Holy Stone HS140 – Lightweight beginner drone under 250 grams
The Holy Stone HS140 is an affordable camera drone with FPV live image transmission. The quadcopter is best suited for beginners and thanks to the propeller guards also as a drone for kids. On Amazon, the model is listed as “Eanling HS140“. However, this variant is identical in construction to the one from Holy Stone.
Design and Weight
The Holy Stone HS140 is available in gray color and measures 31 x 31 x 11 cm. It is not a foldable drone, but a model with a landing frame.
With a weight of about 160 g, the drone is relatively light. The HS140 is suitable for both indoor and outdoor use. Since it is very light and does not have GPS, you should only fly in low wind conditions. Otherwise, the drone can be blown away by stronger gusts of wind.
Features and flight characteristics
To turn on the drone, you simply have to connect the battery – there is no on/off switch. Before launching, the built-in gyroscope should first be calibrated. For this, the two control joysticks have to be moved down and to the right simultaneously.
Takeoff and landing are child’s play at the push of a button. A simple button press on the controller is enough.
If the drone does not hover calmly on the spot, but drifts in one direction, you can use the calibration buttons on the remote control to trim the drone.
Once in the air, the copter automatically maintains the current flight altitude, so you do not have to permanently operate the thrust control.
In general, the Holy Stone HS140 is very easy to control and responds promptly to commands with the control joysticks on the controller.
If you want, you can also control the HS140 with your smartphone only. The appropriate app “Ophelia FPV” can be easily found in the respective app store thanks to the QR code in the user manual and then installed.
A nice extra is the voice control. The drone understands the following commands: “fly”, “land”, “forward”, “backward”, “left”, “right” and “stop”.
The remote control
In addition to the two control sticks, the 2.4 GHz remote control also has various other buttons and switches to activate the drone’s various functions.
Depending on your preference, you can switch between MODE 1 and MODE 2.
On the controller, you will find buttons for takeoff and landing, switching between two different speeds, as well as to switch to Headless mode.
In this mode, a simplified control is available. If you normally always have to pay attention to which direction the front of the drone is pointing when you execute a control command, this doesn’t matter in headless mode. The drone will always fly in the pressed direction. This control option makes it easier to handle the drone, especially for beginners.
Nevertheless, we recommend that you do not fly in headless mode for too long and also learn the normal controls, since not all drones have such a mode by far.
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If you get into a dicey situation with the drone, you can easily press the emergency stop button on the controller. The motors will then instantly stop (and the drone will fall out of the air).
A special highlight of the HS140 is the 3D flip mode, in which it can perform flips in any direction. To perform a flip, simply press the flip button and then the control stick in any direction. By the way, for the mode to work, the drone needs to fly at least 10 feet (3 meters) high.
To view the live image from the drone camera, you need to attach your smartphone to the controller. To do this, you first need to click on the included smartphone holder, which comfortably holds standard cell phones.
The remote control still requires 4 AA batteries, which are not included.
Flight time and range
The flight time of the Holy Stone HS140 is up to 17 minutes. This is made possible by the 3.7 V, 1300 mAh LiPo battery. When the battery is running low, the drone warns you by flashing the LED.
Charging the battery takes about 120 minutes with the included USB charging cable. You simply connect this to a smartphone power adapter or connect it to a PC, laptop or power bank.
The control range is about 110 yards (100 meters). The distance of the FPV image transmission also extends to about this distance.
The camera of the Holy Stone HS140
The Holy Stone HS140 features a 1080p HD camera that captures video in HD (1280 x 720p) at 20 fps and photos in Full HD (1920 x 1080p).
Like all drones in this price range, the copter doesn’t have a gimbal, but it does have a vibration damping element that is supposed to separate the drone’s own movements from the camera. The recorded videos are thus somewhat stabilized, but they are not as smooth as recordings with much more expensive drones with a camera.
To capture different perspectives, the camera can be manually tilted vertically by up to 90° before flight: from horizontal forward to vertical down.
Your recordings are stored directly on your own smartphone, the HS140 does not have an SD card slot.
Videos, by the way, are saved as MP4 or AVI files. Photos as JPGs.
The quality of the recordings is completely acceptable for a beginner drone in this price segment, but of course it is nowhere near that of more expensive drones.
If you want more, you will have to buy another drone.
Photos and videos can also be started and stopped via hand gestures if necessary.
Flight modes
The Holy Stone HS140 does not have automatic tracking and recording modes like Follow Me or Orbit Me, but it does have a Waypoint mode.
In this mode, you can draw a flight path on the map interface in the app before the flight, which is then flown independently by the drone.
Scope of delivery
- 1 x HS140 drone
- 1 x 2.4 GHz remote control
- 1 x 3.7 V, 1300 mAh LiPo battery
- 1 x USB charging cable
- 4 x propellers + propeller guards
- 2 x landing skids
- 1 x screwdriver (magnetic)
- 1 x instruction manual
Conclusion
The Holy Stone HS140 is an excellent drone for beginners and children and offers a very good price-performance ratio. Equipped with a Full HD camera, it can take photos and videos and also stream the live image from the camera to the smartphone.
The quadcopter is easy to control, maintains altitude independently and has a Headless mode for simplified control. The flight time of up to 17 minutes is relatively long for such an inexpensive drone, and the range of about 110 yards (100 meters) is quite sufficient for beginners.
We think the Holy Stone HS140 is a very good entry-level drone in the lower price segment and wish you a lot of fun flying it already!