Eachine E013 Plus Drone Review

I have been having a blast with the Eachine E013 FPV drone that I reviewed earlier in the year. It has proven a great way to get into FPV in the comfort of your home. Its great but its diminutive size does hinder its performance outdoors. So I looked for the next step up, and after looking around I went for the Eachine E013 Plus. A new drone that promises greater flying performance than it's smaller sibling but still at a great price.

What comes in the box?

The E013 plus comes as a R.T.F (Ready to fly). Inside the box it comes with everything you need to experience FPV flying. The Drone, A Eachine VR006 headset, 2 lipo batteries, USB charge leads for the drone and the headset, spare blades, transmitter and a screwdriver.

The drone itself is still small, but roughly double the size of the E013 at 138x29mm span and around 79mm high.

The E013plus is made of plastic with a lexan canopy and weighs approx 37g without a battery and 49.5g with the included lipo.

One of the great things about this drone is that it comes with two lipos. They are 500mah which provides a good 5-6 mins of flying time. They are charged via USB and it takes around 40-50mins for a full charge. If you have a proper lipo charger you will get more charge into the lipos and the USB chargers are not precise and are built to be very secure with their charge rate.

The drone has a 150 degree DFOV camera, and it has a vtx (Video transmitter) which is 25mW 40ch with a linear polarised antenna. (I have no idea what that means other than the FPV guys I know say that it will work with most headsets). Importantly it is transmitted over 5.8ghz which means that there is very little lag on the video signal.

To change the VTX channel on the drone you can press the little button on the undercarriage

The Drone has brushed motors, and the blades are protected within the frame. The drone is light but feels strong and is hopefully crash resistant.

The lipo battery is mounted underneath the Quad, it just slides in and it a snug fit.

The controller is a good size and looks like it should be connected to a games console. You need to fit 4 x AA batteries (Not included). The rear of the controller is rubberised to help with grip.

The sticks feel good, but are not as nice as the aluminium ones on the E013, although the larger size does ensure that it feels comfortable to hold.  The controller also comes with a mount if you want to transmit the video to a screen instead of the headset.

The controller has a few unique features over the E013. There is a one key take off / Anti turtle mode. This is quality, if the drone lands on its roof (All to often when I try to fly), you can press this and it tries to rise into the air and flip back upright. It is not always successful, but it does work.  The other main button is the mode select. This allows you to go from the stable base mode to a full acro mode. Here you have less assists but you can throw the drone around easily. I am not quite that good, so I go for the second mode, it gives me a lot of speed but still allows me to control it.

The included VR006 headset is light and comfortable to wear. It has a built in lipo battery so you just charge it with the included USB cable. I get around 60 minutes use out of it before I need to charge it.

The headset auto-scans for signals so you just press the scan button and it will find the available drone signals. Very easy to use. There is also a head up display which shows you the voltage of the headset battery and the current frequency.

The other buttons on the headset are for contrast and brightness changes via a menu, and there is also a USB charging slot. (When charging you will see a red light)

The image is very sharp when you consider the price. The only issue is that you cannot move the screen to change the focus, so it can be a little blurry, or it might be an issue if you wear glasses. Luckily I have no issues.

Pre-flight checks

The propellers didn't seem to be very well attached to the motors. I went around and pushed them firmly down onto the shafts.

Flying

Despite having a lot of flights with the micro E013 I am still very new to flying drones, and I knew this would be more powerful, so I began with some line of sight flying.

This drone is primed, so once its primed the blades start spinning slowly to show you that it is now ready. So I pushed the throttle and the drone zipped up into the air. On the most stable mode it was actually almost comfortable to fly around the lounge. Although even at restricted flying angles I could reach much more speed.

The gyro worked really well and it was very stable, I did feel quite comfortable flying it line of sight, but for my house it was going to be too quick for someone of my flying experience to try to navigate around in FPV.  You could tell that this drone is going to be more suited for flying outdoors.

I charged both batteries and went to the local park. It was a typical UK summers day so there was a strong breeze and the clouds were pretty thick.

For the first battery I again went for line of sight flying so I could get a better idea on how it would perform. The drone zipped into the air and it had no problems in reaching a high altitude so I could hardly see it. I dropped down and then started to do a basic figure of 8. On its stable mode the Drone felt fine, but I moved up to the next more nimble mode. Here I could reach much more speed and I had no trouble fighting against the strong gusts. I was impressed with the power that this little drone had. I spent a while flying around in and out of the wind. This mode felt the best to me, it was much more direct on the controls, (The stable mode felt a little too numb). Feeling like I could take on the world I went up to the full Acro mode. It was really reactive, but it also didn't provide me with enough assists and I soon found myself racing around, but getting more and more out of shape. It all ended with a nice high speed cartwheel into the grass. Acro is great fun, but I will need more practice.

With the second battery I wanted to use the googles. Checking that there was nobody in my area of the park, I donned the googles and took flight. The viewpoint in this drone was fixed so that you really needed to be flying ahead to see straight ahead. It is not too hard to get used to. I switched into the more nimble flying mode (You hear a couple of audible beeps to say it is in this mode), and I started to gently build up more speed. It wasn't long before I was doing flypasts over my head.

The signal was fine, probably as the field is very open. I started to get more confident and I flew further out to circle a crop of trees at the perimeter. The drone was really nimble and despite some strong gusts it stayed pretty much on course with only minor corrections to the flight path. I set on the way back, I could see myself in the distance and headed towards me. I started to get a bit cocky so went to Acro and totally lost it and landed in the grass.

I had no idea where the drone had landed, I started to look for it where I thought I had landed but it was proving to be fruitless. I then remembered the turtle mode. I pressed the button, and initially couldn't see anything then I heard a whizz and I noticed the drone trying to right itself in the distance.

The batteries were flat now, but this was the first of many packs that I have since used.

Overall

The E013 plus has achieved its goals of being a slightly supped up version of its little sibling. It is larger and it is much easier to control outside, although it is still not large enough to take on gusty weather in its stride.

There are some issues. The props do seem to come loose after a heavy landing. I have lost a couple over the few weeks I have been flying. (It doesn't help that they are transparent.. so if they go flying on a hard landing, they might be a little hard to find). I have made sure that I push them down before every flight and they seem to be ok, although I would upgrade them at some point.

The most stable setting does feel quite numb, stick inputs are not as precise or quick as I would like. This all disappears as soon as you go into other modes and the E013 plus becomes very nimble and responsive. The Aero mode is fun, and I am slowly getting better and better at flying with it.  With that in mind if you want an easier way into FPV flying that you can do indoors, I would go with the original E013.

I'm enjoying the outdoors flying that I am doing with this drone, it is definately the next level up, and if you want something with a bit more grunt, but still a cheap way into the excitng world of FPV flying, you should give the E013 plus a look.

Purchasing the E013 pluskit

You can purchase the Eachine E013 Plus FPV kit from the link below

Here is the direct link here Banggood