I really wanted to love this tiny drone. The Hummingbird is incredibly stable and comes with excellent programming out of the gate.
The kids enjoyed flying it around the house and attempting to make some routes through our inflatable gate from NewBeeDrone.
Let’s explore the overall experience:
I have been exploring the various drone supply retailers out there such as NewBeeDrone, RaceDayQuad (RDQ), AliExpress, GetFPV, etc. to best understand which ones truly exceed at shipping, customer service and more. There is much more to buying drone supplies than just the price of the component. I will detail my full experiences and recommendations on retailers in a different post.
First off, shipping from NewBeeDrone was not the fastest. The package took its time making its way from San Diego, to Los Angeles and then off to Denver. I think it took about a week end to end to arrive at our doorstep in Denver.
Also, based on a prior experience ordering a LiPo charger from NBD, their customer support is almost non-existent. To the point that several weeks after submitting an issue with my newly received charged, I received an apology that their customer support was taking ‘a little longer to respond than they would like’. The order was outside the return window shortly after receiving their initial response.
NBD seems to make some quality products such as the Hummingbird F4 v2, but it appears they are much stronger at hardware design than they are at the other important pieces of the overall drone package.
Once the Hummingbird arrived it took 10-15 minutes to get the ELRS drone paired up with my RadioMaster Zorro ELRS. My recommendation would be to use BetaFlight with the ‘Pair Receiver’ button, but I have read various reviews on the best way to get ELRS working seamlessly. My experience: Nothing is seamless with ELRS.
Once paired up there was little configuration required in BetaFlight for the Hummingbird. It was essentially ‘Bind and Fly’ as you would expect from a…..Bind and Fly drone. That is more than I can say for the Mobula6 that is currently an ornament on my desk and I’ve never successfully gotten into the air, aside from a few 1 second hops before the motors cut out.
The Hummingbird F4 is small and light weight. The motors are powerful enough to maneuver skillfully, powering through some rolls and completing circuits of the living room. The tradeoff is we only got about 4 minutes of flying time on a NBD Nectar 1S battery pack. Fortunately, we picked up 8 of them from RaceDayQuads.
Unfortunately, with this particular Hummingbird we only got a couple of hours of flying time before the flight controller died and the fun was over. I don’t know if we were just too tough on the controls, or if one of the smash landings into the ceiling and floor did in the flight controller but this certainly isn’t a super durable beginner’s drone. If inside this lasted an hour or two I wouldn’t think the NewBeeDrone Hummingbird F4 v2 would last more than one serious crash outdoors.
Just in case it was a faulty set of components, I ordered a second Hummingbird. My son absolutely loved flying the first and didn’t want us to try anything different. Unfortunately, the second Hummingbird met a similar fate, but this time the VTX giving out after about an hour of flying time.
On the first one, I ordered a new Flight Controller from RaceDayQuads (along with the 2nd Hummingbird). I will detail my full experience later on, but in short — it is experiencing the same motor cut outs as the HappyModel Mobula6. If I discover what is causing that — or if you know and happen to want to share — we will have a couple drones we can get in the air.
In the next few weeks, I am looking to build my own custom drone with a sturdier frame and a stack where I can replace the individual components for the next one.