TEST: Eachine EX120

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INTRODUCTION

The Eachine EX120 is a 120mm brushed hexacopter with strong ingredients: SPF3 Evo board and a 800TVL 1/3″ 40CH AIO FPV camera. But probably more interesting, the EX120 is powered via a 2S LiPo to boost performances and why not reach brushless performances ?. The EX120 is sold with three type of receivers: FrSky D8, FLySky AFHDS-2A and DSMX. Let’s discover this new EX model.

BOX CONTENT

+ 1 x Eachine EX120 (with a 2S 450mAh LiPo with microLOSI)
+ 1 x USB charging cable
+ 6 x Spare props (3 CW, 3 CCW)

That’s all …No instruction manual, spare motors. No specific packaging probably to reduce costs

OVERVIEW

The hexacopter is a 120mm machine so much larger than recent 80-100mm QX & EX models. The EX120 have a large lower unibody carbon frame welcoming also arms. The lower carbon plate has 1mm of thickness. Another upper plate is also here more to protect all the electronic.

-FRONT VIEW

Out of the box black props are installed front and orange for the four remaining ones. The FPV camera is not uptilted probably to minimize prop intrusion in the Fielf Of View. In the spare bag of props, 2 oranges and 4 black props.

After minor moddings, the FPV cam is raised a bit

and with the antenna installed more vertically to increase drastically general control range

-SIDE VIEW

The right side shows the FrSKy D8 receiver. By default, the associated antenna is completly jailed Inside limiting a lot the control range.

A full complete SPF3 evo board is installed, not a shrinked version usually found for micromachine. The microUSB port is on the left side

A small tip to raise the FPV camera for more agressive flight is too insert a piece of foam/paper beneath the camera

-REAR VIEW

A 6 programmable leds and a buzzer are installed rear. The buzzer is not super loud but permits to hear it in a radius of 10m approximatively.

By default, the light’s effect is minimum staying solid green.

-UPPER VIEW

The upper plate protect the SPF3 board and hold the rear LED bar and buzzer.

Be default the FrSky antenna is completly jailed between the two carbon plates…. A must to do first mod consists in install more vertically the 2.4G antenna

-BOTTOM VIEW

A small piece of foam is installed beneath to secure the battery installation via these two rubber bands.

With the battery attached with the rubber bands

-WEIGHT

87.7g !!!! so more than 20g heavier than a QX90 for example. We can understand than two extra motors will add de facto 10g. So the big open question…. the 2S setup will be strong enough ?

A little foam is installed on each motor as landing gear

and motors can be easily replaced thanks to 1.25mm 2 pins microJST connectors

Motors

8520 motors 2S compatible 5200RPM probably the main postive of this setup. If the QX120 was only 1S compatible, probably the extra 20g versus a classic quadcopter would kill all the benefit of the six motors.

Classic 55mm props with 1mm of shaft section

LiPo

A 450mAh model with 30C of discharge rate and ending with a microLOSI connector.

AIO FPV Camera module

A 800TVL 40CH 1/3″ 25mW AIO camera with a 3leaves RHCP camera.

The camera is attached via a black rubber band, flexible enough to protect a bit the AIO system in case of frontal crash.

A unique button to select the Vfreq (short pressed) and the cycle between the 5 Vbands (3s pressure)

The FPV camera offer great brightness and light handling. More for a 25mW, the FPV range is pretty good

Disassembling

A complete SPF3 board with an external FrDky D8 receiver. Cleanflight 1.13 is installed by default. Probably no available compact 2S compatible FC was available during the EX120. At least 3-4g could be save with a direct integration.

UNBOXING, ANALYSIS, BINDING AND DEMO FLIGHT

In practice, the EX120 is punchy… and we can immediatly remove the doubt of lack of power. The 2S system is efficient and punch outs are almost comparable with brushless 1103 motors performances.
In term of flight caracteristics, we can feel the machine is more heavier and by consequence you can’t perform super narrow turns. The EX120 is more adapted for outdoors acro flights. No problem to perform flips and rolls. The FPV range range is pretty good too. We can regret the absence of the telemetry feedback with the actual receiver firmware. But thanks to an USBISP module, we can reprogram the receiver with a new firmware with active telemetry.

CONCLUSIONS

A good EX’s model more adapted for outdoors applications with power compatible with real acro flights and without major drawback as soon as you uptilt a bit the FPV camera and installed vertically the 2.4G antenna. Some optimizations can be done mainly to save some weight and boost even more performances : i) installing a more compact brushed 2S FC, ii) removing the the upper carbon plate and the LED’s bar. We can probably expect soon an upgraded model with a FC integrating also a betaflight OSD chip.

PROS

+ Efficient 800 TLV 1/3″ AIO camera
+ SPF3 board 2S compatible
+ Strong 8520 2S compatible motors
+ Acro capable machine
+ Builtin Buzzer
+ Programmable LED

CONS

– 2.4G Antenna jailed into the carbon structure
– Large prop intrusion in the FOV
– Precoce LVC buzzer alarm
– No telemetry for the FrSky D8 receiver
– No spare motors

optional
– No betaflight OSD

This quadcopter have been courtesy provided by Banggood in order to make a fair and not biased review. I would like to thank them for this attitude.
You can find it actually for 76USD at http://www.banggood.com/Eachine-EX120-120mm-With-800TVL-FPV-Camera-F3-EVO-Brushed-LED-Buzzer-Racing-Quadcopter-p-1114602.html

Cet article TEST: Eachine EX120 est apparu en premier sur Drone-Maniac !!!!!!!.

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