Recently I wrote an article on moving up from a toy grade quad to a hobby grade quad. In the past this typically meant a serious commitment in money and/or time as you either had to build a quad from scratch or opt for an expensive RTF (Ready to Fly) option such as a DJI Phantom. Enter the Eye One Xtreme from RC Logger. This quad hails the emergence of a brand new class of quad, the affordable brushless mini. Packing options galore, many advanced features found on more expensive RTF quads, and powerful brushless motors capable of carrying a GoPro, the Xtreme has emerged as the perfect bridge between toy grade and hobby grade quads.
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Editors Note (from craigi – admin) – Due to hundreds of reported problems, we (site admin) cannot suggest this quadcopter to either beginners….or to anyone other than those who desire to hack, replace parts, etc.
While I hope this changes sometime in the future, the current models have proven unreliable and expensive to maintain.
Another model in this size and price range is the Skyartec Butterfly – if you consider the Butterfly make sure you purchase the newer model which shows a battery voltage of up to 11.1 (this model can take 2s or 3s batteries).
Yet another option is the Blade 200 QX – we are currently reviewing this model, but it has gotten high ratings from uses.
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Options Options Options!
One of the best features of the Xtreme is the multitude of options available for it. You can tell RC Logger put a lot of thought into this, there is something for everybody in this little quad. For the complete beginner (or somebody upgrading from a toy grade quad) they have the full RTF package. This package costs $130 and comes with everything you need to get up and flying including a 800 MAh battery, two sets of props, a charger, a game console stlye radio, and the Xtreme itself. If you’re a little more advanced or have access to a hobby grade radio they have 2 options for you, the RC Logger One Link and a connection to accept a PPM receiver. The One Link is a separate radio which attaches to your hobby grade radio though the trainer port. This allows you to use all of the features of your radio, but it communicates with the Xtreme through the One Link. The PPM option is for advanced flyers who want to extend the range capabilities of the Exteme. This options allows you to purchase a separate full range PPM based receiver which connects to the mainboard of the Xtreme and communicates directly with your radio. As I said this option is for more advanced flyers who are a bit more familiar with hobby grade equipment and will know which receivers to get and how to bind them to their radio and set them up.
If aerial video/photography (AV/AP) or First Person View (FPV) is your thing, RC Logger has an upgrade option for you as well. Available for purchase separately is an Aerial Kit, which includes larger props, longer landing gear, a larger 1050 MAh battery, and a camera tray which mounts to the bottom of the Xtreme to give you a place to mount your gear. RC Logger has other options available separately as well such as as a 4 port battery charger, and there are also several 3rd party additions available as well such as carbon fiber folding frames and special adapters to power FPV gear from the main battery or charge the batteries via a hobby grade charger (more on that later). In short, no matter what you want to do with the Xtreme you should be able to find the right combination of gear to get you there.
Flying The Xtreme
As with the gear, the Xtreme has lots of flight options for just about every type of flyer. It comes with 3 flight modes (Beginner, Sport, and Expert) and 3 flight options (Normal, Altitude Hold, and Acro). This is a little confusing at first but it makes sense once you understand what they do. The three flight modes will be familiar to anybody who has been flying quads for a while (toy or hobby grade). Beginner mode is an extremely docile flight mode intended for absolute beginners only. All of the control inputs are dumbed down to the point where RC Logger does not recommend flying in this mode outside as even a slight breeze could carry it away. This mode is for learning the controls only and is not recommended for any other purpose.
Sport mode is the one most people will be flying it. This mode is far more agile and powerful than beginner mode, but auto-leveling is still engaged so it’s still fairly easy to fly. Expert mode is just that, for experts only. This mode disengages the auto-level and cranks up the responsiveness of the Xtreme to the max. If you are an accomplished acro pilot you will love this mode as it truly shows what the Xtreme is capable of. If you’re not already a very seasoned flyer though you should probably avoid this mode. I tried it once and crashed immediately, it’s definitely not for the uninitiated or the faint of heart. It should also be noted that RC Logger does not recommend switching the flight mode while in flight due to the fact that switching flight modes will reset the Gyro and the Xtreme will take whatever position it’s in at that moment as the new “level”. Needless to say this could lead to some unexpected and undesired results!
The 3 additional flight settings are fairly self explanatory and only work in sport mode. Altitude hold is useful, and while not the best implementation of altitude hold I’ve seen it is a welcome feature on such an inexpensive quad. Altitude hold is engaged by a button on the stock Tx or a switch on a hobby grade radio, and is disengaged when throttle is applied. This implementation makes it useful for loitering around or to line up a shot for AP, but not so much for flying around at a constant altitude. Normal mode is when the altitude hold and acro options are disengaged, and acro mode is basically the familiar auto-flip option found on most mini and micro quads (more on that later).
Once you get all the flight options sorted out, this little thing is an absolute pleasure to fly. It’s got power to spare with no payload, and even with a reasonable payload (100 grams or less) it flys just fine and has all the power you need. The Xtreme is a surprisingly fast and agile quad, and you’ll find yourself grinning as you fly it once you get the hang of it. It does decently well as an FPV quad, but it really shines as an acrobatic quad. If you’re an acro flyer looking for a cheap, fun, and portable quad that can handle a decent amount of wind and has speed and power to spare look no further, you’ve found it.
Flying FPV on the Xtreme requires the Aerial kit and the larger batteries. FPV with the Xtreme is a lot of fun, but keep in mind this is a small, light quad, so if you FPV it on windy days you might just get airsick! It’s leaps and bounds ahead of the micro FPV quads that are available though (the Hubsan and the Ladybird).
Modular Design
As with any other flying gadget, once you start flying it, you will also start crashing it, and eventually you will break something. That leads me to one of the absolute best features of the Xtreme, it’s modular design. Unlike it’s larger unibody RTF cousins such as the DJI Phantom and Blade 350 QX, the Eye One Xtreme is fully modular, meaning if you break a part you can buy and replace just that part. This is a very welcome change from most RTF quads on the market today. It’s much more desirable to replace an individual part when you have an accident than to replace an entire body shell. Better still, RC Logger has designed it so that you can take apart and rebuild the entire quad with no soldering whatsoever.
That’s not to say it’s a piece of cake. I’ve had to replace two main frames, and it’s a fairly time consuming and tedious process since you have to take the entire quad apart to replace the main frame. Still though, it was only a $10 part, which beats spending $50 to replace the entire body and STILL have a long tedious job to do swapping all of the electronics over. This was very well thought out and will be very welcome to anybody with a screwdriver and a budget!
A Company You Can Trust
RC Logger is a small company based out of Hong Kong, but they are far from the typical Chinese hobby company. RC Logger places a premium on innovation and support. They start from the ground up with each new design, and they absolutely do not copycat other companies products. They are unique in that they ask for suggestions from the group for upcoming products, and then actually implement many of the suggestions received in the product. Their product support is among the best. They are very active on the RC Groups forums as well as on their own forums, and if you post an issue you will almost always get a quick response and quite often a private email. They do their best to resolve all issues posted, and investigate all ongoing problems.
That’s not to say they’re perfect. They do occasionally behave a tad childishly (threatening to leave the forum or stop disclosing information) when confronted with negative feedback or a difficult customer, but I think this is just a reflection of their passion for the product and overall they are among the best. Horizon Hobby has long been the gold standard for support in this hobby, but I think RC Logger gives them a run for their money. They are a bit more informal and casual than Horizon, but considering their small staff the level of support they provide is nothing short of amazing. This is not a company that will take your money and then abandon you. They want you to be a return customer, and they will do their absolute best to not only help you resolve any issues you might encounter, but also to help you get the most out of the product.
Every Rose Has It’s Thorns…
While the Eye One Xtreme is an amazing product, no product is perfect and no review would be complete without picking a few nits. One problem is a couple of glaring weak spots on the frame. One is the motor mounts, which is a cheap part and fairly easy to replace. If they were available that is, because at the time of this writing motor mounts were not available as replacement parts. RC Logger claims they will be available by the end of the week at a very reasonable price, so we’ll have to wait and see.
The other glaring weak spot is on the main frame, right where the arm connects to the main frame. This seems to split very easily in a moderate crash, and where the motor mount is pretty easy to change out, swapping out the main frame is a pain in the butt. It requires you to take the whole copter apart and re-assemble on the new frame, and while it’s all fairly simple and straight forward, there are a couple of annoying and tedious pieces to this puzzle. The whole process took me a couple of hours, and while it’s a cheap enough fix it’s certainly not something you want to do as often as I think you will have to.
Another minor issue I have with the Xtreme are that the batteries and props are proprietary and expensive. To be fair RC Logger makes a good case for why they did the batteries the way they did. The batteries are actually 2 one cell batteries tied together to make it function as a 2 cell. They did it this way so they could be charged with a USB charger, which is much cheaper to include than a full blown charger. Luckily there are already adapters available from 3rd parties that allow you to charge them on a hobby grade charger. The battery is also shaped specifically to fit the Xtreme battery tray, so I guess I can forgive them the proprietary batteries. I just wish they were a tad cheaper, $16 for the 1050 MAh version seems a bit pricy.
The props are also proprietary, brittle, and expensive. $10 gets you a set of the longer props, and when you consider how easily they break and that you can get generic props of the same size for less than half the price, this seems a bit like gouging. Luckily there are generic 6×4.5 props available from places like GoodLuckBuy which can be coaxed to fit, fly just as well, and cost half as much.
Lastly, there have been some reports on the forums of flyaways and the copter suddenly diving to the left on it’s own. While flyaways certainly have to be taken seriously, I think every quadcopter ever built is at some risk of this happening. It certainly hasn’t reached epidemic proportions as it did early on with the DJI Phantom. Overall though most posters on the forums seem to be very happy with the product, and a few have already bought more than one.
Summary
The Eye One Xtreme has something for everybody. From the seasoned acro flyer to the avid FPVer to the absolute beginner, the Xtreme is a worthy addition to your fleet. This quad would be a good purchase at $250, but at $130 for RTF and a ridiculously low price of $109 for the BNF (Bind and Fly) version, there is absolutely no reason not to pick up this little beauty. This quad leaves it’s closest competitors (The Traxxis Alias and Blade 180QX) in the dust. This is a whole new class of quad, and while it won’t stand alone for long (Blade is set to release their new 200QX in a couple of months), I don’t think you’ll see a better value come along for quite some time. Below is a video I made doing some FPV flying with the Xtreme down at a local park. Enjoy!
Editors Note (from craigi – admin) – Due to hundreds of reported problems, we (site admin) cannot suggest this quadcopter to either beginners….or to anyone other than those who desire to hack, replace parts, etc.
While I hope this changes sometime in the future, the current models have proven unreliable and expensive to maintain.
Talk about this article – ask questions or tell us about your experiences with this quad at our Forum Continuation Thread:
https://droneflyers.com/talk/threads/eye-one-xtreme-full-review-continued.452/
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