best fpv quad

Eachine M80S: This is the Beginner FPV Quad You’ve Been Waiting for…

Eachine M80S

Starting at $95
8.4

Overall Quality

9.0/10

Ease of Flying/Stability

8.0/10

Speed/Agility

8.0/10

Durability

9.0/10

Value

8.0/10

Features

9.0/10

Camera

7.0/10

FPV

9.0/10

Pros/Cons

  • PROS:
  • Powerful 8520 motors
  • Three Modes: Altitude, Angle, Acro
  • Anti-Turtle Mode (Flip over after crash)
  • RTF (includes a quality remote)
  • Durable
  • CONS:
  • It isn't free
  • No way to stop a failed turtle flip
  • Altitude hold mode lacks polish

Specs

  • Flight Time: 6 minutes
  • Range: 100 m
  • Size: 76 mm (diagonal)
  • Weight: 40g (52g w/battery)

The Eachine M80S is officially our new favorite Indoor FPV (first person view) drone and it may also be the best drone for learning how to fly FPV and acro. It is small, yet powerful. It is lightweight, but also durable. You can activate altitude hold and keep it stable, but you can also have total control and fly it in acro mode. The M80S is an unapologetic copy of the Inductrix FPV+.  I wouldn’t call it a clone, as there are some small differences. The most important difference is that you can get the M80S for about half the price of the Inductrix FPV+.

Eachine M80

Drone manufacturers typically get a few things right and a few things wrong with each new drone. Eachine bucked the trend with this quad, it is almost perfect. The Eachine M80S is truly the indoor FPV drone we have been waiting for.

Eachine M80 vs inductrix
Watch the Eachine M80S spin and recover using anti-turtle mode.

The Eachine M80S is a Revelation

The original all-in-one Inductrix FPV was a good beginner drone at the time it was released, but it had a few serious flaws. It was extremely fragile, badly underpowered, and way too expensive. Learning to fly could be a bit tricky as small quads typically aren’t as stable as larger ones.  It took about two years of trial and error, but Eachine has finally addressed all of these issues with the M80S.

E010 vs M80
The Eachine M80 is ten times the drone the E010 is.

The M80S Power

The M80S is a powerful little quadcopter. Small “tiny whoops,” like the Inductrix and E010, typically had some variation of a 6mm diameter motor. These small motors can be OK, but they lack the power to carry a camera and still deliver enough punch. Eventually, some manufacturers decided to use 7mm motors. The E011 was one example of a 7 mm whoop, and its performance was much better than its predecessors. Eachine decided to up the ante and drop 8520 motors in the M80S. These 8.5mm motors provide enough power and then some. It is about time.

M80S Flight controller
Take a look at the flight controller of the M80S. There isn’t a USB, but there are plugs for the 8520 brushed motors

If you were wondering, this is the exact same motor size that is used on DJI’s new Tello, but that is a very different drone. The Tello is designed to be a super-stable all-around starter quad that can take great pictures, while the E010 is designed to tear around flying FPV.

We love flying this little guy on our Fatsharks.
Eachine M80S and VRD2 Goggles
Flying this M80S FPV is a lot of fun. The Eachine VR2D goggles are a good inexpensive way to make this a complete FPV package.

You’ll have to pick up your own pair of FPV goggles to fly this little machine. But once you do you won’t want to stop flying.

Check the price of the Eachine VRD2 FPV Goggles   Check the price of FatShark FPV Goggles   
Eachine M80 vs Eachine M80s
Take a look at the camera of the Eachine M80S.

Flight Modes

The Eachine M80S has three built-in flight modes. It has the typical self-leveling “angle mode” that is typical of most beginner drones. It also has an “altitude hold” mode that makes flying even easier if you are a beginner. In altitude hold mode the quadcopter becomes more stable as the pilot doesn’t have to continuously manipulate the throttle to maintain a constant altitude. This added stability is accomplished using an internal barometer. In altitude mode, the M80S is slower because the angle of the quad is also quite limited. Because the throttle on the remote isn’t self-centering it takes a little getting used to flying it in altitude mode.

Eachine M80S remote transmitter
We labeled some of the buttons for you since the instructions are a little confusing.

Don’t worry, unlike most drones, you can turn altitude hold on and off while flying the M80S. The third flight mode is “acro”. This is a non-leveling mode that gives the pilot ultimate control. Drone racing and freestyle pilots fly in acro mode because of the freedom and control. Intermediate pilots can still race this little quad in angle mode with no problem at all, so you will still have a blast even if you are not an acro expert yet.

Spark vs M80
Some of our favorite red drones: the E010, DJI Spark, and M80S.

M80S Specs

The Eachine M80S has a 76mm wheelbase, making it larger than an E011, but still small enough that you won’t be knocking over lamps in your house. It weighs 40 grams and 52 with its battery. That’s significantly lighter than the 80-gram DJI Tello, even though the Tello has the same size motors. The camera on the M80 is a 600 TVL with a 48 channel 25 mW video transmitter. It comes with a 500 mAh 3.8V 1S battery and you can actually order it with one, two or three batteries. (We recommend 3, you’ll want to fly this thing a lot.)

New batteries from Eachine are more powerful and smaller
Our last two Eachine quads have come with really nice 3.8 V batteries. These are the most powerful and compact LiPo batteries we have ever seen. We put tape on the charger so we don’t accidentally use it to charge 3.7V batteries.
Eachine m80s best micro
Here is the M80S next to its remote controller.

The Eachine M80S comes with its own remote controller. It is a small controller that has a gamepad style to it. We are hoping it operates on a familiar protocol so you can upgrade your remote if you want to. That is yet to be seen. Even though this isn’t an expensive remote, it is definitely not a bad one and we had a great time flying with it. The M80S has a built-in turtle mode so if it lands upside down you can flip it over. This is a nice feature that was integrated in Betaflight 3.2 but comes already set up for you. Maybe you don’t crash as much as we do, but we find the turtle mode quite helpful.

Eachine M80S Micro FPV
Take a look at everything you’ll get in the box with the Eachine M80S. We got the package with two batteries.

The Camera

The camera on the M80 has a very wide 127° horizontal field of view which makes it good for ripping around your house. The image quality isn’t superb but it is good enough for some awesome FPV flights. You can see the left side of the image on our drone was a bit blurry, but it is not noticeable when flying. The picture quality we see while flying tends to be better than what our goggles save in the recorded videos.

Eachine M80S camera
Take a look at us testing the camera on the Eachine M80S.
A snapshot taken from a video of our test target recorded on our Fat Shark Dominator V2 goggles.

Is the M80S Perfect?

The Eachine M80S is almost perfect, but not quite. If we could fix one thing it would be a little refinement on the anti-turtle feature. If the drone is stuck on something and you hit the flip button the drone won’t ever stop trying to right itself. That means the motors will spin like crazy until you can manually recover the quad. We still love the turtle feature and we are excited that they included it. We also would like a little better image quality from the camera and a more refined altitude hold, but these are not major issues for us.

Should You Order The Eachine M80S?

YES YES YES!  This Eachine M80S is the drone that we have been waiting for. We’ve been asking for a good indoor quadcopter with enough punch to fly outside as well. We wanted something with angle mode, altitude hold that can be turned off, and acro mode so pilots can grow from beginners to pros. We wanted a durable drone that came ready to fly. Eachine answered these requests with the M80S. As soon as we have time, we are moving this quad onto all of our best drone lists. It is almost the perfect little racing quad for racing around indoors.

You can also order the similar M80. The M80 doesn’t come with a remote, but rather a FrSky, FlySky or DSMX receiver so you can fly it with your own remote transmitter.

Order the Eachine M80S   

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Learn More…

If you want to learn more about taking great pictures or flying FPV then check out our comprehensive guides on those topics. Also take a look at our articles on how to choose the right drone for great aerial photos or for getting started flying race drones. Learn more about drones and how to get the most out of them in our Drone Academy. In the Academy we also detail some of the advanced testing we do, including our recent addition, drone thrust testing.
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2 thoughts on “Eachine M80S: This is the Beginner FPV Quad You’ve Been Waiting for…”

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  2. Pingback: Makerfire Shark: An All-in-One FPV Solution with Altitude Hold

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