Phantom 1, Phantom 2 or Vision?

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Dear all,

I'm new to quadcopters and have been tiredly researching my first purchase.

I have been training with a cheap £25 quadcopter and now feel ready to take my first step but I'm extremely confused.

A friend who also has gotten the bug has bought a vision which is a fantastic piece of kit, but having lurked on this forum I couldn't help but think a Phantom 1, zen muse, fat shark and gopro would be a much better set up (in terms of video quality) for around the same money.

Now the Phantom 2 has come to market, I'm wondering if I should purchase one with the zen muse and simply add fat shark and a gopro. Now I have the flight time of a vision, video quality of the gopro and stability of the zen muse for a little more than what I can get a vision for?

Pros, cons and words of wisdom would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

 

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From a Vision owner...

If you are not much of a tinkerer/modder, if you don't already own a GoPro or similar, if you want good quality stills, good quality (but unstabilised) HD video, a full telemetry feedback and a non-immersive FPV view of what you are shooting without any extra equipment I can highly recommend the Vision - especially as all this is pretty much plug and play out of the box. I just recently added a Flytrex core to mine and that was about as much tinkering as I want to do (took the lid off, plugged it in, put the lid back!). If you pick your weather conditions and are careful with shot selection you can get some reasonable video. Mine have got better as I've practised and use atti mode when appropriate, etc. Some examples here: https://www.youtube.com/user/Nomisnotwen/videos

I don't have experience of the V1 so can't comment on that option, and with the V2 don't forget if telemetry data is important to you you will need some additional expense to get that sorted. If you are interested in getting the highest possible quality video you just have to have a "proper" gimbal, full stop. I can certainly rave about the Vision battery and its endurance - definitely north of 20 minutes every flight, even when giving it full chat to try and get a speed record like I was yesterday! (SO close to 50mph, dammit! http://flytrex.com/mission/quadcopter-p ... wton-5839/ ) so that's relevant to Phantom 2. However, the batteries are over £100 each... I know some people don't care about landing their V1 every 8 to 10 minutes as they can afford 4 good batteries for every one of the Vision's.

As an additional complication DJI have announced they will be bringing programmable autonomous waypoint flying (i.e. ground station capability) to the Vision via an app and firmware upgrade within a month or two. That'll be fun to play with.

Don't envy your choice, but if top video quality is what you are ultimately after then the Vision probably isn't for you. Suits me down to the ground, though, and I'm loving every minute of it.