Pros

• Steady flight
• Decent camera
• Functioning altitude-hold
• “Battle Mode” for having fun with friends
• High-quality construction
• Very durable
• Decent range
• Works both indoor & outdoors
• Handles light wind fairly well
• Compact, nice for travel

Cons

• Battery tends to overheat, causing the drone to land and shut down
• Flight time is shorter than advertised due to overheating
• Controls are meant for a phone, with the tablet it’s a bit awkward to use
• Movement is a bit slow
• Instructions are entirely in Chinese, with no translations available
• Little to no modifications possible

The Xiaomi MITU Drone is ideal for use at social gatherings or with friends, and the abundance of entertaining features makes the experience that much better. Both indoors and outdoors, the MITU Drone functions extremely well, aside from some issues with frequent overheating (more on this later). The flight is very stable thanks to the onboard sensor suite, and the controls are simple enough for a complete beginner to use. 

The drone came well-packaged in a neatly organized box. In separate compartments, we found the drone, the blade guards, the battery, the charging cable, and all of the included blades. The only extra parts included are two replacement blades, one for the clockwise motors and one for the counterclockwise motors.

The camera doesn’t have the sharpest focus, and while moving quickly the picture is a bit blurry and shaky, but for slow flights, the quality is good enough to satisfy most users. For FPV, the camera has a rather slow refresh rate and there tends to be some lag, so this isn’t really suitable for any racing purposes.

The frame is well-built and sturdy. This was proven by the Xiaomi MITU Drone’s ability to survive a 1-meter fall after hitting an object head-on without taking any damage.

All of the safety features work well, and the Xiaomi MITU Drone has already shut itself down a few times while overheating. The included blade guards are a nice addition and work well for protecting against walls and other large objects. However, they are not really useful for protecting against an accidental finger or smaller objects.

Due to an overheating problem we experienced, the flight time ranges between the advertised 10 minutes and as few as 5 minutes before a landing is required to cool down and/or replace the battery before continuing. It’s not optimal, but it might be worth overlooking considering all of the other features for such a low price.

So, is the Xiaomi MITU Drone worth the $69.99 price tag? For beginners and those who just want to fly around a little to have some fun and take a few aerial selfies, absolutely. For a hobbyist or drone enthusiast, there are definitely better (but more expensive) options.

The Xiaomi MITU Drone has many features, which we’ve grouped into three categories: Performance, Safety, and Extras. Performance features affect the flight quality and experience overall, Safety features protect the drone from damage, and Extra features have no real impact on the drone, but add to the user’s experience overall. Here is a brief overview:

Performance Features:

• 6-axis Gyro – for stability even without other sensors
• Ultrasonic Sensor – for low-altitude hold
• Barometer – for high-altitude hold
• Optical Sensor – used for position hold and stability
• 720p 30fps Camera – for photo and video
• 4-core 1.2ghz processor – to run all of the systems smoothly
• 4 Gb Internal Memory – for storing firmware, photos and videos
• 920 mAh Li-Ion battery – prone to heat problems, max. 10 minute flight time
• Sturdy Polycarbonate Frame – Can withstand large amounts of abuse before breaking.

Safety Features:

• Low-Battery Warning – Will alert in case of low battery, can land if necessary
• Overheat Warning – Will alert if the drone is overheating, can land if necessary 
• Crash Protection – Automatically cuts power to rotors in event of a crash to prevent damage
• Blade Guards – Primarily for indoor use, helps prevent excess damage during collisions.

Extras:

• IR Diode and Receiver – for “Battle Mode”
• Auto Take-off and Landing – takes the hassle out of flying a drone
• Tilt-Control Mode – control by tilting device instead of using “joysticks”
• Headless Mode – for beginners, to ease the flying experience
• 360° Flip – can perform a flip in 4 different directions
• FPV Video Streaming – See what the drone sees, right on-screen

And now for the long read:

Most of the Performance Features of the Xiaomi MITU Drone are implemented to work in conjunction with each other. For instance, the optics, barometer, and the ultrasonic sensor work together with the gyro to stabilize the drone and keep it in a steady hover, even in light to medium wind conditions. This system works very well, and the flight is very steady and predictable.

One downside to this steadiness, however, is that the speed becomes impacted. This means that the MITU is actually not very fast for its size, but that becomes a bit irrelevant considering that the camera isn’t up to racing specs either.

The photos and video shot on this drone aren’t the best of quality, as there isn’t vibration correction, but they’re decent enough. Even in really bright and depressingly dim evironments, the camera was able to take a fairly crisp photo of a good resolution, making this drone more like a “flying selfie stick” than a profeesional photography drone or racing-type machine.

The polycarbonate frame is able to take quite a beating, in the few times we crashed there has been no visible damage and everything continued to work normally. The motors are well-situated and the Mitu drone has a very small, minimalist design. The rotors are nicely marked in correspondance with the appropriate motors, so if you happen to break a blade it’s easy to tell which replacement to use.

After a flight, the battery will take up to two hours to charge with the included USB cable. Conversly, you can purchase a separate charging block that can charge two batteries at a time. Before charging, it is a good idea to let the battery cool to avoid any potential damage and/or an explosion, adding about 15 minutes to the total charge time.

One of the issues we seem to have frequently with the Xiaomi MITU Drone is that battery experiences overheating. In all drones, the battery will heat up as current passes through it, but unlike most drones, the Mitu Drone has no good way to cool the battery in-flight. Because it is sandwiched right up against the control board, processor, and some sensors with no significant airflow ducts, the heat will simply build up to a critical point. Fortunately, the Xiaomi MITU Drone has an onboard temperature monitoring system that will land and shut down the drone before any damage occurs. A better solution for the manufacturer would have just been to redesign the battery compartment with adequate ventilation.

After letting the battery cool, you can continue to fly. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a way to actually fix this problem (aside from refrigerating the battery before use). As we previously mentioned, another option is to have a few spare batteries on hand and to interchange them as they reach their heat limits. We did notice that the battery did not overheat as frequently (or at all) when flying the Xiaomi MITU Drone in cold environments such as a well air-conditioned room, but in the heat of summer, this is difficult to avoid. Who knows, maybe this was only intended as a winter drone.

One other slight annoyance is the complete lack of navigation lights. There are a grand total of two status indicator LEDs on the MITU drone, and neither is bright enough to make night flights feasible without night vision goggles.

The nice part is, if you happen to crash or the drone malfunctions in some detectable way, the safety features will intervene, landing the drone and in extreme cases even shutting down. From our limited experience (we typically try not to crash) these safeties work well and do help to prevent damage to expensive components.

Problems and safety aside, the extra features are well-implemented in the drone. The auto take-off and landing even have a safety prompt that you must acknowledge before launching or landing, ensuring that no one is accidentally hurt. The headless mode works as intended, and the flips are fun as well.

The Tilt-Control mode is fun if a bit unwieldy, as you must hold down a button on-screen for it to work. In our experience, it works better in headless mode, as there is no confusion as to which way the drone will fly when the device is tilted. 

The FPV video is a fun addition, and in “Battle Mode” it even shows a targeting system and the “shots” as they are fired. As we don’t have a second drone, we have no idea how the drone responds to being “shot”, but we hope it doesn’t involve falling from the sky in a burning wreck.

The app for the Xiaomi MITU Drone is fairly straightforward and has some nice settings that allow you to do things like set a height limit and change the control layout. It also gives you notifications about the status of the drone’s battery and will tell you if there are any issues. 

Additionally, the feed from the video camera is displayed on-screen, with the controls overlayed. This allows for the app to display animations for “Battle Mode” and gives you a Heads Up Display with any safety warnings scrolling in between the two “joysticks”. 

A cool feature of the app and a byproduct of the FPV streaming is that any photos or video was taken from the drone can be saved directly to your phone or tablet’s photo app, instead of occupying the built-in 4Gb on the drone. This makes it less of a hassle to transfer the photos and videos to friends or onto social media, which will come across as a plus point for many users.

One thing to note is that the app is meant primarily for a smartphone, and on a tablet the controls are oversized and the layout is a bit odd. However, it still functions quite well on a tablet, and once you get used to the controls it is quite fun. 

One thing we all love doing is upgrading things. So naturally, one of the things we looked at is what we call hackability, or the ability to modify, add or upgrade components on the drone. 

Unfortunately, the Xiaomi MITU Drone is a closed-source, tightly constrained product, and therefore is difficult to modify in any functional way. All of the electronics are contained on a single board with no expansion ports, and the battery has a unique 3-pin interface and casing, so only brand-name batteries can be used. 

The app and firmware are also proprietary and closed-source, so there is no way to modify the flight parameters for the MITU drone, outside of the functions already given in the app.

Among the few things that can be modified are the blades and blade guards, as you could fairly easily buy or 3D print alternatives that will fit on the MITU drone. What impact this sort of upgrade will have, we don’t know.

Another possibility is to design and 3D print custom shells to put on the Xiaomi MITU Drone so that different players can be distinguished during battles. Such an upgrade has little to no effect on performance and requires no wiring, making it an easy and hassle-free mod to use.

Overall, the Xiaomi MITU Drone comes across as a solid platform for beginners and people who want the ability to fly about their house, taking videos and photos of the cat and dog trying to catch it (or escape from it).

This drone provides exceptional stability, and all of the features are easy to activate and use, with the help of prompts on-screen. Everything works fairly well, and aside from the glaring cooling problem, the drone is very capable and quite fun to fly around.

Can we recommend it? Sure. If you don’t mind switching out batteries as they heat up, or live in a cold place, this drone is wonderful, and packed with fun features to make your day more exciting.

So, if you are a beginner or enthusiast looking for an affordable and fun quadcopter, why not give the Xiaomi MITU Drone a spin?

Xiaomi MITU

Commissions Earned Check price at

 

and