I was sent a free drone for review earlier this year, an MJX X300C Quadcopter Drone. It was a pretty cool toy, and I was looking forward to having fun with it.MJX X300C Quadcopter Drone

MJX X300C Quadcopter Drone

While the battery was charging, which took about forty minutes, I read the instruction manual. There were a lot of pictures in it, which was just as well. The manual was clearly written in another language and then translated into English by a non-native speaker. It was rather unreadable, although I persevered. In the end I found some better instructions on the internet.

I started off testing it a little indoors. I got it paired with my mobile phone. I had to download a version of the app from the manufacturer website as the version in the android store didn’t work. I was a little nervous of breaking things, so I took it out into the back garden.

The first couple of very short flights were OK, I took it straight up and down again. The controls were quite sensitive and went from no noticeable effect to shooting skyward rapidly in a few millimetres. However I managed to retain control.

My son came out to watch, and asked to have a go. He’s 10 and used to electronics, so I let him. We put the drone on the grass and he slowly turned the power up. The drone shook a bit but didn’t take off. So he put the power up some more. He kept increasing the power slowly while the drone was on the ground. It got free of the grass and suddenly shot skyward. Before we could react it had cleared the apex of the house in a curving climb. We shut off the power and ran round to the front garden. The drone was nowhere in sight. Despite looking for it for an hour and asking our neighbours it never reappeared.

I discovered later that there was a special beginners setting that would have helped us. However I could work this out from the manual given the exceptionally poor English. If we’d had it the button on the controller would have return the drone to us from the air. However that didn’t work.

So the MJX X300C Quadcopter Drone is a good device, but the instructions mean that it isn’t suitable for beginners.