ive had a couple, and a few helicopters... i have 1 chopper and 1 bigger drone right now...

buy a cheap one first, get used to flying it, that way you wont crash a 1500-8000 dollar drone your first time trying to use it...

the little choppers that are about 30 bucks are a great way to get started if you havent flown RC vehicles before, it will help with the learning curve with the drone...

most choppers in the cheap realm, dont have a 6 axis system like drones do... but, most drones will allow you to turn off the axis system to fly them like a regular chopper, that means they can go forward, backward, left, right, but cant bank taking corners...


a while back, i got a Propel X11 wifi drone, it was a 120 dollar drone that i got on clearance for 25 bucks (they had 4 more that i should have bought, but didnt, and they were gone, quick), it flys great, although, the camera isnt that great... its HD when its sitting on the ground, but not super great when flying... if you crash it you can get parts, and its cheap... unlike a DJI...

now for the "good" stuff, the DJI line is hard to beat, you can get a Spark for around 400 bucks, which is a simple little drone with an HD cam, but dont get too excited about what you can do with it... then there is the Mavic line(air, pro, ect) which start at around 800 and go up.... then there is the Phantom line, which also start at around 800, but get more expensive than the Mavic line, the pro can push 1500+ depending on where you buy it... when you start getting upwards in the lines, you get the Phantom Pro and such (theres different models of the Phantom and Pro, with numbers), they come with 4K cameras, which shoot 12 mp stills... you can also buy FLIR cameras for them, but they are about 2 grand for the cam itself....

then you have the DJI Inspire line, they generally start at around 3k for the 2 model, you can get refurbed 1 series ones for 1k-1500 depending on where you look, but they are the old series... and they reach prices upwards of 6k dollars....

theres also the Matrice line, but they are Hexacopters (6 props) not quadcopters, and they come with no camera, they also start out at 5 grand....

like i said, get a cheap one first, mess with it, see if you like it, and go from there... drones arent for everyone... some people cant even drive cars....