Why I Don't Recommend the New Whoop for Beginners

The new whoop everyone is talking about…

I wouldn’t recommend it right now, no matter how good it allegedly flies. There are several design choices that make this seem like favorable flight characteristics are covering for planned obsolescence. This is without actually having hands on the drone, but all I’ve seen about it so far are positive product showcases, not reviews. Thats not fair to consumers, especially new consumers. Maybe this will be a great whoop, but I think average pilots/beginners should stay away until the design choices are either proven or changed. 

1. Built in canopy, the canopy looks reinforced, but if a piece of it does happen to snap, you have to disassemble the whole system and replace the entire frame.

2. Right angle canopy connection points, the front and back arms of the canopy are connected to the frame with right angles and directly over board components. The right angles tend to have less tolerance for shock than a gradual slope in these applications. If you have a hard crash and the front or back of the canopy breaks, there is a good chance it goes directly down and into the board and potentially scrapes off a component. Even if it doesnt break, the right angles will flex directly down into the board/components instead of across like the sloped arms. The canopy may act as frame reinforcement in this case, but it being a structural part of the frame also means it has to do more work and makes it a lot more important to the overall build than a canopy that is mostly for holding a camera.

3. Soldered arms without wire guards, the aio is mounted on the bottom of the frame with a separate assembly. The wires on all but one of the pictures Ive found are soldered above the second assembly, which means there is nothing keeping them from going into the props. Every time you land on something other than a flat surface, you’ll need to check a wire didnt get pushed up into the ducts. There are holes on the second assembly for motor wires/plugs, but you would have to either put the wires through the plastic and then solder, risking touching the thin plastic with a hot iron, or hope that your motors will fit through the holes after soldering. The fact that there is space for plugs but they didnt use them is a red flag in this specific case. Plugs on this frame would keep the wires further from the props and potentially allow them to come out intact during a crash instead of snapping apart because they are directly soldered, this is a build specific problem because of point 4.

4. The second assembly being mounted on the bottom, with only tiny screws into plastic, is a prime target for being ripped off if you hit something. This assembly carries the fc and battery. If the assembly is ripped out, you risk motor and camera wires being ripped out. On other frames, it’s just the canopy/camera that are at risk for being ripped out this way. Lets say you fly perfectly and never crash, the g-force of the fc and battery are still going to pull against the rest of the build every time you do a power loop. Again, combine this with the fact that theyre using very small screws directly into plastic, thats just not a permanent setup for this application, even with perfect conditions.

5. Proprietary battery connector for their batteries and overconsumption of power regardless of vtx setting. This isnt even with their higher kv motor options. Perhaps their batteries will compensate for this or maybe they can fix it in a firmware update. Its a huge red flag that there is a power issue and theyre using their own batteries, they have potentially very low incentive to fix something thats just going to make you a guaranteed more frequent return customer for more batteries. 

6. Only 5/6a ESCs for +30k kv motors, see point 5 again and add excess heat to the equation.

Nothing against anything/one personally, these are just my opinions as to why I wont be buying it as someone who always talks about loving 65mm analog whoops.