The worst part of drone flying is that it’s almost impossible in windy, cold, wet, or snowy conditions.
An indoor drone allows you to fly whenever you want, is a ton of fun, and are great starter drones for beginners!
Here are the best indoor drones to help you get your drone journey off the ground, fly inside, and have fun no matter the weather!.
Why Learn How to Fly Drones on an Indoor Drone?
I think that getting an indoor drone is by far the best way for new pilots to learn how to fly a drone.
Since you can fly the drone indoors, you don’t have to worry about losing the drone while you are still getting used to flying.
These drones are also really small and have protection around the propellers to make them safer to fly around people and property, so you don’t need to worry about damaging anything
Also, indoor drones are cheap and very durable, so they will last you through hundreds of crashes until you’ve fully mastered how to fly!
What are Toy Grade drones?
Before we dive into the best indoor drones you can get, let’s talk about what a toy drone is for a second because most professional drone pilots all start with a cheap toy-grade drone they got from Amazon or Walmart for less than $50.
Toy-grade drones are basic quadcopters. They usually have brushed motors, a plastic frame, and a very simple radio controller.
Since there isn’t as much to them, toy-grade drones are really durable and can handle hundreds of crashes.
Best Mini Indoor Drones
Here are the best mini indoor drones. If you’re looking for a drone with a camera or that can be flown from FPV, check out the next two categories!
All of these drones have headless mode, which means you can fly the drone without worrying about what direction it’s facing, making it a lot easier to fly.
They also all have altitude hold, auto takeoff, and landing, and all except the first can do cool flips!
Potensic A20 Mini Drone – Tried and Trusted
This tiny drone from Potensic is one of the most popular mini indoor drones out there. This is a small brushed ‘whoop’ style drone, which means it has ducts around the propellers.
It is very safe to fly inside and is light enough to handle crashing over and over again.
You get three batteries in the kit, making it perfect for getting in lots of practice flying a drone. There are also 3 different speeds, so you can go faster as you get more confident!
This mini indoor drone has things like altitude hold, auto take-off, and auto-landing to make it even easier to get used to flying a drone. Altitude hold is useful because it will keep the drone stable and level in the air. This will help you to learn throttle control, which is a big part of flying a drone.
| Price | $29.99 |
| Batteries | 3 |
ATOYX Mini Drone
This drone is really similar to the one listed above, but it can also do cool flips!
Aside from doing cool flips, the ATOYX mini drone also has a different remote controller, with a few extra buttons for controlling the flips.
It’s also currently two dollars cheaper than the Potensic drone above, making this a steal of a deal.
| Price | $27.99 |
| Batteries | 3 |
NEHEME NH320 Plus Mini Drone – Best Protection
This is another whoop-style mini indoor drone that is perfect for beginners.
It’s even safer than the first two drones because it fully covers the propellers! You can crash this over and over again and have zero chance of hurting yourself or others.
We think this is perfect for young kids around 4-10 years of age because of the extra safety.
The biggest weakness of this drone is that it only comes with two batteries.
| Price | $29.99 |
| Batteries | 2 |
NEHEME NH330 Mini Drone – Best Batteries
This drone is a completely different design than the NH320 above. It still uses a cage to cover the propellers but doesn’t cover as much of them as the NH320.
The main benefit of less protection is that the drone is lighter, and will probably fly longer than the NH320.
What makes this drone so awesome are the batteries. The NH330 uses a battery that slides into the drone which makes it much easier for younger children to power the drone up and will prevent any damage to the battery or drone.
| Price | $32.99 |
| Batteries | 2 |
Sansico A31 Mini LED Drone – Looks the Coolest!
For older kids over 12, this is a great upgrade from the small drones we have looked at so far.
The Sansico drone is larger than something like the Potensic A20 but is still made to be an inside drone. A larger drone is great for older pilots because it will have more power and be more challenging, helping to develop flying skills faster.
The Sansico A31 also looks really cool, with multi-colored LEDs on all of the motors, making it possible to learn to fly even with the lights off!
Three different speeds are included, so you pick between flying slow or fast.
The main downside of this drone is that it has no protection over the top of the props and only comes with two batteries.
| Price | $45.99 |
| Batteries | 2 |
Best Indoor Drones with a Camera
While we don’t really recommend starting out with a drone with a camera, there are still some really good options for beginner indoor drones if you have your heart set on capturing some footage.
At this price, any footage you get is going to be very low quality. It’s fun to see some of your recorded flights, but just don’t expect to get anything you can upload to social media.
These drones still have the same altitude hold, auto takeoff and landing, and headless functions as the ones without a camera.
Sanrock U61W Mini Drone – Fly Missions!
The U61W from SANROCK is another small whoop-style drone with ducts around the propellers and can record in 720p.
The drone streams video to an app on your phone, and even though the footage isn’t the highest quality, it’s still great to record your learning to fly journey.
You can even set waypoints so the drone will automatically fly a set path that you choose.
The camera uses WiFi to send live feed back to your phone. There will be a slight delay, so it’s not really ideal for flying and is more just a novelty.
Because it is more complicated, this drone is less durable than other toy-grade drones. For the price, it’s a great deal for anyone wanting an indoor camera drone with some extra features to play around with.
| Price | $59.99 |
| Batteries | 2 |
Cheerwing CW10 Mini Drone – Cheapest Indoor Drone with a Camera
This drone from Cheerwing is the cheapest camera drone we could find. It’s great for people who want a drone with a camera that will teach them the basics of flying a camera drone.
Like the drone above, the footage isn’t really usable for uploading to social media. It’s more of a novelty that makes learning to fly more fun!
This is yet another whoop-style drone with ducts, meaning it’s safe to fly indoors and even smaller and lighter than the SANROCK camera drone.
You get 3 batteries with this kit so you will get lots of flights in a row, but be careful with plugging in the batteries, because reversing them will break the drone’s electronics instantly.
| Price | $33.98 |
| Batteries | 3 |
Best Indoor FPV Drones
Flying drones indoors with FPV (first-person view) goggles is a blast, and you can set up your own racetrack with household items!
FPV is a very tricky hobby, but these Ready to Fly or RTF kits are a great option because they come with everything you need to fly your FPV drone without the need for hours of research.
Makerfire Micro FPV Indoor FPV Drone
The Makerfire Micro is the cheapest indoor FPV drone on our list.
This tiny FPV drone has all the same features of the toy-grade drones like altitude hold, one key take off/landing, ducts around the props and it also has a cool shark style design.
The main difference between those drones and this one is the FPV camera and goggles.
This camera gives a low latency video feed back to the goggles that come in the kit. You don’t need your phone like with the WiFi drones we saw earlier.
Simply plug in the drone, power on the goggles and you will see what the drone sees in real-time! This is what makes flying FPV so fun, you end up feeling like you are in the drone itself while you are flying around.
This is the perfect drone to try out FPV without having to spend too much money.
| Price | $110.99 |
| Batteries | 1 (you can buy extras) |
Emax EZ Pilot Indoor FPV Drone
Emax has been making FPV drones for years. They are a company that is known for making easy-to-use, beginner-friendly drone kits like the popular Tinyhawk 3.
The EZ Pilot is the most beginner-friendly drone Emax has ever made. It is a small whoop-style drone and has 3 different special modes that help a new pilot get better as they fly.
Mode 1 uses just 1 of the sticks on the radio to fly the drone and allows anyone to start flying right away.
Mode 2 uses both sticks, which gives you more control over the drone. In this mode, the drone will assist you and will level itself if you let go of the sticks.
The final mode will allow you to do things like flips and rolls and have more manual control over the drone.
Emax really put a lot of thought into this kit and it’s perfect for new FPV pilots who just want to learn the basics of flying an FPV drone.
The goggles and radio in the kit are fairly good quality, but only the goggles can be used with other FPV drones.
| Price | $155.99 |
| Batteries | 1 (you can buy extras) |
BETAFPV Cetus Indoor FPV Drone
The BetaFPV Cetus RTF kit is a big step up in quality compared to the Makerfire drone, and a fantastic investment for a beginner FPV pilot.
This kit comes with a decent set of goggles and a much better quality radio. Both of these can even be used to fly other FPV drones as well.
The drone that comes in the kit is more of a traditional FPV style of whoop and is very different from all of the toy-grade drones we have covered so far. It’s basically the closest you can come to an FPV drone without needing to worry about setting it up on a computer.
There are 3 different flight modes for every level of skill. Normal mode, Sport mode, and manual mode.
Normal mode is perfect for beginners and uses altitude hold to keep things steady. Sport mode is just faster than mode, and manual mode allows almost full control over the drone.
This makes it perfect for new pilots who want to learn how to fly a full FPV drone without all of the other complicated things that come with normal FPV drones.
This kit comes with a nice storage case to keep everything together.
| Price | $191.99 |
| Batteries | 2 |
New Indoor Drone Owner Tips
Here are some helpful tips when getting your first indoor drone.
- Buy two because they are so cheap! You can fly with a friend, and have a full set of spare parts to fix your drone if you damage it.
- Fly every day! The more you fly the more comfortable you will become.
- Don’t be afraid of crashing! Drones are designed to stand up to a lot of abuse. The more you crash the more you will learn not to crash that same way next time
Final Thoughts
Our pick for the best beginner drone goes to the Potensic Upgraded A20 Mini Drone. It’s cheap, durable, and easy to find online.
As for the camera drones, we like the SANROCK U61W Mini Drone because of its child-friendly batteries.
For FPV drones it is hard to look past the Emax EZ Pilot FPV Drone. It is cheaper than the BetaFPV kit and has 3 flight modes designed for new pilots.
Hopefully, we made choosing your first indoor drone a little easier. Let us know what your favorite one is in the comments!
Happy flying!