Eachine E58 Drone Review

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The Eachine E58 has the features of a premium drone but at a budget price. What can you actually do with it and does it live up to expectations? How does it work and what do you need to know?
If you want to get into drone flying without forking out a big wad of cash, then you won’t go wrong with this model. With the design and styling imitating the well-known DJI Mavic, we took a closer look at what you get for your money.
We can recommend this little beauty as an entry-level drone, but read on and judge for yourself.
The main attributes the Eachine E58 drone offers include:
• A capable flyer (unless it’s windy!).
• Good feature set but without all the bells and whistles.
• Records and streams images and video in first-person view.
• Average image quality.
• Affordable entry-level drone.

The Eachine E58 Drone in a Nutshell

The Eachine E58 WIFI FPV is a budget and pocket-sized drone that unfolds into a small quadcopter with a built-in 720p camera. The video of the gimballed camera can be recorded directly onto a Micro SD card and, at the same time, streamed to your smartphone.

The remote controller has two joysticks to control the flight. Plus, there’s a number of buttons to adjust trim and special flight modes, including a 360-degree flip. Without GPS capability, the drone uses atmospheric pressure to maintain altitude.

What Can You Do With the Eachine Drone?

The designers of this drone certainly didn’t hold back, and squeezed nearly everything you could wish for into the box, at least for a drone at a budget price. What’s most astounding is that the folded machine can still fit into the palm of your hand.

But these days, it’s easy to use a long list of jargon to impress the punters with. You’ll probably be more interested to know what you can actually do with this little power box.

Let’s take a look.

Get Flying

You could carry the drone in your shirt pocket since the arms and props fold in snugly to give you a small compact unit. Because the dual prop blades are not fixed, they simply fold back together with the arms without any sharp blades sticking out. Turn the motors on and the centrifugal force holds the blades in the right position.

Launch the drone automatically by pressing a dedicated button on the controller. The drone will lift about a metre into the air where it will hover and wait for you. The same also works in reverse, with another dedicated button on the controller to return the drone back to the ground.

The E58 will hold its altitude level while flying, at least as much as is possible. The altitude control uses pressure but is sensitive to wind.

Easy Control

You can steer the drone from your perspective, where pushing the joystick towards you makes the drone come towards you, rather than surging back from whatever direction it may happen to be facing. With a quadcopter like this one, it can be hard to make the head or tail out so the headless mode is a real sanity saviour.

Or you can physically move your phone in the air to steer the drone with gravity control (gyro sensor).

First-Person View

Get a live view while flying using the app and a Wi-Fi connection to the onboard camera. You can turn the headless mode off and fly visually in heads up mode.

Or fly point of view using a 3D mask with your phone showing a split-view display.

Aerobatics

Draw a trajectory on your app and let the drone follow it automatically at the selected speed.

To roll the E58 drone through a 360-degree loop, press another dedicated button.

Choose one of three speed settings to fly slowly to manoeuvre it around obstacles or speed up to catch up with a faster-moving target.

Aerial Photography

Put the drone in hover mode to take sharp photographs, especially in marginal lighting conditions. This is simply achieved by enabling altitude hold in windless conditions.

Get a 120-degree wide angle photo with the built-in camera.

Take action videos while you’re flying using the drone’s video camera.

Record live footage sent to your phone while recording high-quality images and videos on a Micro SD card (not included) inserted into the drone itself.

So What Can You Not Do With the Eachine E58?

Perhaps the designers ran out of space, but some form of collision avoidance would have made this model perfect. Video stabilization is another useful feature that is missing. And maybe more extravagant but also very useful would have been a built-in follow me mode.

The Inner Workings of the Eachine Drone

Let’s take a closer look at some of the capabilities of the Eachine E58 drone.

What’s Included in the Package?

Out of the box, the drone comes fully assembled with its remote control, optional prop guards and two spare sets of props. Also included are three batteries and a USB charging cable.

How Do You Control the Eachine E58?

The flight controller uses two joysticks along with a number of dedicated buttons. It feels comfortable in your hands and has all the controls necessary at your fingertips.

The left-hand stick sets elevation up or down and the basic forward and backward movement at the set speed. You similarly use the sticks to turn left and right, or fly the quadcopter sideways.

The speed lever can be set at three positions from slow to fast. You can keep it easy to control at low speed and then increase speed at two settings 60 percent and 100 percent to reach or follow a fast-moving object, or to counter stronger wind.

You can also take photos or video using a button on the side of the controller.

The controller takes three off-the-shelf AA batteries, which you need to buy separately.

The range of the controller is about 80 metres. If you use the app to control the drone, you have different options, but keep in mind that the Wi-Fi range at 30 metres or so is much more limited.

So How Long Will It Fly For?

The million-pound question. That depends on how you fly it of course, but 7–9 minutes is a reasonable expectation. It does make a big difference if you use the phone app with Wi-Fi, which will cost you a few minutes of flying time.

How Does the Camera Work?

You can adjust the camera angle manually from straight down all the way to directly forwards.

Camera resolution is adequate but not excellent at 2MP 720p. We would have preferred a 1024p version.

Images and videos are stored in the onboard Micro SD card, which prevents transmission lags affecting the recording quality.

What About the Lights?

There are two white front LED lights and a red one at the rear—very intuitive and helpful to make out the orientation of the drone. The lights flash when the battery runs low.

How Does the Drone Connect to My Phone?

The drone links to the phone via direct Wi-Fi, which is fully independent of the internet and any Wi-Fi router. The 2.4 GHz protocol used minimizes interference.

How Are the Batteries Charged?

Batteries for the drone are included and can be charged in place with a standard USB cable and any regular USB charger, even a cigarette lighter adapter or a laptop USB port. Allow an hour or a little more for the light on the battery to indicate a full charge.

The USB cable plugs straight into the batteries—it couldn’t be simpler. We do recommend investing in some spare batteries to gain more flying time when you’re out and about. Click Here to Check Battery Prices

What Are the Technical Specs?

According to Eachine, the basic specifications for the Eachine E85 drone are:

• Take-off weight: about 120g.
• Size with arms extended but without guards: 27 x 19.5 x 5 cm.
• Size fully folded: 12.5 x 7.5 x 5 cm.
• Remote control distance: 80–100 m.
• First-person video (Wi-Fi) range: about 30 m.
• Radio control: 4 channels.
• Gyro: 6 axis.
• Motor: 0720 Coreless Motor.

Are Spare Parts Available?

You can order new arms with motors cheaply online. In fact, we recommend you get some spares to carry in your kit, along with some extra batteries. Check out the Drone Accessories Kit, which comes with four landing gears, four protective covers and four propellers.

Tips for Using the Eachine E58

1. Make sure the battery, SD card and prop guards are fully attached.

2. If the on/off button on your phone wedges against the controller when you put it on the phone mount, tape some pieces of foam or cardboard on the phone to prevent that.
3. Keep an eye on the Wi-Fi signal strength. Once it descends to 1 bar, bring the drone closer immediately.

Pros and Cons

Our Eachine E58 review to this point has highlighted the strengths and weaknesses, but let’s summarize the key points here to help you make a good buying decision.

Pros

• Compact design.
• Easy to fly.
• Automatic take-off and landing.
• Altitude hold.
• Wi-Fi first-person view.
• Emergency kill button.
• Arms with motors can easily be replaced.
• Affordable price.
• Stable flyer.

Cons

• Proprietary battery.
• Poorly written user manual, small print.
• Plastic parts do break in collisions.
• Handles poorly in wind.
• No GPS, video stabilization, follow me mode or collision avoidance.
• If it goes out of range, the E58 drone risks just falling to the ground or disappearing.

Product Reviews

The Eachine E85 has been on the market for a couple of years now, so flying experience has accumulated. Overall, users report that they consider the Eachine drone very good value for money.

Some users have had negative experiences, however. For some part this has been due to the poor instruction manual, which is so small to be nearly illegible and written in very poor English.

Those users who took their time getting to know the unit before heading outdoors in difficult conditions had much better experiences. It is good to know, for example, that the Eachine E85 will attempt an emergency landing when it loses contact with the controller, which in some terrain could lead to loss of the flyer.

Others reported more seriously that the machine had just flown off. Whether it simply did an emergency landing out of sight or actually flew until its battery died is unclear.

FAQ

Can You Trim the Quadcopter?

There are dedicated buttons on the controller that allow you to adjust trim in flight to compensate for windy conditions.

Is There an Emergency Stop?

Just press and hold the return button to stop the engines in an emergency.

Does It Come With Video Stabilisation?

No, it doesn’t, but the altitude hold and built-in gyroscope do a good job maintaining the Eachine E58 in position to take clear panorama shots. Of course, if it’s windy, that makes it a lot harder.

Can You Change the Camera Angle in Flight?

No, this has to be done manually before take-off.

Is There a Warranty?

If you buy the Eachine E58 on Amazon, then you have a 30-day right of return.

Where Can You Buy It?

You can get the Eachine E58 drone on Amazon.

​Our Verdict

The feature-rich Eachine drone is an excellent entry-level drone enabling you to learn and explore key functions without breaking the bank. Either you’ll be satisfied with the feature set and quality at this price, or you will learn what matters to you when the time comes to invest in premium drone technology. Just keep in mind that the flight time, picture quality and features will reflect the price you pay.