Having heard good things about the S107G Syma RC Helicopter, I thought I ought to check it out.
I was a bit worried when the box turned up as it says for kids aged 14+ and Ben (my son) is only 10, albeit going on 35.
Opening the box did nothing to allay my fears as the actual helicopter looks very fragile in real life. Being a micro helicopter, it is also pretty small so sits happily in the palm of your hand.
As such my husband had the first go as I thought Ben might smash it into bits before I got a chance to take some video. I should have known better as hubby managed to crash it straight away anyway. Luckily it is very durable so survived and Ben then got his turn where a few more crashes later, it is still in one piece – phew.
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The Technical Stuff
This is a micro coaxial Syma RC helicopter. It is hobby grade so is one step up from a toy helicopter. This basically means you can replace parts that get damaged or if you want to make modifications.
The best bit for beginners is that it has a built in Gyro. This stabilizes the spin and ensures it stays on course going in the direction you want.
The remote control has 3 channels so you have control over height, speed and direction. A 4 channel helicopter would have additional control over bank/roll.
You can turn it 360 degrees as well as up and down.
There is no assembly required but the remote control does need batteries.
It is made from a mixture of plastic and metal and is designed to withstand crashes.
The range of the remote control is 30ft.
You can choose from 2 frequencies allowing you to fly 2 helicopters at once.
The infra red remote does not work well in sunlight so this is an indoor toy.
Other Syma Military Models
For something that looks a bit more like its from the range of toy army vehicles, take a look at these other Syma helicopters:
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Syma S107 Review
So was it really as great as many hundreds of reviewers had promised? Yes it was! Watch it in action on our video or read the transcript at the end of the review.
Pros
Costing around $20 this Syma helicopter is great value for money.
It is lots of fun and the control functions are easy to learn. The sensitivity of the controls does take a bit of getting used to though. If you’re too heavy handed you’ll crash into the ceiling or floor very quickly. Small adjustments are all that is needed.
It is quite quick to get up and running, especially if you have pre-planned the initial charge.
The Syma S107 battery charges via a USB cable to your computer. You can also charge it up from the battery powered remote control which I can see would be good if you were out and about with it, although I imagine it would deplete the batteries pretty quickly. If you don’t have your computer on all the time, you might consider buying an AC plug to USB adapter.
Whilst not indestructible the helicopter is more durable than it looks. It has had some big crashes and other than tweaking the tail blade a bit it has survived. There is a metal casing that protects the innards which seems to do its job nicely. The blades seem to take care of themselves and don’t break. I think being lightweight with a sturdy frame and only moderate power means that it cannot crash too heavily.
The Syma S107 RC helicopter only flies for 6-7 minutes at a time but I actually think this is a pro because if my son had played with it for a few hours non-stop he probably wouldn’t have gone back to it for a few days but now when its charging he keeps checking on it so he can go and have another 6 minute fix when it’s ready.
The in built gyro means that the helicopter does not spin out of control so it can be controlled and flown very precisely. It is versatile, flies well in the direction you tell it to and is very responsive to the remote control. It is very easy to keep in a hover without moving forwards when you’ve had a bit of practice. All in all it is ideal for novices.
There is an adjustment knob on the remote to correct slight directional issues (see image of Trim Control below). In other words if you push the forwards lever but the helicopter veers off slightly to the right or left you can adjust the knob to get the helicopter back on track.
It is fairly quiet when flying.
If the worst does come to the worst, Syma S107 parts and spares are readily available. You can easily find rotor blades, tail blades, connect buckles, USB charger, tail parts etc so there is no need to throw the whole thing in the bin. They are also very cheap.
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Cons
I messed up and bought a product on Amazon that said “colors may vary“. As such we got yellow when my son would have preferred red. You can get red, yellow and blue, so double check which one you are buying.
Out of the box it needs to charge. Of course us adults understand this, but a 10 year old does not. So if you are buying this as a gift, you might want to charge it, then stick it back in the box and wrap it at the last minute.
The Syma S107G helicopter takes 40-50 minutes to charge and this will last for 6-7 minutes of flying. Again to a 10 year old this seems terrible but it does keep him keen for the next flight.
It only works indoors as direct sunlight interferes with the remote control. You also need to avoid AC, heating or fans indoors as the airflow affects the flying. Depending on where you fly the Syma S107 indoors, you may want to cover up furniture so that it does not get scratched.
The plastic charging socket on the helicopter itself is twinned with a plastic mate on the USB lead. The resulting fit is not as tight as I’d like although it seems to work.
The Syma S107G manual’s translation into English is pretty bad. Here are some gems – and no it is not my bad typing – “When the helicopter flies steadity, you can showly push” – ha ha!
It needs 6 AA batteries for the remote control – blimey! That depleted our supplies.
You need quite a bit of space indoors to fly it more easily, especially at first. Somewhere where you have no precious ornaments and the like is probably best.
Things I Think You Might Find Useful To Know
It is quite tiny. Check it out compared to an apple below. It measures 22cm long, 3.8cm wide and 9.8cm high. The rotor diameter is 19cm.
Battery care – this is the most important bit of advice I can give you.
- Never fly the helicopter until it is completely flat. Time yourself and limit the flying time to 5 minutes.
- Allow the battery to cool down for 5 minutes between charging and flying (so after flying and after charging).
- Unplug the helicopter from charge as soon as the red light comes on. (The lights are a bit confusing – basically when you plug the cable into the computer the light comes on. When you plug the helicopter into the other end, the light goes out. When the helicopter is charged, the light comes on again!)
You can see how the controls work on our video above but this picture also shows them:
- The left hand lever moves the helicopter up and down vertically.
- The right hand lever is directional, so front, back, left and right.
- The smaller knob in the center is the trim control. This corrects the flight path of the helicopter if it is veering off to one side when you are supposedly flying straight ahead. Only small adjustments are needed if any.
The hardest thing I found was that the direction works relative to the helicopter. So it is advisable to stand behind the helicopter and then forwards is forwards as you would expect. But if you then turn the helicopter back round to face you, the forwards lever will now bring it back towards you. My natural instinct was to point the lever towards me (ie backwards) but this sent the helicopter backwards into the wall – oops!
Avoid hovering the helicopter too close to the ground on take off and landing as the air currents affect the stability. So go up quickly but immediately release the throttle or it will shoot into the ceiling.
Start off slowly with these practise exercises so you can get used to it and don’t damage it beyond recognition straight out of the box:
- move up and down and left and right;
- go in circuits (left and right);
- perform figure of eights.
When you are about to crash, which at some point you definitely will be(!), kill the throttle to prevent damage.
Pick the helicopter up by the main body not the blades or tail.
You will notice the battery power depleting as you get close to the end of the charge. Initially when the battery is full, the helicopter takes of rapidly (too rapidly sometimes!), but as the battery drains the helicopter will not be able to fly as high and when it is about to run out, the helicopter will barely get off the ground. But as noted above, you should not run the battery down this much if you want it to last a long time.
Fun ideas
Obviously flying around the same room all the time might get a bit boring after a while, so set up some obstacles, activities or helipads from books or stools etc. As you can see on the video, we have a martial arts mat so we set up mini tests where we had to take off from one mat, fly to the edge of the room, turn around and land on a different mat.
As you get more experienced you can come up with your own more advanced flight skills competitions or just fly room to room.
Syma S107 Mods
We’re not really at the stage of needing to modify or repair anything yet but if you are then KillBuckets.com has a few great mod tutorials. These include:
- Become a Syma S107 mechanic with this step by step teardown.
- Remove the throttle return springs to allow for thumbs-off flying.
- Replace the LiPo Battery.
- Replace a flybar.
Overall
The Syma S107G helicopter would be an ideal learner level helicopter or one to practice with before spending your savings on a more expensive model. It will stand up to a bit of abuse while you learn to fly!
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Video Transcript
This is a video made by me and my Dad on how to fly the Syma S1076 [Edit: the box looks like S1076 but it’s actually S107G] Gyroscope system.
Before you fly the helicopter make sure that you get to know the controls properly. On the left you have the up and down key. This will basically lift you off the ground and hover you above the ground. Try not to push it too far up or you may go into the ceiling or if you’re outside who knows where you’ll end up. That’s the left hand key.
Here is an example of how to hover the helicopter so just pretty much using the up and down control as previously shown this is the helicopter taking off and hovering around the room. There are a very few slight adjustments to direction to stop it veering off but as you can see this is pretty much only using the left hand key. It takes a bit of practice to keep it at a certain level otherwise it does tend to go up and down but once you’ve got the hang of it you’ll soon get used to it. And that’s just using the left key.
Secondly you’ll need to get to grips with the directional control. The directional control works as you’d expect. Forwards is forwards. Backwards is backwards. Left is left and right is right. This is one of those controls that can move in any direction so it doesn’t have to be perfectly right or left or forwards or backwards. So do practice with this before you actually set off with your first flight.
Here is a small hop forwards. And here is a small hop backwards. Here we can see the directional commands in operation – the simple left manoeuvre followed by here we go a simple right manoeuvre. You can see its very straight forward.
If you find the helicopter veers off in one direction to the left or to the right then this is what the central control here is for. If you turn it to the left it will actually stop the helicopter from veering to the right and vice versa for the other direction. Use this carefully as only a small adjustment may be needed.
In this clip we’re looking at the left and right adjustment control. I’ve left the sound on on this clip so that parents can see exactly how loud the copter is. Here we can see the copter is actually rotating to the right so we’ve corrected it and now it’s staying just about perfect. So you will need to take some time to get this control exactly right. It’s the control at the centre of the console itself. Just play with it until you get it perfect and you’ll have hours of fun using this. As you can hear the helicopter isn’t very loud and your child or yourself in fact should have hours and hours of fun with it.
Finally this last clip is to show you how my son who is 10 years old after probably an hour’s worth of flying can control a helicopter in a very very small room. So you can see how easy it is for your child to get to grips with this. As you can see he’s just spinning it round here but keeping it very central and moving it backwards, forwards, left and right within a space of probably around 15 x 12 feet. Just do be careful when you first learn to fly this because once it’s hit a wall a couple of times it might not be coming back again.
We’d like to thank you for spending your time to see this review of this Syma Gyroscope and hope you have hours and hours of fun with it as we already have. Thank you very much.