Holy Stone HS720E Review 2023 (Everything You Should Know)

Hello, drone enthusiasts! Welcome to my Holy Stone HS720E review.

The Holy Stone HS720E is known to be one of the best drones Holy Stone has ever produced. I am going so far as to say the HS720E is the best drone you can find for its category and price.

Holy Stone is a Chinese drone manufacturer known for selling consumer drones at low prices to the general public. The Holy Stone brand is known for its excellent customer service. If any part of your drone is damaged or in need of replacement, do not fail to contact the company.

The Holy Stone HS720E is not without its quirks, but that does not make it one of the best drones anyone can own. The HS720E comes equipped with a lot of cutting-edge stuff like GPS, an optical flow sensor, a brushless motor, a 4K camera, and a 5GHz transmission.

It is a great budget drone for people who do not want to break the bank when buying their first drone.

In this Holy Stone HS720E review, I will go over the features and benefits of this beginner drone to show you if the drone is the right choice for you before you go ahead and purchase it.

Quick Overview of the Holy Stone HS720E

Holy Stone HS720E Review

The Holy Stone HS720E 4K camera is capable of taking pictures at 1080p at 60 fps and 4K at 30 fps. The HS720E camera has motorized parts that help with image stability and prevent shaky videos. The GPS and optical flow sensor help with flight stability, flight orbit, automatic landing, return to home, and altitude holding. With its “return to home” button, the chances of you losing your drone are almost non-existent unless you are actively trying.

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As I wrote earlier, the Holy Stone HS720E blurs the line between toy-grade drones and professional drones. However, this drone is perfect for professionals and beginners because of its easy user interface.

If you are in the market for a drone that you can practice with before moving on to a more professional drone, then the HS720E is the drone for you.

What’s Inside The Holy Stone HS720E Box

• 1 x Drone and Transmitter
•  2 x Drone Batteries
•  4 x Extra Propellers
•  1 x USB Charging Cable
•  1 x Charger Hub
•  1 x Screwdriver
•  1 x Instructions for Use
•  1 x Carrying Bag

Holy Stone HS720E Specifications

• Weight: 460 g/ 16.2 oz
• Dimension:173*104*56 mm(Folded);336*370*56 mm(Unfolded)
• Flight Time: 26 minutes
• Charging Time:5~7 hours
• FPV Distance:984~1640 feet
• Flight Distance:2624~3277 feet
• Camera Frequency:5Ghz
• Camera Angle:0° to -90°
• Video/photo Resolution: HD3840×2160P (stored in TF card); HD1920×1080P (stored on a mobile phone)
• Max Expansion:32GB TF Card (Not Included)

Features and Benefits of the Holy Stone HS720E

Let’s go over the features of the Holy Stone HS720E and its benefits to users.

Design and Build

The Holy Stone HS720E has a very compact and sturdy design. The HS720E camera is lodged underneath with a vibration-damping system that helps camera stability. This drone can be classified as a medium-sized drone with a measurement of 336*370*56 mm.

Just like most advanced Holy Stone drones, this one weighs more than 250 grams; this weight can be an advantage when flying in windy conditions, and even with its weight, the HS720E is pretty fast. Given that it weighs more than 250 grams, you will have to register it with the FAA before flying.

In the spirit of honesty, most drones are going to be difficult to fly in windy conditions. The HS720E does not fall into this category; with its powerful brushless motors, you can be assured of a stable and balanced flight.            

The detachable battery fits in a hole that can be found on the back of the drone, while the camera is fixed underneath the drone to give it enough clearance to capture footage from different angles.

Battery Flight Time

The Holy Stone HS720E is powered by a 7.4V, 2800mAh Li-Po battery, which gives it a flight time of 23 minutes, as opposed to the 26-minute flight time advertised on the sales page.

After testing, the Holy Stone HS720E battery takes around 3-4 hours to charge completely, which is one of the few cons of purchasing an HS720E. However, the H720 comes with two batteries.

You can always purchase an extra battery; that way, you have three batteries on hand. You get up to 46 minutes of flight time (two batteries), so purchasing extra batteries may be the way to go. The HS720E batteries have cool lights to indicate the battery power level  

Camera

The Holy Stone HS720E is equipped with a 4K camera with an operational frequency of 5 GHz that is sure to take decent shots and record video in ultra-clear 1080p. In all honesty, because there are phones with quality cameras nowadays, the drone footage may not be up to par.

The wide-angle lens has a 120-degree field of view that can capture maximum details in your shot, while the 90-degree adjustable camera lens can capture photos and videos from different perspectives.

The HS720E camera is equipped with a vibration-damping system to give some camera stability and overhead shots. Videos recorded on the drone SD card will have a higher resolution than those streamed and saved on your phone.

However, do not expect the videos to be of the same quality as those from other, significantly more expensive drones.

Remote Control

The Holy Stone HS720E remote is great to handle; it has a similar design to 175D drone remote controllers. 

The remote control is not difficult to figure out; it’s pretty straightforward, like the return home button, power button, take off button, and land button.

First, you have to unfold the controller. At the upper part are the antennae for Wi-Fi, then your phone holder, and at the lower part are the grip handles.  

The back of the remote controller holds the camera and video buttons (short press for a camera, long press for video). Still at the back of the remote controller, there is a button for changing the speed mode (the HS720E has a 2-speed mode) and a button dial to change the camera angle.

The front of the remote controller houses an LCD screen that displays signal strength and power levels. The upper left-hand side has the “take-off” button, and underneath that is the “lock and unlock” button (this button shuts down all of the drone propellers).

The upper right-hand side has the “power” button, and underneath it is the “return to home” button. On the side of the remote is the GPS button (ensure that the GPS button is switched on or else attitude hold and return to home will not be possible).

The remote control comes with two double A batteries. You have to download the Holy Stone drone app, which is available for both Android and iOS devices, to connect your smartphone to the drone and also utilize the FPV feature.

Control Range

The Holy Stone HS720E has a maximum range of 900 meters before it loses connection with your smartphone and remote control. The good thing about this drone is that it will continue to record footage even after it loses connection and save it to the SD card attached to the camera.

Another advantage of the Holy Stone HS720E is that it saves you money on repairs and replacements by automatically activating its Return to Home function during low battery, weak signal, or when flying out of range and returning to its initial launch position so you don’t lose it due to crashes and damages.

GPS-Assisted Flight Experience

The GPS-assisted flight feature provides you with accurate positioning details for your drone. If the GPS is on, it enables the return home function, just in case you lose sight of the drone.

Speed and Power

The Holy Stone HS720E comes with a 2-speed mode that can be adjusted from the remote controller to vary your speed during flight. Holy Stone doesn’t give a direct specification of the speed on the sales page, but many people who purchased the drone on Amazon have attested to how far it can go.

You should be careful about going into full-speed mode because it doesn’t have an obstacle avoidance mode. Plus, you’re more likely to collide with obstacles if you’re a beginner drone pilot. so, avoid places with trees.

Durability

Like most other drones, the Holy Stone HS720E is made of plastic (reinforced plastic). The drone is light and very easy to carry.

The Holy Stone HS720E is fairly durable, despite being made of light and strong plastic; it can even stay together after falling one or two times. However, you should take precautions.

Holy Stone HS720E Pros and Cons

Here, I’ll go over what I like and don’t like about the Holy Stone HS720E

Pros: What I Like About the Holy Stone HS720E

• The drone is pretty easy to fly.
• Its camera is pretty sharp
• The GPS signal is very strong and does not lag
• Its user interface is pretty basic, and novice fliers will quickly catch up.
• Very reliable and fun to use for beginners
• Doesn’t have glitches or problems.
• It comes right out of the box ready to use
• Very super simple to calibrate
• GPS mode enables precise positioning and prevents losing the drone
• Built-in altitude hold function allows the drone to fly while its height locked
• It has amazing specs like GPS, a “follows me” mode, a return to home, and intelligent batteries.
• Instruction manuals are easy to follow (they did a great job transmitting from Chinese to English)
• It records and saves your footage on both the SD card on the drone and your phone’s memory.

Cons: What I Don’t Like About The Holy Stone HS720E

• It can be difficult to fly in high winds.
• The phone holder on the remote controller is not really efficient
• The 4k camera drains the battery power faster
• It doesn’t have obstacle avoidance mode. This means you have to fly the drone in open areas without lamp posts, tall buildings, electricity lines, trees, and other obstacles.

Holy Stone HS720E Set Up

I’ll go over some basic setups for the Holy Stone HS720E if you’re a beginner drone pilot who doesn’t know how to set up the drone. However, you’ll have to exercise patience so you don’t screw things up.

1. Charging the Holy Stone HS720E

The first step is to charge the Holy Stone HS720E drone battery with the USB cord. Unfortunately, only one USB cable is provided in the package, so you’ll either have to wait for one of them to get full before charging the other or simply buy another USB cable.

2. Assembling the Holy Stone HS720E

Putting on the propellers: This shouldn’t be too difficult. Holy Stone provided a magnetic screwdriver to help in attaching the screws to prevent them from falling off. They also provided extra screws in case you misplaced some while attaching the propellers to the body of the drone.

Install the propeller guards if you want

Insert the charged battery in the battery slot of the drone

3. Pairing the Holy Stone HS720E With Your Smartphone

The next step is to pair the Holy Stone HS720E drone with your smartphone

1) Download the Holy Stone app on your phone – free

2) Turn on the controller.

3) Switch on the drone’s battery. The battery’s lights will show the charge level; four lights indicate a full charge. Before successful pairing and calibration, the drone’s lights will flash white and pink/red.

4) Go to the WiFi section of your phone’s settings and choose the Holy Stone WIFI signal.

5) Click the “Enter Device” button in the app’s first page’s center after launching the Holy Stone app.

4. Calibrating the GPS of the Holy Stone HS720E

This is the final step you have to take before you can begin flying the drone.

Step #1: Switch on your drone and the remote controller, and flip the joysticks upwards when everything is on.

Step #2: Rotate the drone counterclockwise while it is on the ground by standing above it, looking down at it from above, and rotating it while it is on the ground as if you were turning off a faucet. When this is successful, two of the drone’s lights ought to cease flashing and go blue.

Step #3: Turn the drone 90 degrees so that it is on its side, then spin it so that the propeller guards are perpendicular to the ground and rotating in a plane that is parallel to the ground. The second time you correctly spin the drone, the second pair of lights will cease flashing and turn white. So, the drone’s four lights—two of which are white and two of which are blue—are all solid and not flashing.

Step #4: Press the joystick in and flip it down to switch on the propellers. With that, your drone is ready for flight.

Simply step outdoors and choose a space free of obstructions like telephone or power wires.

Best Alternatives to the Holy Stone HS720E

In this section, I’ll share with you three alternatives to the Holy Stone HS720E to give you more options:

1. Holy Stone HS720E (Best Overall Holy Stone Drone)

In my opinion, the Holy Stone HS720E is the best holy stone drone. It’s easy to use, has advanced flight mode, & comes with dual batteries for a more fun time and a 4K EIS anti-shake camera with a Sony sensor

2. DJI Mavic Mini (Best DJI Alternatives)

The DJI Mavic Mini is my best DJI alternative to the Holy Stone HS720E. What I like about the Mavic Mini is that it has a long flight time of 30 minutes. Not just that, it comes with a triple battery for triple the fun and a 2.7K HD camera attached to a 3-axis gimbal that provides camera stability and smooth footage.

3. Holy Stone HS430 (Best Budget Holy Stone Drone)

The Holy Stone HS430 is my best-budget Holy Stone drone. It’s pocket-sized, easy to use, and comes with all the basic features and functions of premium drones on the market without the expensive price tag.

Holy Stone HS720E Safety Tips

Below are some safety tips you should be aware of before flying your Holy Stone HS720E to ensure a fun and safe flight for you and everyone around you:

• For your safety and that of the drone, avoid flying near or over obstacles, high-voltage power lines, crowds, trees, water bodies, and airports.
• The minimum recommended flying age for the HS720E is 16 years.
• You’re advised to fly in open areas, where you can maintain a line of sight and preferably below heights of 120 meters.
• Be careful with rotating motors and propellers, and keep a distance to avoid ear damage by the drone’s nose.
• Avoid flying in extreme weather conditions such as rain, fog, snow, and strong wind.
• Avoid flying the drone when tired, under the influence of alcohol, under medication, or when in any physical discomfort.
• Keep the drone clean and well-maintained.
• Read the user manual thoroughly before flying the HS720E.
• Follow the battery safety rules as outlined in the user manual.
• Fly the drone with a fully charged battery, and perform all the recommended pre-flight procedures before takeoff.
• Follow your local laws on drone flying, and avoid flying in No-Fly zones.
• Always check the drone, controller, and battery for damages and correct installation before a flight.
• The onboard compass can be affected by electromagnetic fields near base stations or power lines.

Final Thoughts on the Holy Stone HS720E

Overall, the Holy Stone HS720E is regarded as one of the best drones ever produced by the Holy Stone brand. The HS720E can easily pass as a professional drone and is my personal favorite Holy Stone drone. Its advanced GPS technology makes it easy to handle, and the flight is seamless.

The HS720E is not perfect, but it will surely fulfill your flight needs. Its flight time, flight handle, camera, and several other tweaks make it one of the cutting-edge drones out there. I recommend getting a more professional drone (see the alternative drones above).

You can also check out the best Holy Stone drones to see the reviews of various drones from the Holy Stone series to see the benefits they have in store for you.

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