Tomzon mini drone review: this ‘Flying pig’ is fun for kids (but probably not worth $50)

The Tomzon mini drone is designed for kids, but I couldn’t stop laughing the whole time I was flying it. And sure, I look like a 12-year-old sometimes, but this is an excellent drone for kids to have fun with — and for adults to hone their flying skills.

The Tomzon Mini Drone, dubbed the “flying pig” is an LED-lit stunt drone with a few different modes, including the ability to do flips. I’d recommend it for kids or kids-at-heart as a fun party trick. But given its various modes including the ability to toggle on/off altitude hold, plus options to fly with or without headless mode, it’s an excellent training tool for drone pilots looking to master their skills before buying a more advanced (and expensive) camera drone.

My one hang-up with it is the price. When I reviewed it, it was going for $50 on Amazon. While there seem to frequently be coupons — and pricing history tools like Honey indicate that the price has been as low as $33 — it’s hard to justify $50 when competitors are offering similar toy stunt drones at $25 to $30. At $50, I’d almost recommend you spring another $50 to go for the high-quality Tello beginner drone. That one is twice the price but has enticing features including a camera and ability to program it through your own code (thus teaching you coding skills).

With in mind, here’s a deeper dive into my review of the Tomzon mini drone:

What’s in the Tomzon mini drone box

I appreciated how simple this drone was when you opened it out of the box. No extra cords. No superfluous iPhone mounts. Not even an unnecessary packaging! Even without needing to read the user manual, it was incredibly clear and straightforward how to charge up, connect and turn on the drone.

Batteries: The charger is through a simple USB cable, and the drone comes with two batteries. One super smart, under-appreciated design feature that I was pleasantly surprised to see with this drone: you charge the batteries separately (not through the drone). That’s nice because you can fly the drone with one battery while the other battery is charging.

It takes about 60-80 minutes to charge your batteries, and they only last about 6-8 minutes each. However, that’s in-air time. You could likely have 15-30 minutes of play time per battery with the drone depending on how often you crash. That’s an hour right there between both batteries. During my test with friends, we never felt like our fun times were cut short.

Controller: The drone also comes with a compact, lightweight controller, which is powered by three AAA batteries (not included).

Spare parts: You get a spare set of propellers. I never broke mine thanks to the protective cage (more on that later). But if you run through the existing pair and the spare, you can buy an extra set of Tomzon propellers for an additional $10.

Flying it

While I wouldn’t consider this drone easy to fly (and that’s not a bad thing!), it was super simple to get into the air.

This drone does not connect to your smartphone or any other devices besides the controller. That’s a good thing in reducing the headache needed to get this started. Nothing wrong with simplicity!

However, that also means there’s no camera (which is often why people purchase drones), and there’s no ability to really customize the settings in significant detail beyond basic toggles between modes or adjusting speeds. But those are the important settings — and why you want this drone. I often encourage newbie pilots to practice on a low-cost toy drone so that way you’re a master before you touch an expensive (yet easier to fly) drone.

I recommend turning off altitude hold if you really want to improve your flying skills. Additionally, train your brain to be able to fly with and without headless mode.

The physical drone

At just 68 grams and 127*158*42mm in size, you won’t need to register this drone. In fact, you won’t need any sort of FAA approval to fly it.

I really appreciated that the propellers are wrapped by protective guards. While this drone was super small and light and likely wouldn’t do much damage if crashed, I did appreciate the extra safety feature.

As far as aesthetics go, Tomzon makes it fun with LED-enhanced propellers and a cool RGB color-changing effect while flying.

Final thoughts on the Tomzon mini drone ‘flying pig’

This drone was super fun to fly. It was seamless to set up — I got it in the air within minutes of unboxing it (and that was just because I let the batteries juice up a bit for 10 minutes charging).

You won’t get a camera, which might be an important feature. It’s also still on the pricier end as far as toy drones go (I’ve seen others around $30). However, if you can find this one on sale and are in the market for an intro drone, then jump on the Tomzon mini drone.

Then again, if you don’t mind springing $100, then the Tello is my top drone overall for kids. It’s twice the cost, but has many more features including ability to take pictures, which might be worth the additional cost.

You can grab your own Tomzon mini drone here. Or, if you’re interested in comparing and learning more, check out my guide to best drones for kids and beginners, or my guide to cheap practice drones.