Well back to another edition of Just Fun Tech, our semi-regular column where we look at tech that has nothing to do with gaming but is just plain fun and interesting. Last week, we looked at the Holy Stone HS900 drone and liked it! But at $379.99, it was just too expensive for many beginners to the hobby. Today, we’re looking at the Ruko U11MINI.
From the team that brought us the excellent F11GIM2, we have a 4K drone with nearly two miles of fly distance, GPS navigation, all in a two battery package with a handy travel case and lots of replacement parts. It retails for $279.99, or $249.99 with the current $30 off coupon, so it’s more affordable but lacks a gimbal to keep the price down. It’s a good beginner option but not something you’ll want to use for more than personal recordings.
Pricing
- Current Price: $279.99 $249.99 (Amazon)
What is Just Fun Tech?
Here at MMORPG, we often get requests to review products that fall outside of our scope. Beauty products, clothes dryers, couches, thermal cameras… the works. Most of the time, these are just not a good fit, but every now and again, we get a request for something that looks genuinely fun and interesting. We believe that though it is PC gaming that draws us together, our audience is interested in fun and exciting technology. Rather than let those opportunities pass, we decided to share them with you as part of this special series.
With many of these products, we don’t claim to be the expert authority. Instead, we approach them from the newcomer’s perspective with two core questions: Are they fun and do they bring joy that enhances your life? Just FunTech is about highlighting and exploring these products.
Ruko U11MINI- A Sequel of Sorts…
If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed that we just did another drone review. The HS900 from Holy Stone. Before we did that review for Just Fun Tech, I reached out to Ruko because my F11GIM2 had been having troubles and I wanted to have it on-hand for comparison. The company let me know that it had a new, more affordable drone out that might be a good fit for newbies that didn’t want to shell out almost $400 on their first drone.
I was curious. I sure didn’t want to spend $400 on my first drone and the idea of buying a little toy to fly around the house felt like something else entirely. And because we live to serve, if we’re going to review a product, as the Hardware Editor, I feel it’s my responsibility to give you options, even in a fun-tech review column like this.
This is that drone.
And no it doesn’t shoot lasers. I figured, hey, the review column is called Just Fun Tech, why not have a little fun with it? And yes, I spent way too long making the thumbnail.
Ruko U11MINI- Good for Beginners
The Ruko U11MINI is a drone that’s performing a balancing act. It’s designed to be accessible and approachable for beginners. It’s also clearly aiming at beginners who don’t just want the basics. It boasts a lot of features you will also find on more expensive drones, like GPS navigation, one-touch return to home, and a 239g weight so it doesn’t need to be registered with the FAA.
All of these are welcome features, and once you pair the drone with the Ruko app, you’ll have access to even more, like two automatic follow modes and gesture recognition. The app also tells you all of your basic flight parameters, like height and distance, but even more importantly, battery life.
Speaking for myself, one of my fears when first considering buying a drone was that I would fly it too long and it would run out of battery before I was able to get it back to me. Or I would lose signal in the distance. Or I would hit a branch or other high-up object and wouldn’t be able to find it again.
The U11MINI has a lot of safeguards against all of those things. It can detect a weak signal or low battery and will automatically use its GPS to fly itself back to its launch point and land. When it does come down, it has sensors on the bottom to detect if there’s anything below it and to make sure it touches down gently. If you do crash happen to lose it, the GPS can also help you find it again, so long as it has power or you can view the map.
The controller is also simple and easy to use. I like it quite a bit, even compared to some of the more expensive drones I’ve tried. It’s not busy. You have your joysticks — left for height and left/right navigation, right for forward and back and tilting left or right — for flight, a simple switch to control the speed, a power button, return to home button, and a camera reset button. There are three speeds: Cine, Normal, and Sport, which equate to slow, normal, and fast.
On the top, you have a couple more controls and a bracket to hold your phone. The right trigger controls recording and picture snapping. The left is a wheel that controls the camera. The antennas are all internal so you don’t have any to worry about unfolding and keeping safe. Despite the lack of external antennas, it’s rated for up to 9,800 feet for its transmission range, just under two miles. This is unobstructed and I started to see image freezing around 6,000 feet, but on a clear day, it can go a long way.
I especially like the design of the bracket and its hidden connection cable. It telescopes out and easily fit my Samsung Galaxy S24 in a Spigen Tough Armor case, a behemoth of a phone if ever there was one. The cable is hidden below so you can easily plug in your phone without having any slack wire hanging from the side. It’s smart.
The U11MINI comes with a lot of extras. It comes in a nice zippered carrying case with room to hold everything and keep it safe in transit. You get two batteries, each rated for 35 minutes (realistically, a bit under 30 with wind to contend with), cables to connect with all manner of phones (including iPhones), and because Ruko anticipates that you may just crash this thing, a bunch of spare propeller blades and screws to repair and replace parts.
The camera can record up to 4K (more on that soon) and can snap crisp, high resolution pictures from the air. It’s not gimbal mounted but has motion dampeners to help reduce shaking while recording video. Despite lacking a gimbal, you can still control the angle to point anywhere from straight down (90-degrees), to straight up.
All told, it offers quite a lot. Though it’s definitely on the expensive end for a beginner drone, it represents a baby step into the mid-tier, extending beyond what we would usually associate with “entry-level.”
Ruko U11MINI- Camera, Flight, and Value
I have to be honest: it’s fun to fly. I had a good time zooming around my yard, neighborhood, and, later, the nearby park. It’s fast and on a still day, pretty stable. It would definitely be a good drone to learn on.
The problem lies in its camera system. The lack of gimbal makes a huge difference in the quality of the videos you can record with it. It’s not a matter of under what conditions it will shake, it’s that it will shake every flight, and sometimes pretty terribly, such as when there’s wind.
The other issue is that 4K is limited to 20 FPS. 30 FPS, the really only usable frame rate for anything you’d want to share outside your friends and family, is limited to 2976x1680. That’s still crisp but it’s not the same as 4K at 30 FPS.
Now, there’s a couple of important things to note here. The first is that if you’re planning to produce videos at 1080p, the stability issue can be mitigated by using a stabilization tool like Warp Stabilizer in Adobe Premiere. The larger size of 1680p will give you more room to work with for stabilization.
The second thing is that, if this is your first drone, maybe it doesn’t matter so much that the video isn’t perfect? Hear me out. If you’re just starting out, are you expecting to produce shareworthy YouTube videos, or are you looking to explore, take neat videos to show your friends that don’t need to be perfect, and maybe post some things to Facebook?
But this is cope, because the U11MINI has a problem: the DJI Mini 2 SE. It retails for $279.99, has a way longer transmission distance (32,800 feet), records at nearly the same resolution (2.7K, 30 FPS), is also GPS enabled with Return to Home safety features, has multiple built-in flight modes for cinematic drone movements, and is mounted on a gimbal. The biggest downsides are that it only comes with a single battery and that it’s hard to find in stock because it’s so popular (at least, as of this writing).
Final Thoughts
On its own, the Ruko U11MINI is a fine drone for beginners. It flies well and despite its light weight, does alright in light wind. It has Return to Home safety features, a good app that guides you through learning to use it, a very nice controller, and comes with two batteries. The lack of a gimbal and limitation to 20 FPS really hurt its value proposition, however. It’s fun to fly, no doubt about it, but it needs a price cut to feel competitive.
Or lasers. That would work too.
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