TEST: Eachine EX2 Mini

[Drone News]

INTRODUCTION

The Eachine EX2Mini is the direct rebranding of the MJX B2mini… a compact (<=220mm) brushless solution ready to fly, i.e. a nobrainer machine for beginners who don't want to tune anything in betaflight. The machine is fully plastic based, equiped of 1306/2750Kv motors, a proprietary flight controller untunable in combo with a basic 4-in-1 ESC board. Three versions are proposed: i) one basic with the flyer standalone, ii) the second comes with the FPV 24CH/25MW AIO module pre-installed and the iii) comes with a full FPV solution including a basic FPV monitor and large mask goggles. I will review the second model.

BOX CONTENT

+ 1 x Eachine EX2mini
+ 1 x 850Mah proprietary 2S LiPo
+ 1 x Transmitter (using 4xAA batteries not included)
+ 1 x USB charging cable
+ 4 x Spare props (2 CW, 2 CCW)
+ 4 x Prop guards
+ 1 X Prop remover wrench
+ 1 x Screwdriver
+ 1 x Instruction manual (English)

A good thing, four prop guards are included as well as four spare props.

OVERVIEW

The machine is a 100% direct rebranding of the MJX product. The EX2/B2 mini comes after the surprizing sucess of the Bugs B3… their first RTF brushless machine. Here the EX2 is more lighter and compact of course, a 220mm machine with 3″ props. As the Bugs3, the top canopy structure is very easy to extract thanks to the smart clip system. No real risk to loose midflight this part. It’s well designed.

-FRONT VIEW
The machine got four nylon based landing skid… more solid than the rest of the plastic struture. The general body is full plastic based. Flexible enough to handle moderate crash easily on soft/earth surfaces but don’t expect miracle at full speed against concrete.

-REAR VIEW
The EX2 dislike the Bugs3 with a EC2 connector got a proprieatary battery with a five pads connector.

The battery extraction requieres a bit some force….. More I regret the absence of small and simple power switch….

-UPPER VIEW

-BOTTOM VIEW

Four strong lights are located bottom ideal for LOS only flight applications. Good news, you can turn off them via a dedicated radio button.

-WEIGHT

About 180g with the battery…. so no problem for the 250g limitation.

Motors and props

The 1306 motos announced to be 2750Kv model.

Be aware, you need props with a thread of 4mm.

3″ bull noze props … efficient and silent in practice.

Larger props can be installed if required

LiPo

A 850Mah 2S LiPo model with 45C as discharge rate… Punch out are correct with….. and you can expect close to 9min of flight time with. Not so bad.

Use the special adaptor between the USB charger and the battery. A red light will flash when charging and will be off when it’s done. Expect more than 1h20 for a full charge.

Camera module

The AIO module is directly installed into the machine. It’s a basic 600TVL CMOS camera in NTSC only format with a builtin 24CH/25mW VTX… So no racerband supported…. The camera is powered via a 2p JST-ph connector… so it’s easy to install another module. In theory the camera can uptilted with a fixed 25-30 degrees angle….

The problem is with such angle, the field of view is partially occulted by the top canopy structure …. Weird ….

A unique button to control the AIO module. Short press to cycle withing the eight Vfreq inside the current selected band while long press permits to cycle between the four supported Vbands.

Disassembling

As expected, no hidden USB port for a potential connexion on a PC… so no possibility to tune some flight parameters. But…there is also a buzzer ringing in out of range and low battery conditions.

The 2.4G antenna is jailed into the front left arm.

Transmitter

A rounded chassis with four top parnel bouttons… two fake antennas. The sticks are basic…. with weak spring feedbacks.

The major novelty is the left vertical trim button used to select angle (1) and acro(2). The main constraint, the flight mode must be selected before to turn on both the EX2mini and the transmitter….

4xAA batteries are required to feed the transmitter. NiMh model are working with. The RF protocol is based on the A7105 RFchip… like the FlySky ADHDS/AFHDS-2A protocols. In practice, the control range is pretty good….

The L1 button engages 360 flips when the EX2 mini flies in angle mode only.

UNBOXING, ANALYSYS AND DEMO FLIGHT

Even if the machine is a pure RTF machine, you will need first to bind togather the transmitter with machine: turn on the quad then press and hold the top red button while powering the transmitter.

The first contact at least in angle (stablized) mode is good as the former MJX models…. it flies smootly… beautifully… By default the machine is in H (high speed) mode… The machine is fast but far to reach the top speed of any 3S FPV 3″ racers. It’s unfortunatly in practice confirmed that you can cycle mid-flight between angle and acro…. You will need first to land…. turn off everything…. It’s weird…. I guess the flight mode is transmitted during the binding sequence…. In angle mode, 360 automatic flip are super easy like for a small brushed quadcopters. When the acro mode is active…. first thing … when you push left or right the right stick for a roll…. the machine don’t roll instantaneously…. You will need to wait close to 1s to engage the mouvement….. definitively flip and roll rates are too slow in acro …. :(…. and no possibility to tune them.
Well at least there is an acro mode but with such rates …. forget to transform the EX2mini into a freestyle machine. The machine is also not eanough power for this. The main problems IHMO comes from the AIO FPV module…. Both the color rendition and the light sensitivity are poor …. Really disapointing even for a CMOS sensor.. More the Field of View is really narrow…. less than 90 degrees… Really incompatible for most FPV applications except in case of super wide open spaces…. To resume this module is crap… luckely another one can be easily installed. In term of advanced features associated with the EX2 protocol, the radio buzz when the quad battery is low or when the machine is close to be in out of range condition or when the batteries of transmitter are low. This feature is really in absence of real telemetry displayed informations. Probably these informations will be here if the machine is flown with compatible DeviationTX radio and the special build supporting the MJX protocol (https://www.deviationtx.com/forum/protocol-development/6696-mjx-bugs-3?start=340#70061)

CONCLUSIONS

I got a mixed feeling with this machine…. If the EX2mini is super compact RTF machine with a pretty angle mode… the acro is far to be optimized and the default FPV camera offers pretty poor performances…. incompatible with fast FPV session in low riding conditions for example. I recommand more this machine in basic edition without any FPV addings and install instead a real efficient AIO FPV module.

PROS

+ Great angle mode
+ Compact and Ready to fly
+ Brushless machine for beginners
+ Telemetry feedback (low battery and out of RC range)
+ 360 flip for a brusless machine
+ Protocol Deviated (Mostly)

CONS

– Full plastic based
– Proprietary battery
– No possibility to cycle mid-flight between angle and acro modes
– Slow pitch & low rates for acro mode (hard to flip and roll fast)
– Poor light sensitivity camera performances
– Narrow Field Of View incompatible with most of FPV practices
– No possibility to uptilt the camera without occlusion introduction due to the top canopy structure
– No possibility to tune any flight parameters

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 100USD at https://www.banggood.com/Eachine-EX2mini-Brushless-5_8G-FPV-Camera-With-Angle-Mode-Acro-Mode-RC-Drone-Quadcopter-RTF-p-1301880.html

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