Buying the WORST drone kit... (TWICE) so you don't have to. Cetus x pro 

Dear UAVfutures, thank you for the review of the Cetus X Kit which we have watched thoroughly and listened to your valuable user feedback. Each of your suggestions and user experience has been delivered to our product team, and we are always looking to improve our products. We believe you are one of the most experienced FPV pilots out there educating others with your FPV knowledge and we very much respect your channel. We would like to take the chance to address some of our perspectives regarding your video. We have seen you fly FPV since the start of this hobby, and therefore believe having your habit of button setup on radios, which may have caused interference in user experience for our pre-configured button setup. As a beginner kit, we have pre-setup button configs for beginners to learn - and if anyone would like to change the button setups, the answer would be yes, through the betaflight configurator. This leads to the next topic for the choice of versions of the CetusX. We certainly recommend adult pilots choose the betaflight version to get familiar with this mainstream configurator. Still, because the Cetus Version of the CetusX has altitude hold, we believe that was an appealing function for you to choose the Cetus Version over betaflight version of the kit. The difference for the Cetus Version is the additional altitude hold function which may be beneficial to some pilots who wish for a stable start-up flight and for those who like to get in air quick and easily. The only downside is that to support this function, we have to use the betafpv configurator which supports easy configuration for our radios and drones, including preset button configs. In this case, the Cetus version of the CetusX Kit may not fall under your preference for FPV setup, and we apologize for not making the difference between the two kits clear. Again, we respect your FPV Knowledge and we like to present our betaflight version of the CetusX Kit for advanced fpv pilot, and experience the fun of FPV.

I started with the Cetus X last year. It ran betaflight. It was enough to make me fall in love. Then I loaded up on DJI kit. I still fly it and my metemor 75 indoor at work.

Check your audio setup, my friend. Seems like sound is coming 90% out of the right channel during the studio introduction

My roommate started with the Betaflight version of this kit and did really well with it. The kit has its faults, the DVR's unreliability and the generally low quality control being among them, but as a beginner kit it serves its purpose. The drone is relatively powerful and maneuverable enough, but a more experienced/capable pilot will feel the extra weight and battery sag. I feel like the non-betaflight version sorta gives the illusion of softening the learning curve of FPV and perhaps it succeeds at that in a way I may not ever experience, given that I jumped off the deep end into Betaflight.

I've had mine for well over a year and it helped me get started in the hobby rather well. I was able to get somewhat comfortable with betaflight and overall flying. I've never had any issues regarding connections or the goggle screen. Although i do have to point out that i bought it when it still had the V1 of their AIO so that might be something to consider as well as it was quite recently released on the market when i bought it so the quality control might have been better.

I purchased a Cetus X and couldn't bind it to my Radio Master controller so purchased a Beta lite 3 controller which binded easy with buttons, it's been a fantastic drone using my Skyzone goggles , it's so good I just ordered a Beta Meteor pro 75 and have had continuous problems with the FPV channels and not being able to start it without re binding etc . Once the fpv view stopped while flying and I lost it , took hours to find it . Disappointing 😢 Thankfully the Cetus X is so good 😊

I started with the Cetus X (Betaflight) only a few months back. Everything in the kit is pretty meh, but I still love it; it was enough to show me the possibilities of the hobby, let me do a little upgrading.. and showed that my eyesight has gone. I have a couple tiny BnFs and probably the last pair of Sky O4X Pro's in white, but i still am using the Literadio 3 for now.

I got the cheaper Cetus Pro kit.. I knew nothing about drones or FPV. Only had it a month or so. It has been fine for me. I have all the cheaper stuff in the kit, goggles that don't record, frysky transmitter.. I flew it outside once.. Couldn't go more than 50' without losing signal. In the house, 2 walls and it's start getting pretty bad. But for $229, it's honestly not terrible from my perspective. I still think it was a fun place to start. I can hand it over to my 7yr old and not be worried. The price of entry into nicer gear is quite high, so I wanted to learn what I can and see if I can even fly.. I am still no good, I have gotten better. But it's just a skill I have never learned. It's nothing like any videogame I had played previously. But I have learned a lot about what I would want in the future. It's just that no upgrade I buy would be backward compatible to what I have. I could add a 4 in 1 module to an ELRS transmitter. I would need to go with some goggles that have the ability to run analog, but I'd want to go digital. But they would need to have a DVR, which isn't asking for much. I have not even looked at betaflight or whatever software BetaFPV uses. Thank you for the review of the "nicer" kit.

Love the shirt Stew , I buy from Rising sun up here in FNQ.

I have the Cetus pro and it broke the second day off having it and then after I fixed it, it broke again without me crashing it and i can’t find the part for it and I can’t even find the problem with it because when I turn it on it just flashes a red light. Now that I kind of know how to fly I bought a radio master pocket to practice more and I am thinking about buying a flywoo firefly nano baby 1s but I am still saving up by doing chores since I’m only 12 and don’t have that much money. By the way I love your channel and am thankful for people like you in this hobbie and am thankful for your help.

The only thing I can think of is, if you have a couple of friends thats gonna fly together A channel switch button could be useful so you don't interrupt eachoter.

Well dang 😮 sorry to hear about all the frustration in a kit like that cheers to great review

I learned on the cetus pro and love it. Once you know what the switch does its actually nice. BTW, mine won't change channels while it's armed so I don't know how you would have done that.

The $300-$350 RTF price point is a minefield of sometimes working hardly repairable kits. I'd like to know how many thousands of people pay for these and they are unusable in less than a week. I was very fortunate to get almost a whole month out of my Emax kit

Cheers for this, I genuinely had my sights set on ordering one this month for an entry level kit. Ill give it a miss after seeing this video.

Thank you for making this video. I started out with the older FRSKY version of this kit over a year ago and similar experiences. Also, the gimbals on the controller gave out after a month. Guess what, that vtx switch is also the turtle mode switch but only when it's upside down. It was such a bad kit to start with.

I’m sorry but hopefully this helps in future. I’m brand new to FPV, I just started a week and a half ago. I bought the kit and I love it, I did retune it. I didn’t fly I stock, but reading the manual before you post a video would be very helpful . If it is our first time we will read the instructions, hopefully. They even threw in pictures of how it works. One huge tip for newbies go into beta flight and increase the OSD range to 400. The default is 25 and is terrible. I love this drone and kit.

Damn and I was thinking about getting this drone as my first. I'm disabled and very poor, it will take me 3 months to save up 300 dollars to buy this kit. I've seen so many videos recommending this drone. Now I don't know drone to buy. I've even been looking for used drones but no luck.what would you recommend

If you stand outside with goggles on you don't see those big ass killer wasps come at you! 🐝🐝🐝💀

I definitely need some parts for my cetus pro it blew the second time i flue it

Thanks for you candid opinion on this POS kit

brissy fauna the wall is looking fantastic!

Love your content bro😂

Amazing effort Stew.♥ Huge thanks for posting this for the FPV community, and the FPV industry to see. This is so SAD from the perspective of a target audience of beginners to the hobby with limited experience, and limited resources. So sad! The real question is why was this kit even sent out for review. (can understand a manufacture doing a prerelease outreach for feedback on a product being developed, but this not the case) For an experienced pilot this would be very frustrating. For a new pilot this would be impossible. This so painful to watch, feeling for Stew. What he does for the community is well above and beyond. (including fending off killer wasp) To BetaFPV, WTH ... A product needs to provide a reasonable experience in line with expectations across the industry. It's your reputation on the line, for all your products, not just one! Please deliver to at least a minimum level of expectations, and valid your products against other industry offerings. A product needs to be usable for a reasonable duration of time. Thank Stew for providing real valid feedback, he's gone above and beyond what most reviewers. Many would just remain silent, not good for you, or the FPV industry.

Recommend to get the beta flight version,maybe you didn’t get the beta flight version. My experience wasn’t a bad experience.

Good video 😊

this is kinda shocking how they put products that are in such a bad state on the market. :/

Truth. I dig it. Thanks UAV futures. right on.

Weird how now these kits suck this much.. they were actually a good kit when they came out a year ago. Even beat the Emax kit price wise..

Dronecamps gonna drop a video about how amazing it is

Seems like the vTx channel changing turned into an obsession for you there. Seems reasonable for them to put it somewhere easy to reach, and you just are accustomed to it being in a different place.

No one going to mention sound is right ear only? Pretty sure everything my side is OK.

they must not have a pilot on staff?!? $309 with all this sorrow?

I bought the Cetus X Pro and my biggest complaint is the video. Over time, I can't fly 15 m without losing connection.

Mine was fine out of the Box and i have Betaflight on it

well out of the 5 beta fpv products i have bought, none work , my experience is beta fpv is junk. its like playing the lotto some win many don't

Emax had this pretty much down 2 years ago......

Please review aquila16

Betafpv suck! Bought a Cetus flew for 2seconds hit the roof then wouldn't bind again. Emax or happy model work

Thankyou stew for making me feel not so bad that I couldn't get my Cetus pro to work! Half them don't work! @botgrinder was correct in his QC statement of betafpv I'm sure d.c had an opinion... Not that it counts cheers stew for being real:)

You keep on changing the vtx channel.

Idk if my comment like a month ago made you put that prop on the drone with the orange 5 blades, but fuck im ded you put a random triblade 😂😂😂

One of the biggest issues our new pilots have is not realising how much effort and knowledge you need to make flying a drone fun. We have a guy who has been flying 4 years badly on his own, and only last week he finally flew for more than one battery with other people and his own gear and had no issues. (yes extreme but true) it took him that long to get to the level of fun we have been having for years now. It his words "I finally really get what you have been waffling about" His face was a great picture and his excitement was on another level. So a company releasing a kit to get people into the hobby have to make it as idiot-proof as possible to allow people to learn from it while having fun, not have to learn Stu's level of experience to maybe do so. Great review, big fucking bee!

There really is no excuse for this in 2024.

I'm famous 🎉🎉🎉😂😂😂

I’d love a Cetus for parts! Trying to make a sub 250 long range quad.

On video

Seriously 😮...i could not belive how bad this review was...not the cetus x kit...(that i own bf version an flights really well for entry level that it is)...but the reviewer...10 years into the hobby?very very biased 😮

First comment 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

First

BetaFPV is trash