SKYSTARS X120 REview Part 1: Bench review and setup

Please note this review will be in 2 parts. In this part (1) I will cover an intro, overview and setup of the quad and I will completed part 2 once I have a decent amount of packs through it. Part 2 is now here

Skystars X120 Bolt

Intro
In the last 10 or so months that the Fullspeed Leader 120 (review here) came out, a whole new category of 2.5" quadcopters have been released. These have mostly knocked out the 2" brushless market owing to better power and efficiency that the 11xx series motors are able to deliver with 2.5 inch props - most notably the Gemfan 2540 (review here). In all this time, none have really hit upon what made the leader unique: it's supremely light weight. The Aurora Mini Fight, the HGLRC Hornet and to a lesser extent the 3" babyhawk R (review here) have all showed what more powerful 1106 motors can do but have all had 15-25g or more weight on the Leader.

Enter the Skystars X120 Bolt. This is an 1106 powered 2.5" quadcopter and weighs 65g - only 2g more than the Leader 120 whilst retaining a durable 3mm thick bottom plate. Better yet it receives all of the modern improvements that have become more common on brushless micro quads since the Leader's release:

• Micro CCD camera (Furibee MS1672)
• Variable power VTX (25/100/150mW)
• 4s capable ESC and FC
• Stock Gemfan 2540 props

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Click to embiggen

What is included:

• The assembed quad with a FRSKY XM receiver attached but not secured
• 4 Pairs of Gemfan Flash 2540 propellers
• 1 crap battery strap and one good one
• JST lead, cable ties, prop screws
• Stickers... Hooray for marketing!

Overview of the build

Components here look fairly familiar. The ESC looks to be the same as the one from the Furibee X140 (review here) which is good because this was easily able to handle  4s 1000mah battery on 1306 motors. The flight controller however is running an F4 rather than F3 processor which is a welcome addition now that more advanced and power-hungry filtering is being implemented in beta and butterflight. VTX looks to be the same from the X140 as well. Signal-wise this is avery good VTX BUT it is a chore to change channels. Check out my X140 part 2 review here for a simplified guide to setting this up.

Soldering around the stack looks adequate and it is nice to see they took the time to keep motor wiring tidy and tucked away. Motors themselves are 1106 4500kV and are a naked bottom design which helps with cooling and weight. They are similarly notchy to the Emax RS1106 motors on the Babyhawk R. Motors have only 2 mounting holes on the frame arm by design. On mine 3 had all 3 screws but one had only 2. No big deal for me but a little sloppy on QC.

One thing that does concern me a little at this stack is the small amount of material on the bottom plate around the camera mount. Given location I would be worried about breaking the frame at this point but I can say more until I have flow (and crashed!) it some more.

Battery connector is an XT30 and nice to see it uses 16 rather than 18 or 20 gauge wire. A JST connector is included but thankfully XT30 has now become the standard in this class.

One last note here: as you can see below left this is advertised as having 0-60deg camera angle however I have found that the camera angle is limited to about 30deg due to the camera connector fouling on the stack. More to follow on this in part 2 of the review.

Software setup
Below is the stock betaflight setup. At the time of writing (June 2018) Betaflight 3.4.0 has just been released as RC1. The Skystars Bolt X120 came defaut with 3.2.4 which is a release that has dynamic filtering so I am happy to leave this be. The default target was omnibus F4 SD which is odd since this card certainly has no SD card for blackbox storage. When I update I will be changing the target to omnibus F4 no SD.

I am pleased to say that setup has been customised. In particular I like that the dynamic fliter has been turned on but especially that custom pids are present on profile 2. All values are significantly lower than default and my guess is that they are set up for 4s. Interestingly the rates look quite unique - max yaw rate is increased over stock @ 769, pitch is higher at 870 and roll is very high at 1176.

For the purpose of reference I have a screen shot of all customised screens below and my take on the unique settings.

So that will wrap up part 1 of the review. Keep an eye out here for part 2 where I will maiden and try with 2s, 3s and 4s of varying sizes with my take on performance and DVR footage. Thanks for reading.

The Skystars Bolt X120 can be bought from Gearbest who kindly provided this model for review. It can be bought from Gearbest in multiple formats to suit your transmitter including:

• FRSKY Bind and Fly SkystarsBolt X120
• FLYSKY Bind and Fly SkystarsBolt X120
• Kit (no receiver) SkystarsBolt X120
• PNP (no receiver) SkystarsBolt X120