Eachine E520S Drone

Eachine E520S Drone Review

Eachine E520S Drone Review 2020 – is the Eachine E520S quadcopter worth the money? Review of features, pricing, flight duration, battery, camera and more.

GPS Drone with 4K Camera for Adults,EACHINE E520S 5G WiFi...

$139.99 3 used from $98.06
6 new from $139.99

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The Eachine E520S drone is an affordable quadcopter with a built-in 4K camera, foldable design, lightweight frame, and a host of other features and functionalities. Eachine is a relatively modest-sized drone manufacturer known for delivering feature-rich, low-price drones with excellent cameras.

Package Contents

The E520S product package comprises the following:

• Drone
• Remote control
• A 7.4V 1200mAh Li-Po battery
• Two spare propeller blades
• Four covers
• A screwdriver
• User manual

If the E520S you bought misses an item or two in its package, you have either purchased an already used drone or the product is a fake.

Design and Build

The first thing you’d invariably notice about the E520S is its exterior that looks quite similar to the Mavic Air, which is a lot more expensive machine. This design similarity is a good thing if you value designs more and don’t dig too much into their authenticities. The build is high-quality plastic. It’s durable and does not feel cheap. The drone will definitely not break upon crashing, keeping its innards safe. There are also propeller guards that minimize damage from crashes, if any.

The drone is collapsible, and it becomes half its size when you fold it. And you need not remove the propellers to reduce the drone to its more compact size. This attribute, along with its lightweight body, renders the drone travel-friendly. If you travel to places a lot and need a drone to carry with you always, the Eachine E520S is a solid option.

Flight

The E520S comes built with coreless brushed motors, which offer it more-than-adequate flight performance. Like several modern drones, the E520S has multiple intelligent flight modes. As a result, pretty much anyone can fly the drone and take videos and images with it. The three intelligent modes are:

• Waypoint: You need to draw a route on the accompanying app and the quad would automatically follow that path.
• Surround/orbit: With this mode on, the drone would orbit you. It’s a great mode for taking some cool selfies.
• Smart track: This mode ensures the drone stays hooked to you and accompany you wherever you go. The mode is ideal for taking videos and pictures hands-free.

Most importantly, there is automatic ‘return home’ functionality. This feature comes in handy when the drone’s battery is low or the drone has fallen out of your sight. To activate this option, you must press the ‘RTH’ knob residing on the controller. Drone pilots who are handling the quad for the first time and fear losing the drone to the sky would be happy and relieved there is such a function.

On the general performance front, the drone is quite solid. It’s stable and easy to control even during windy scenarios. Some level of hindrance may, however, creep in if you are utilizing the FPV features. Since there’s GPS on-board, hovering the drone should not be a problem. GPS also helps with capturing better videos and images.

The E520S offers three speed modes. Even the lowest mode is quite pacy than normal. If you are a beginner drone pilot, switch to the higher speed modes only when you’re absolutely sure of your piloting skills.

Camera

There are different versions of the E520S and their camera configurations are unique too. Though the 4K camera is what most people would gravitate to, you also have the 720p and 1080p camera options. All the three cameras are capable of transmitting video via either 5G or 2.4G technology. On all the variants, the camera sits right on the drone’s nose.

Needless to say, the 5G 4K offers the best value for the price. The 4K capability ensures you capture the highest quality videos, and the 5G transmission helps with long-range streaming. If you are going to capture a lot of footage with the 4K camera, make sure you have the SD card handy. The drone supports up to 128GB of SD storage space. This local storage size should be sufficient enough for you to not push your captures to the cloud.

Making up for the fixed nature of the camera, the 120-degree field of view (FOV) offers you required width when recording and capturing aerial videos and pictures. Moreover, the camera angle can be adjusted 90 degrees so that you have even more perspectives. For live video transmission, you would need your smartphone. Conveniently, the drone’s remote control comes with a retractable mobile phone holder that can potentially fit in both Android and iOS devices.

Sadly, there is no stabilisation, either in the form of a gimbal or as electronic stabilization software. The saving grace, however, is a six-axis gyroscope that should offer some stability while your drone is meandering mid-air. No doubt, this should help reduce any form of distortion in the images and videos the drone captures.

Battery

The E520S comes equipped with a 1200mAh battery. The modular battery used is a newer version of Li-Po batteries that can store charge for significantly longer. On a single charge, the drone flies for approximately 15 minutes. Most other comparable drones don’t even come close to this kind of endurance.

Though the flight time is better than the industry standard, it may still not suffice for people who relentlessly use their drones to capture footage. Therefore, it’s advised you buy additional batteries. Eachine, in fact, offers a battery bundle. There are three batteries in the bundle, which ensures you need not buy extra batteries separately and worry about compatibility.

Remote Controller

The remote controller, like the drone, looks modern too. It’s quite comfortable in the hands, since it’s not big and clunky. It’s transmission range is close to 300m, and video footages can be streamed from a range of up to 250 metres.

PROs & CONs Listing

Pros

• Solid build and foldable design
• High-quality camera
• Responsive to commands
• Multiple safety and beginner-friendly features and functions
• Good flight time and range
• SD card support

Cons

• 4K footages may exhaust storage space

Conclusion

The Eachine E520S is an excellent drone with solid features. What makes it an attractive proposition is its price. It’s almost impossible to find a drone with a built-in 4K camera that costs less than $150. The build quality, portability, flight time, and endurance are other aspects that push the value proposition higher. Long story short, if the prospect of taking beautiful aerial footage at a cost excites you, the Eachine E520S is what you should be looking at.

GPS Drone with 4K Camera for Adults,EACHINE E520S 5G WiFi...

$139.99 3 used from $98.06
6 new from $139.99

in stock

Buy this item

Tyler West

Tyler West received a Bachelor Degree in computer science from The University of Texas Austin. Tyler has been working as a full-time computer programmer for the past 3 years. In his spare time, Tyler’s favorite hobby is flying drones. One of Tyler’s life goals is to become a full-time drone pilot.