3 Things You Should Know Before Buying the Havoc Heli RC Mini Helicopter

The Air Hogs RC Havoc Heli is a mini helicopter that you can fly indoors. It is one of the hottest toys of this holiday season. But before you buy the Havoc Heli, there are several things you should know about this mini RC helicopter.

The first thing you should know about the RC Havoc Heli is its reality is less exciting than its marketing.

The Air Hogs product commercial for the Havoc Heli states how "you can fly Havoc in any direction with ultimate accuracy ... from the tightest corners to the sharpest turns." If this was true, the Havoc would be the coolest mini helicopter Santa could ever give any kid this Christmas. Sadly though, it is not true.

Sure, the helicopter will fly in any direction. But getting it to go in the exact direction you want is more likely going to be the result of a happy accident than skilled accuracy. While there might be some genius kid pilot out there who has just the right touch, most kids will have only minor control over where exactly their helicopter flies.

The Air Hogs Havoc Heli product commercial continues by saying the micro RC helicopter can "fly to heights of 100 feet." As impressive as this might sound, it doesn't actually mean as much to people who live in normal size houses.

The next attempt at impressing buyers Air Hogs makes relates to flight time. The commercial claims the helicopter gets "10 minutes of flight time on a single charge." While on their product packaging, the RC helicopter flight time is said to be "over 6 minutes". My experience is after about 5 minutes the helicopter charge weakens to the point it isn't worth trying to fly.

You should also know that it takes about 30 minutes to fully charge the mini helicopter.

The Air Hogs Havoc Heli product commercial then suggest kids race their friend's mini helicopters while showing footage of two zooming helicopters. While racing helicopters is possible, the kind of high speed, straight line race suggested in the commercial is unlikely to happen. That's because, again, the Havoc Heli helicopter is challenging to control; and also because this RC helicopter is just not really made to fly straight.