controllers.

FPV Goggles:

The next thing needed for an FPV setup are the goggles. Choosing a unit has been pretty tough for me, but I have discovered the contenders by researching goggles used by racing world championship winners. With FPV Goggles, you can connect two pairs to the same video feed when flying and have a spectator watch while you fly, so I plan on getting the cheaper goggles first and upgrading later and keeping my old ones.

With no budget, I wouldn’t hesitate to get the DJI Digital FPV Goggles. If they are sold out on amazon, try the DJI store (I am affiliated with both Amazon and DJI). Digital FPV (as opposed to Analog FPV) has a much higher range, higher video quality in your goggles, and just seems like the new thing that eventually most people will have (in my opinion). Check out the DJI page for more info.

There is a $15 module that you can install into your DJI goggles to make them backwards compatible with analog drones, which is absolutely something you should do, unless you exclusively fly drones that you built yourself, each with the $180 DJI Air Unit inside them. It is recommended to get different different antennas for the DJI goggles.

This whole setup would run over $700, just for the goggles part of the FPV setup (controller and drone bought seperately).

Fat Shark is another brand option for high-end goggles. Fat Shark seems to be a trusted brand for some time now, and the Fat Shark HDO “Dominator” Goggles seem to be a very popular choice. I trust they are doing something right.

*$740 Fat Shark HDO Dominator Goggles With accessories*

However, they are not that much cheaper than DJI and it is over $700 with all the accessories, and that doesn’t include a battery.
For additional reading (please come back!), this article describes the difference between box goggles and low profile goggles. I think the new budget Fat Shark box goggles (The Recon and Scout) don’t look so bad. The low profile goggles seems like everything would be too close to my eye balls and I just feel like I might get nauseous with those, and the low profile goggles are very expensive.

The Scout and Recon are Fat Shark’s budget options compared to their high end goggles. These box goggles are Fat Sharks newest products.

The cheapest goggles I’ve found come with the TinyHawk, but can be purchased seperately for $45. They do not have a DVR function to record footage from your flights.

Drones

My #1 reccomendation for a cheap, beginner, ready-to-fly drone would be:

Tiny Whoops:

So first things first a whoop is a drone which has ducts around the propellors. The ducts actually generate more lift for the drone and make the motors more effecient, despite the extra weight.
A whoop (with ducts) has a different chassis than a racing drone (with exposed propellors).
Another added benefit of the ducting around your propellors(props) is that it provides protection for flying indoors. You won’t destroy your drywall flying down your hallway.
A tiny-whoop is tiny, compared to the cine-whoop class of drones which are a full sized drones with ducts meant to carry a high quality camera for slow, sweeping, cinematic shots. All the tiny-whoops I’ve seen have about 1 inch props. A cinewhoop has at least 3 inch props. A tiny whoop is a drone which is meant to be as small as possible rather than as powerful as possible.

Advantages of tiny-whoop:

The ducting around the propellors makes them ideal for flying inside
Price point is much cheaper
They will train you to fly drones better by using the same controller that you might use for a bigger, more powerful drone.

Disadvantages of tiny-whoop

Not ideal for outside, affected by wind
Battery class is 1S, or one-cell. Flight time of ~3 minutes
Lower video transmission range

There are so, so many options for drones, and build-it-yourself drones are the way to go for performace. For a beginner I might recommend a ready-to-fly(RTF), pre-built drone. Building drones yourself involves soldering wires and is a pretty involved process, but not too much for a resourceful person. You’d need to watch tutorials on soldering if you’ve never done that before. There is definetly a youtube rabbit hole for building drones.

Different ready-to-fly racing drones (batteries not included):

*$240 Emax Hawk Pro 5inch 6s battery class Racing Quad*

^ (4S battery choose 2400KV / 6S battery choose 1700KV) The 6S version would be very fast.

*$190 ARRIS X220 5inch Racing Drone, 4S battery class*

*$250 iFlight Nazgul5 V2 5inch, 6S battery class with Crossfire*

Crossfire makes this drone have a much longer range.

*$400 ARRIS Dazzle 5 Inch, 4S battery class FPV Racing Drone (comes with Q X7 Controller)*

*$475 iFlight Titan XL5 5 inch, 6S battery class with DJI Digital FPV Air Unit, GPS & GoPro mount*

The “air unit” that connects this drone to the DJI goggles is $180, which is what makes the drone itself that much more expensive. The video feed quality and range is next-level.

Cinewhoop Drones

The four links below combined, to fly this cinewhoop with a gopro mounted.

*$240 iFlight green 3 inch cinewhoop 4S Drone*

To get a cinewhoop in the air, you’d need to purchase a controller and goggles, and you’d need to spend $273 on the drone, or close to $530 if you want to add the gopro mount and a gopro to that drone. This cinewhoop with a gopro, the Taranis X9D controller, and Fat Shark Scout goggles altogether is about $970 - about the same budget as the Mavic Air 2 fly more combo - but you can fly inside, do flips and fly FPV using goggles!

In conclusion

I think anyone getting started might want to try a pre-built, ready to fly drone before they deep dive into building a drone themselves. The shopping list for a brand new entry level drone set-up would contain the following items:

FPV Goggles.
Drone remote controller.
A drone, unless you just play the Drone Simulator.
Many LiPO batteries for the drone, and a LiPO battery charger.

Recommendations based on budget:

Lowest, under $200
- (1/1) $165 All-In-One EMAX Tinyhawk w/ Goggles & Controller for indoor flying or (1/1 $190 All-In-One EMAX Tinyhawk 2 w/ Goggles & Controller (amazon) for outdoors.
Low-Mid: $345
Mid: $540 (best recommendation)
High-mid: $910
Highest: $1680

If you use any of the links on this page and purchase a drone/controller/goggles of your own, thank you! I will earn a comission on any products linked on this page, except for the Drone Racing League Simulator on Steam. If you’d like to race each other on the Drone Simulator add me on Steam: my Steam “Friend Code” is 43723941. The simulator can technically be played with a mouse and keyboard, but would be best with a real controller such as the Taranis X9D.

Written on January 4, 2021
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Justin Murdock - Licensed Drone Professional