Holy Stone HS360E review: a neat yet imperfect beginner drone

With DJI flooding the market with relatively inexpensive beginner drone models, the sub-250g drone market is becoming incredibly competitive. There are some interesting releases on the horizon, but one that caught my eye is the Holy Stone HS360E, which is a basic beginner model from a well-known DJI alternative.

Holy Stone produces a mixture of beginner drone models of varying quality, with the Holy Stone HS900 being the company's most impressive drone to date. Some models could fall into the best non-DJI drones, the best camera drones, or the best beginner drones categories, so let's see where the HS360E lands.

The HS360E looks similar to the DJI Mini 4K and features a much more basic 12MP camera that's supported by a 2-axis gimbal and Electronic Image Stabilisation (EIS). EIS certainly removes vibration to smooth video, although the drone's pitch and roll movements are captured in photos and videos to produce what you could call FPV-style imagery, which is immersive but not smooth and level.

Video is captured at 4K 30fps on the microSD card inserted in the drone, while 720p 30fps video is captured on your smartphone. Photos are captured in JPEG format in either 4000x3000px or 3840x2160px (4K) dimensions on the microSD card, and at 3840x2160px on your smartphone. There are some extremely basic camera controls available, but it's essentially a point-and-shoot camera.

Holy Stone HS360E: Specifications

Holy Stone HS360E: Price

The Holy Stone HS360E costs $249 / £269, but at the time of writing, discounts available on Amazon reduce the price to a much more reasonable $229 / £209. This discounted price is much more appropriate to the HS360E than the full price, because while it's a well-made drone that flies well, it does have deficiencies in other areas.

The HS360E kit includes the drone, a controller, one battery, a charging hub, phone connection cables, a USB-C cable for battery and controller charging, a spare set of propellers, and a shell case with a shoulder strap.

Holy Stone HS360E: Design & Handling

Most drones these days follow a similar design path with propeller arms that fold to make the drone more compact for storage and transportation. The HS360E is no exception here with horizontally folding propeller arms that take the drone from 5.5x3.5x2.17in / 140x90x55mm when folded, to 8.37.1x2.17in / 210x180x55mm when unfolded with a regulator-friendly weight of 8.78oz / 249g.

Where most Holy Stone drones are dark or mid-grey, the HS360E bucks this trend with its light grey airframe and an overall design that strongly reminds me of the DJI Mini 4K. The design is pretty simple, and the only visible features beyond the obvious are a light on the bottom of the drone that changes colour to show the connection status with the controller, and an optical flow sensor that's barely visible.

Image 1 of 3

The drone uses a 2000mAh Li-ion battery that's advertised as providing up to 30 minutes of flight time, although during testing, my flights were coming in at around 18 minutes per charge. This would likely increase a small amount in warmer months, but the 30-minute claim is perhaps a little optimistic. With flight times coming in at this duration and the fact that the kit only includes one battery, purchasing additional batteries alongside the kit would be a worthwhile investment.

As previously mentioned, this is a basic beginner drone, and this extends to the camera and gimbal, which are made of plastic, and the gimbal only offers 2-axis movement to adjust the tilt of the camera. The tilt mechanism of the gimbal is also extremely sensitive, so it's easiest to position it at -90 and 0 degrees rather than in between. It’s not impossible to set it at 45 degrees, for example, but it takes more than a few tries to get it there. The smoothing of video, as a result, is provided by Electronic Image Stabilisation.

Image 1 of 2

Moving onto the controller, it's the standard Holy Stone offering that comes with most new Holy Stone drones these days. It's a chunky rectangular controller that's comfortable to hold and looks strikingly similar to the DJI RC-N2 controller, but with a basic screen to show flight information. There's a telescopic phone holder at the top where the phone cable can be stored, and this can accommodate even larger phone models.

Build quality is reasonable, not DJI level, but it can’t be faulted, and the controller comes in light grey to match the drone. Other features include seven direct access controls to make camera and drone operation more convenient, while the control sticks can be stored in compartments at the bottom of the controller when not in use.

Image 1 of 2

Holy Stone HS360E: Drone performance

The HS360E flies well overall, and the flight controls provide smooth operation of the drone. This allows you to successfully perform a range of flight manoeuvres to capture more interesting video footage, although the absence of a 3-axis mechanical gimbal for stabilisation does throw up a few challenges in this area. The drone also isn't particularly fast or powerful with a maximum wind resistance of just 12.3 mph, so it's not suited to even mildly windy conditions.

Features on the whole are fairly simple, and those that are available may not be as refined as those you'll find on more expensive drones, but they do work and offer beginners a handful of fun and creative options beyond standard drone flight and image capture. Panorama, Time-lapse and Slow Motion video are some of the more creative features on offer and all three are easy to set up and execute. The latter two work well, but Panorama produces low-resolution images, saved to your phone rather than the microSD card in the drone, and they're only suitable for sharing online.

Other features include automated flight patterns such as Point of Interest, Catapult, One-key Ascension and Spiral Up. Other options within the menu include VR capture, Gesture Selfie, Selfie Video and Camera Filter. There's also AI Subject Tracking which is a feature where you draw over the subject to be tracked in the HS Fly app and the HS360E camera follows the selected subject. The drone only hovers and rotates in this mode, so you have to fly manually to track moving subjects.

There is another tracking mode that does follow the subject and that's GPS Follow Me. With this tracking feature, the HS360E uses the GPS signal from your smartphone to track you and will follow a moving subject, unlike AI Subject Tracking. This works reasonably well but again, the 2-axis gimbal supported by EIS does result in bumpy video footage and less refined tracking overall.

Image 1 of 4

The HS360E also uses GPS positioning like most camera drones and this feature helps to keep the drone locked in a hover when the controls are released. Drones flown in ATTI mode (no GPS) are blown along by the wind making flight difficult compared to GPS-enabled drones. The HS360E does maintain a hover in wind, but it does exhibit vertical and horizontal drift when hovering, which means you have to take care when hovering at lower altitudes.

GPS also allows for Return to Home (RTH) functionality with Smart RTH available to bring the drone back to the take-off point at the touch of a button. Then there's Failsafe RTH, which returns the drone when the signal to the controller is lost and Low Voltage RTH, which returns it when the battery charge is low. All three are useful and work well. There's also Optical Flow Positioning for indoor flights when a GPS signal is unavailable, but it's not something you can rely upon.

Holy Stone HS360E: Camera performance

The HS360E, up until now, appears to be a great drone despite the use of a 2-axis gimbal supported by Electronic Image Stabilisation; some pilots will prefer the video result of this set-up while others will prefer the smoother and levelled results of a mechanical 3-axis gimbal. The area where this drone, unfortunately, falls down most is when it comes to the camera.

The camera uses a 12MP sensor and photos are captured in JPEG format at 4000x3000px or 3840x2160px dimensions on the microSD card in the drone. Photos saved to your smartphone are 3840x2160px. Video is fixed in terms of resolution and framerate at 4K 30fps on the microSD card and 720p 30fps video is transmitted to and saved on your smartphone. It's incredibly simple, alongside the operation of the camera itself.

Image 1 of 4

The camera is point-and-shoot, which is great if you're not familiar with camera controls. Plus, the automatic exposure isn't bad at all, and you can adjust brightness alongside white balance, contrast, saturation and sharpness in the basic camera menu. I tried increasing sharpness which didn’t deal with the softness issue we'll discuss in a moment, but brightness did work well to lighten or darken exposure.

Image quality is limited and the main issue is an overall softness in photos and videos – there's an inherent lack of clarity. The pitch of the camera doesn't, however, introduce distortion as can be seen with some basic low-cost drone models. Video quality is better than photos, but JPEG processing is prominent with the latter while jello, (wobble) can be seen in video occasionally. The roll of the drone into the wind when hovering also results in uneven horizons being captured in photos.

For video, the reliance on Electronic Image Stabilisation with no gimbal-based smoothing means that the pitch of the drone is captured when flying. When flying sideways, the same occurs with the roll of the drone. This means that video looks similar to FPV drone footage where the movements of the drone are captured. You can, however, fly slowly and smoothly to mitigate these movements to a degree.

Holy Stone HS360E: Verdict

The HS360E is a basic sub-250g drone that comes in a useful kit and offers decent build quality. Being such a small and lightweight drone, it's ideal for beginners, and flight performance is commendable despite not being perfect in terms of the hover drift. The features on offer include timelapse, slow-motion video, subject tracking, and a handful of automated flight patterns that are certainly welcome.

These aren’t anywhere near as refined as similar features on more advanced drones, but they perform well at a basic level, and having them isn’t a bad thing. Where they do fall down is with the 2-axis gimbal and EIS because wind and flight move the drone and camera so you get bumpy results. In terms of flight, the HS360E is a good drone at a good price, but the soft image quality means it's more suited for flying fun than serious image-making.

Alternatives

Holy Stone HS900
The Holy Stone HS900 is another sub-250g drone but this model not only delivers impressive flight performance while offering useful features, but image quality is significantly better than the HS360E.

DJI Mini 4K
The DJI Mini 4K is a sub-250g drone that can capture 4K video and photos in Raw format. Image quality is impressive for the price, and the drone offers the reliability DJI is known for.