A flight controller controls the functioning of the drone. Without the best drone flight controller, you might fail to enjoy a smooth flight. As with this device only, you give instructions to your drone to move in a certain direction. We tested the limitless options in the market before coming to this list. Our research and expert consultation suggest, DJI Naza-M V2 is the best drone flight controller in the market.
Table of Contents
Our Top Choices
Best Drone Flight Controller
1. DJI Naza-M V2 – Best Flight Controller For Camera Drone
- DJI Naza-M V2 & GPS Combo in Original Sealed Box.
- Included in the box:
- NAZA M V2 MC - GPS - LED - PMU - Accessories
Naza-M V2 is a popular flight controller manufactured by the most popular drone company DJI. The device comes with GPS support. You can expect a high-quality drone flight control with this. This can be the desirable choice for any camera drone or for stable aerial photography. It also has 2-axis gimbal stabilization to make you flight much more smooth and easy to control. Although it comes to be a little expensive but it comes handy later for add-ons.
The new DJI offers better stabilization, automatic compass compensation, and a better take-off mode. The device is compatible with DJI video downlink, iOSD, gimbals, and other products. It also supports 9-different multi-rotor configurations. It has everything to help you drive safely.
- Highly stable
- Multiple flight control mode
- Flight controller with GPS
- Easy to deploy
- Expensive
Bottom Line
If you are looking for a best flight controller that works for almost all the events be it sports flying, aerial photography, surveying, or anything else Naza-M V2 is a great choice.
2. PIXHAWK PX4 2.4.8 – Best Flight Controllers For Racing Drone
- ★The advanced 32-bit ARM CortexM4 high-performance processors, can run NuttX RTOS...
- ★★★Please do not use Qground but use Mission planner.
- ★★★We have M8N GPS for the Pixhawk flight controller,ASIN : B01KK9A8QG.
Pixhawk PX4 2.4.8 is an integrated multithreading. It is based on the rapidly evolving Ardupilot mega or an open-source 3DR robotics. With this best flight controller, you can convert any fixed-wing, rotart-wing, or multirotor vehicle in to a fully autonomous vehicle. You can perform a variety of tasks with it from sport photography, videography, programmed GPS missions with its optional GPS module, surveillance, etc. It is one of the best flight controller for autonomous drones.
While testing we got to know, it has advantages like integrated multithreading, a Unix/Linux like programming environment, the new autopilot functions like sophisticated flight control, and a custom PX4 driver layer to ensure right timings for all the processes. Pixhawk ensures that there are no limitations to your autonomous vehicle. It lets existing APM and PX4 operator to switch to the systems and avoid any barriers. Overall, Pixhawk has all the new options like digital airspeed sensor, external multi-color LED indicator, and an external magnetometer. All these specifications are automated to help you enjoy an easy flight.
- Popular flight controller board
- Automated
- Easy to mount and set-up
- Both manual and automatic mode
- Supports MicroSD card
- A little expensive
Bottom Line
The PIXHAWK FC is another amazing model that is known as one of the racing drone. It has all the necessary features and easy ounting capability to help you in flying.
3. DJI A3 Flight Controller – Best Drone Controller Broad
- CP.WK.000046
Now this drone controller board is meant for expert/professionals. It is not meant for any beginners or for a fun flying experience. This one from DJI is an integrated solution for professional/industrial drone flying. Like other best drone flight controllers this one also supports GPS and comes handy for industrial/cinema applications. DJI revamped this controller board to let it support all the advanced specifications like touch screen, route planning, offline mission route, and flight formation.
We also find that it has a stronger altitude control and multi-sensor fusion algorithms to have enhanced control and accuracy. We also like its 3IMU/GNSS that provides triple redundancy and makes it apt for critical missions. Lastly, the fault-tolerant control system helps the drone to land safely even in the propulsion system failure.
- Fits to all the DJI models well
- Great for cinematography
- Flight controller with GPS
- Fault tolerant control system
- Expensive
Bottom Line
Overall, it’s a GPS flight controller for professionals in the film industry and other cinematographic experts.
4. iFlight Succex-e F4 – Best Flight Controller For Freestyle Drone
- 1.SucceX-A F4/40A BLHeli32 AIO board is the first BLHeli_32 ESC 40A All-in-one...
- 2.Plug-and-play for FPV air unit - no need to solder tiny wire
- 3.Suit for iFlight bumblebee green hornet cinewhoop drone
iFlight Succex-e is one of the first all-in-one flight controller for freestyle flying or even for cinematography. It is because it can handle 40A continuous current and supports 2-6S lipo battery. The other best thing is that it is a plug and play mode. You need not solder any tiny wires that comes again handy as it starts its operation as soon as you plug it in your drone.
iFlight Succex-e is compatible with all the models from DJI to Skydio to Yuneec. For the same, it has 8pin unit port: 10V, 2 GND, T1, R1, T2, and 5V. In one flight controller board you can do a variety of builds. The unit comes with all the required accessories, USB type C Connector, cable, wire-harness, and M4 to M3 silicon grommets.
- Can make a variety of builds
- Compatible with all the latest drones
- Swift flight
- Manual settings needs to be understood well
Bottom Line
A great affordable best flight controller board that can make a lot of builds and is compatible with all the latest drone.
5. BETAFPV F4 FC – Drone Flight Controller For Micro Racing Drone
If you are looking for a best flight controller for hobby, this can be a good choice. BETAFPV is a drone with longer range, affordable price, more reliable, and it even flies better in any of its mode. The overall flight controller uses 65mm -75mm brushed whoops to take flying to another level. It has a plug and play mode. You just have to connect the wires and you are good to go.
The F4 brushed FC board is all together a new FPV whoop technology. It comes with 3 points, 100MHz high performance, lower resistance, and polar reversed protection. All of these together offer reliability and warranty for all BETA FPV FC boards. The beta flight is a fulling programmable flight controller which uses the USB port and has all the other parameters to give you perfect setting for an easy flight every time. Most of the accessories and controls come along with it. You do not need to get anything from outside which is again a plus point.
- FPV whoop technology
- High performance
- Lower resistance
- Affordable price
- Not for beginners
Bottom Line
This best flight controller has 65-75mm brushed whoops to give you a good flight experience.
6. PIXAHAWK Cube Flight Controller – Best Open Source Drone Flight Controller
- Isolated and Dampened IMU reduces interference to sensors
- Foam padding filters high-frequency vibrations to the IMU
- Triple Redundant IMU with multiple gyroscopes, barometers, accelerometers, and...
Pixahawk Cube flight controller is also called Pixahawk 2.1. This one has a lot of open source hardware project. Not only this, it also has many flight control boards and is one of the newest version of Pixahawk. It has all the latest combination boards like ArduPilot which cater the newest functionality and support to the Pixahawk cube. The cost of this one is slightly higher than the original Pixahawk because they have given a lot of specifications and control boards to this which very well justify its price.
This best flight controller is compatible with almost all the type of drone available in the market. Last but not least, you can future proof your drone as it has a lot of online support. The customer support team is great, they are very prompt to resolve all technical queries over the phone.
- Supportive ArduPilot
- Future-proof drone
- Great customer care support
- Multiple input/output connectors
- Expensive
Bottom Line
The Pixhawk cube is the latest version of Pixhawk flight controller. It has better controls, multiple connectors, Ardu pilot, and many gyrometers for a safe long range flight every time.
7. MATEK F722-PX F7 Flight Controller – Best Mini Drone Flight Controller
- MCU: STM32F722RET6, IMU: MPU6000(SPl) ,Baro: BMP280(12C), 6x Uarts & 1x Softserial_Tx...
- 0SD: Pixel OSD(Uart), Blackbox:32M-byte Flash(SPl), Switchable Dual Camera Inputs ,...
- 9-36V DC IN(3-8S LiPo), BEC:5V 2A cont.(Max.3A) , BEC:8V 2A cont.(Max.3A), Battery...
This is another good performing mini flight controllers. It’s a F7 flight controller. It brings a lot of new feature to the fixed wing or multirotor. It has an array of features and tons of room for peripherals. This control board will let you choose how you want to fly. You can even go long-range with this one. The price of this unit is affordable, in spite of the fact that it has all the necessary features for easy flight operations.
The customer reviews say it has the best technical support ever. The team is very prompt to resolve all your queries over phone itself. Lastly, we also the liked its dual switchable camera inputs which comes handy during aerial video recordings.
- Good camera control
- Multiple uarts
- Compatible with almost all the drones
- Cannot be connected to USB
Bottom Line
If you are looking for a mini drone flight controller, this can be a good bet. It has all the necessary arrangements for a safe flight.
8. HGLRC Zeus Flight Controller – Best Racing Drone Flight Controller
If you have a DJI drone or any other drones on these lines, than this can be a good bet. It has all the features to help you have a better control over your drone. It hasl integrated LED controller that allows quick programming of LEDs in it with just a push button. Installing this flight controller also does not require much of expertise. You just have to connect the wires and you are good to go.
Last but not least, it has two GPS dedicated cable. One is M81 GPS and the other is M82 GPS. You can keep a track of where your drone is going as it has a GPS map feature in it. It also has 4 shock absorptions to save your drone form any kind of shock during flight.
- Better control
- Best for DJI drones
- Multiple shock absorption
- GPS feature
- No plug and play option
Bottom Line
This mini drone flight controller is awesome. You can use it for a DJI setup and can solder the camera and VTX to the pads also. It works amazingly well with almost types of drone. So, this can be a best bet if you are looking for a easy to control flight controller board.
What Is A Flight Controller?
Flight controllers are actually circuit boards having specific sensors like gyroscope, barometer, accelerometers, and compass. A gyroscope can help find out the angular orientation. The accelerometer can help measure the vibrations of the motors. The barometer can help you find out the altitude. And the compass would provide you the orientation in relation to earth’s magnetic field.
The major role of a flight controller is to receive and process the input signals from the drone which is the receiver here and execute appropriate commands given by the user. They are like the brain of the drones. They guide the drone how to fly in the sky and where to go, which path to follow, etc.
Buying Guide – Factors To Consider When Choosing A Drone Flight Controller?
A product like these needs to be purchased after a lot of math. You need to see what are your requirements, what does your drone want, etc. before purchasing flight controllers like these. In this buying guide we would give you an idea of the things you should look for when buying the best drone flight controller. So, let’s start.
1. Flight Control Processors
F1, F3, F4, and F7 are the most commonly used processors in mini quads. F3 came after F1, F4 came after F3, and F7 replaced F4. All of them are based on the STM32 architecture which carry forwards 32 bit processing.
The operating frequency of F1 and F3 is 72MHz, F4 168MHz, and F7 216 MHz. With the advancement in processors, the processing speed increases. The more the the advancement in the processors the more the processing speed. As of now, F7 is the highest processor that can execute 216 million cycles per second.
a)F1 Processor
It is the oldest processor and has the lowest processing ability of all the processors in the market. It is one of the old one with Beta flight ending support.
b)F3 Processor
F3 processors was made after doing some modifications to F3. This one has more number of UART’s and increased flash memory. The smaller done till now use this processor because of its size and high processing power.
c)F4 Processor
F4 was an innovation. It was a leap in the mini quad processor with double the processing power than of F3. There were few limitations in these like the F4 has not support for the smart audio system. It still is very popular for its affordable pricing and functionality.
d)F7 Processor
F7 is the latest and the most advanced processor in the market. There speed is amazing as they follow all the instructions instantly without a micro second lag. It comes with 8UART’s for telemetry, camera control, GPS, etc. It also comes with dual Gyros which are noise resistant. The F7 is the future and has more betalight developments to optimize its processing power.
2. Flying Style
Before we go and buy any drone we should know the flying process then only we can adapt different styles of flying. Generally people buy one kind of flight controller for one kind of flying. You should know how will you fly and what would be your flying style. A few common flying styles that you can achieve with these flight controllers are:
i) Cinema Flying
This is the flying style which is meant for recording smooth videos. This can also be used for moviemaking. For this one, you will need a controller with dampened flight characteristics and slow control stick rates. This way you can maneuver it slowly, instead of giving it a sudden push.
ii) Autonomous Flying
This is the beginner flying style. Most of the people who buy drones do this kind of flying. Most of the flyers, who buy drone for the fun sake use this style of flying as with this they do not have to use too many controls. You need to do a little of work as they landing and take-off on its own.
iii) Sport Flying
This is the most adventurous form of flying. This can be only done by expert drone flyers. It is very different from the other two. In this one, you have to make quick changes in the flight and you have to be very aggressive while maneuvering it. This is generally used for racing with other pilots. It is actually meant for racing and is not a kind of casual or fun flying. When following this flying style there are fast roll rates and you have to your device in a particular angle. A sport quadcopter is a real challenge when it comes to flying and that can only be achieved if you have the top drone flight controllers.
3. Hardware
Hardware is the most important aspect of an Flight controller. It is hardware only that will decide hot a quad will perform because if it has quality components it will assure accuracy, performance, and efficiency. IMU gyroscope and accelerometer are the two most important hardware requirements of a drone flight controller. IMU here is the inertial measurement unit. IMU have the accelerometers and gyroscopes. A single IMU contains the accelerometer and gyro’s. Most of the pilots fly in the acro mode.
Gyroscope is the sensor that is places in the Flight controller to find out the angular orientation or the tilt. The two commonly used gyros are MPU6000 and ICM20602. The F4 processor uses MPU6000 and the F7 uses ICM20602. You can switch as per your preferences. The MPU6000 is the old version it has noise resistant with the gyro sampling at 8KHz. On the other hand ICM20602, is the latest gyro. It has more sensitivity and is capable to gyro at 32KHz. The sensitivity of this one is a good thing. It performs much faster and better because of its sensitivity. The mechanical vibrations requires the flight controller to soft mount the gyro. The electrical noise from the motors and the ESC’s require the addition of capacitors to reduce the noise. Overall, the ICM20602 is much better than others in this respect.
4. UART’s Availability
UART stand for Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter. It is the hardware interface that lets the users to connect to a lot of multiple devices like camera, OSD control, serial radio receiver, and VTX channel control, etc. It has two ports to transmit and receive data. A FC can have a TX4 and a RX4. Here, TX4 uses the UART 4 transmitter and RX4 means it will use UART 4 receiver.
Before few years, Flight controllers used to have up to 20UARTS on the flight controllers. This way the people need not worry about running out of UARTS ports. But at a later stage, when the manufacturers wanted to reduce the size of FC’s they reduced the number of UART’s. They made flight controllers with maximum of 8UARTS and till now the modern flight controllers have 7UARTS. For someone, who wants to run telemetry or a smart port or even a GPS, a long range or large number of UARTS come more handy. You have to jot down your peripherals for finding the right UART port. This kind of modification is actually required for expert drone flyer, for beginners this things won’t matter much unless they do sport flying.
5. GPS Integration
GPS stands for global positioning systems. It is a satellite based navigation system that gives geolocation for a GPS receiver no matter wherever you are in the world. The GPS sensors in flight controllers uses Quads. The smaller quads are cheap and easy to build and they come out at a reasonable pricing. The bigger the size like 650nm or even a 1000nm, the higher the quad frame. The GPS sensor is a must to avoid mishaps and to easily locate your drone.
It identifies the loss of quads, and a few quads with automatic features needs Aerial mapping requiring GPS. GPS are mostly used for quads with automatic features like Aerial mapping. Manufacturers generally put Quads for flying beyond visual line of sight. We would not suggest you to invest in a GPS sensors for close proximity flying. It is meant for sport flying or for surveiallance. For general fun flying, GPS integration is actually a waste of money. When beginner do not invest your money but as later stages when you develop your flying skills you can invest these kind of flight controllers.
6. On-screen Display (OSD)
The function of this chip is to overlay or display the information coming from various sensors and also display the parameters like battery voltage, GPS location, current consumption, altitude, etc. This information gets transmitted when the video feed from the FPV camera. The betalight OSD features a flight controllers that you can program to display various specifications like airspeed, GPS coordinates, current consumption, mAH consumed, etc. Not all flight controllers have this feature.
7. Current Sensors
The current sensor as the name suggests is used to measure the amount of current your quad draw at various ranges. This is very crucial because this way you can monitor your current and be rest assured that you are not damaging your battery by removing a lot of current. This not only measures and monitor the current but would also let you know how much current the battery is consuming. A current sensors is placed on the power distribution board or the ESC integration circuit. You can even mount them separately but having a current sensor is always advised. The best flight controllers in this category are DJI Naza-M V2, PIXAHAWK PX42.4.8
8. Return Home Feature
These flight controllers is actually a savior especially for beginners. With this feature, the copter will return home on its own. These kind of drone flight controllers back on its on to the initial position of take off even when the driver lost its control and could not figure out how to get the device back. We guess, one should always invest in features like this as they come very handy in most of the situations.
9. Price
Price is another thing that you need to bring in to consideration before choosing any of the flight controllers. The market has lot of flight controllers coming in different prices. You cannot just rely on the highly priced models. You have to crosscheck your requirements before buying one. In our list, we have included all the options from the most expensive one, to the moderate one, and to the affordable models. Consider buying the flight controllers which matches your need.
Final Talk
There are a lot of things to consider when a good flight controller and for a beginner it is obvious to feel overwhelmed by the specifications. Experts suggest you should equip yourself with utmost knowledge in this field before buying one. You should know what are the specifications to look for, what is the latest technology going on, and what all models are there in the market. We suggest you to go through our buying guide and also through our well-sorted product list. Everything is written after testing and expert consultation. We hope that you would be less skeptical and would definitely choose one from our best drone flight controller list.
DJI Naza-M V2 - Editor's Choice
Summary
Naza-M V2 is a popular flight controller manufactured by the most popular drone company DJI. The device comes with GPS support. You can expect a high-quality drone flight control with this. This can be the desirable choice for any camera drone or for stable aerial photography. It also has 2-axis gimbal stabilization to make you flight much more smooth and easy to control.