The Awesome Youbi XV-130 is a BNF 3 inch brushless micro FPV racing quadcopter and in this review we will take a look at the quad, do the initial setup, go fly and see how it performs out of the box.

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A big thanks to Gearbest for providing the sample for reviewing! This review is written by oyvinla (intoFPV.com).

AWESOME Youbi XV 130 Unboxing

What’s in the box:

• 130mm 3 inch quadcopte
• Two Battery straps
• User manual in english and chinese
• Two sets of 3x3x4 propellers
• PPM cable
• SBUS cable
• XT30 to JST cable
• Linear 5.8ghz VTX antenna

Before you can fly this little guy, you will also need to get a 3S or 4S LiPo battery, a radio transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) of your preference and a set of FPV goggles.

I am going to test it with a 3S 35C 900mAh, a 4S 65C 600mAh and a 4S 65C 1000mAh and use a Frsky X4R-SB receiver. The manual doesn’t mention anything about telemetry. I haven’t tested it yet but I think it should work just fine through one of the serial ports on the FC.

Product Spec and Overview

• 130mm deadcat design Carbon fiber unibody frame with plastic canopy
• F3 SPRacing target FC with MPU6050 gyro
• 40CH switchable power VTX integrated in FC (25mW/200mW/400mW)
• 4 in 1 20A BLHeli_S ESCs
• 1306 3600kV motors with 3x3x4 propellers
• 600TVL CMOS camera with 100 degree FOV
• Rated for 3S and 4S Batteries

The quad weighs 127 grams with the X4R-SB receiver. With a Dinogy 4S 600mAh it comes in at 200g.

Frame

The frame is a 130mm deadcat-style, similar to X but the 2 front arms are longer than the 2 rear arms. It consists of a carbon fiber bottom plate and a plastic canopy for protecting the electronics.

The bottom plate carbon fiber quality is decent and the cuttings are nice, but the bottom plate is only 2mm thick and there are some grooves in the arms for the motor wires, so I am a bit concerned about crash resistance. I think that it would be better for the strength of the frame to just skip the grooves.

One nice detail is that all the mounting holes in the bottom plate are countersunk. This will prevent punctures of battery on the screws. The frame is also a bit wider than needed, making the tip of the arms act like motor protectors.

Colours available are white, grey and black. I got the grey version but I would also like to see some other exciting colours.

Flight Controller

The FC is a F3 type SPRacing target with MPU6050 gyro sensor that comes pre-flashed with Cleanflight 1.14.0. Unfortunately it does not come with any flash data storage, which means you are not able to do any blackbox logging, unless you use one of the serial connections and an SD card Openlog device.

On top of the board there are boot pads right next to the USB. There is the display and button which are for the VTX.

On the bottom of the board you will find all of the connections. There are a 6CH PWM input, while the PPM/SBUS inputs are on the left side, the UART1 and UART 2 are on the right side. The motor outputs and the camera inputs are on the bottom and there are also a buzzer and LED soldering pads on the top. The quad doesn’t come with a buzzer, and you can easily solder on one.

ESC’s

The ESCs are 20A 4 in 1 type of ESCs with BLHeli_S. They come flashed with BLHeli 16.4 and the firmware target is F_H_40.

Check out BLHeli Configurator, which makes life much easier.

Motors and Propellers

The motors are 1306 3600kV rated for up to 4S which I think will be very fast! The bearings feels quite good with no slop and the overall build quality of the motor is decent. The shaft is 5mm thick and 11mm long with CW and CWW threads. Unfortunately, they come with standard prop nuts, which are not locknuts (nylon nuts). The propeller hub is 5mm thick, so a normal locknut would probably fit. Also keep in mind that the 2 of the nuts have CW (clockwise) threads and the other 2 are CCW.

Camera

The camera is a 5V 600TVL CMOS camera with 100 degree FOV according to the specs. It’s hot-glued to a plastic holder which again is fastened to the frame with 3 screws. This makes the camera tilt angle unchangeable at 30 degree, but it should allow some fast flying without having too much of the ground in FPV footage.

VTX

The VTX is a 40 channel switchable power output transmitter (25mW/200mW/400mW). It comes with a SMA connector and a linear antenna.

The VTX is a bit tricky at first to operate and the manual is not the best, so I will try my best to explain how it works.

Change Channels:

• In order to change channels, push the button to change from 1 to 2 to 3 etc.

Change band:

1. To change frequency band, push and hold the button for 2 seconds
2. When band A shows on the display, release the button and the display will start at band A and jump between the bands automatically (A, B, C, D, E)
3. When at the desired band, you must push the button again and now you are back to choosing the channel as normal
4. When you are at the desired band and channel, you will have to save your settings by pushing and holding the button again until the small dot next to the number on the display starts to blink. Now you can release the button

Change output power:

• To change output power, push and hold the button for 6 seconds. when you see 1, 2 or 3 (1=25mW, 2=200mW, 3=400mW) you can release the button and push the button to scroll through the power outputs. When you have reached the desired power output, you just simply push and hold the button until the dot on the display blinks again

Initial Setup

Configuration of the FC software, Cleanflight, was straightforward, I just had to

• Choose Serial RX and SBUS on UART3 and Smartport Telemetry on UART2
• Adjust the throttle endpoints from 1150-1850 to 1000-2000 and calibrate ESCs

When I first armed the quad and applied some throttle, the quad lifted off, but I was not able to get it to descent. The min throttle were obviously too high and I had to disarm to get it down. I tried to set min throttle lower in Cleanflight, but then I couldn’t get the quad to arm.

Instead of using a lot of time struggling with Cleanflight (which I never use anyway), I flashed Betaflight 3.0.1. I did notice that most of the Youbi XV-130 that has been reviewed by others come pre-flashed with Betaflight.

Flashing and setup was done the normal way through Betaflight GUI. The only difference from stock Betaflight was that I chose Multishot and calibrated the ESCs again.

How It Flies

When I finally got the quad in the air, I noticed that there were a lot of vibrations. When doing full throttle, the vibrations were so bad that I wasn’t able to see much. The lens actually unscrewed itself a bit, making the picture all out of focus. I refocused the lens and added a bit of hot glue so it would not come loose again, and changed the props to some DAL T3045BN. Now the vibrations were gone, and I was able to go on with the PIDs.

I tried first with default PIDs, but it has to be re-tuned to get it to fly nice. I played with the PIDs and so far this is where I’m at. It’s far from perfect, but I think this is where it starts to fly great.

I tried to put on the spare set of props that came with the quad, but the vibrations came back again. It is a shame because I do feel that the 3x3x4 prop was better for the motors as it felt much faster and more agile than the DAL T3045BN which is a much heavier prop. I liked the flight characteristics of the stock propeller, but not the vibrations.

The image quality of FPV camera is not the best I have seen, but it’s decent. It doesn’t have the same wide dynamic range as you’ll find on a HS1177 or Runcam swift. For example if you are looking at something bright like the sky, darker places will be too dark to see. But It changes exposure fast enough, it is not a big problem. We must also keep in mind that the small size and weight of this camera can’t compare with those bigger cameras.

With a 3S 35C 900mAh LiPo battery it is fast, but if you really want it to scream, you can go up to a 4S 500mAh-1000mAh battery. I tried it with a 4S 600mAh and a Dinogy 1000mAh 65C, and it was fast with both. I think the quad should be able to carry a Mobius mini camera for HD recording, but then I would probably go for a lighter battery like 600mAh to save of some weight.

With some fast flying, you can expect about 3 minutes of flight time on the 4S 600mAh battery.

Flight Videos

Here are some flight videos with the Awesome Youbi XV130. The first video is with stock props and the 2nd one is with DAL props. The second video is captured with a Mobius Mini HD camera.

Final Thoughts

PROS:

• Serial outputs on FC for OSD, telemetry and even Openlog
• Buzzer and LED pads on FC
• Canopy for protecting the electronics
• Lightweight and easy to carry on the go
• Fast and powerful little demon!

CONS:

• You have to take off the canopy to connect the USB cable or change VTX channels unless you make some small holes in the canopy
• Unnecessary grooves for the motor cables in the bottom plate weakens the frame
• No OSD
• Doesn’t come with buzzer
• No built-in flash memory on FC for blackbox logging
• Battery straps could be of higher quality
• Stock propellers out of balance and cause vibration. It wasn’t flyable out of the box, it could be Cleanflight user error from my side
• Loose camera lens

The quad is absolutely screaming on 4S and if you don’t consider the need for some small modifications and better balanced propellers, I think that this is a really nice and budget friendly BNF 3 inch quad. I like the design, but I would like to see some more colors. I’m also very impressed that it’s able to handle the weight of a heavy 1000mAh 4S battery and a Mobius mini on top.

The only thing I can’t find right now is spare parts, which I hope Gearbest will start selling in the future. I had a crash where one of the motors came loose and snapped the motor wire, so I must say again, USE LOCTITE on the motor screws before you take the quad out for a spin. I did not… Fortunately I was able to solder it so the quad is back in business!

I did notice that one of the front arms had delaminated after the crash so I am a bit concerned about the durability of the frame. The delamination occurred at the depth of the groove mentioned earlier. This is probably one thing to improve, drop the grooves in the arms and increase the thickness to 2.5mm.