Yes, I fly an Inspire 1 quad and love it. I went through 4 Phantoms over a few years and upgraded to Inspire in January once I had enough experience.
We have 2 - one is a smaller "beginner" model and the other a larger sized, budget model (well rated, out of China). Both are crazy cool, but the larger one is really great. I've taken some video, but nothing of note.
Ive had 2 phantoms..had problems boards, controllers, I also have a cheap one now I play around with..Im waiting till the Airdog or similar product comes out, I like Soloshot, and use it, and these guys have incorporated the GPS-Lidar tech in a new drone that will automatically follow like Soloshot does on the ground... https://www.airdog.com/products
Is there an aircraft alternative to these helicopters? A camera on a gimbal mount and a stable plane seems like it would offer greater flight time than the helicopter.
I'm sure there are - you can also stick gopro's all over an airplane. But you cannot fly a plane below 400 feet altitude (and you are not supposed to fly a drone above 400 feet - at least in the US) so they are completely different tools for different jobs.
To me a drone offers video capability. There are droneplanes which include video or seperate cameras available for planes. Quadcopters are the new rage because they are so easy to fly, fly in limited space (between trees), fly vertically and can return to 'home' and land by GPS if signal is lost or battery is low. Saturday on my second flight was comfortable flying over car show easily able to aim camera at lines of cars and good speed to view each car without crashing into any people or cars. Sunday on my third day flew around historic house and at high altitude and then between and under large trees and amongst the people playing croquet recording the house, the gardens and the people at the luncheon. Very easy.
