What makes me laugh is that everyone is a champion for there own heli's.
Now I have micro electric fixed pitch heli's and I have also flown a good few collective pitch heli's,
The reason I say that is because I want you to understand that I am not baseing what I am about to say with no experience of other products.
What I am baseing my advice on is the fact that if your here then your looking as a person thinking about starting the hobby.
So I will give you a few heli models, and give you the reason as to why I think these suitable. I will also say to whome I think they are suitable.
Here goes:
first I will assume that you have no experience and are not sure about whether you want to or even can learn to fly Heli's.
For you there is no point in buying a fixed pitch model that requires charging and experience to fly, You will be better of with a heli that can give you all of the flight performance of the bigger heli's but not be capable of inverted flight. It is very crash resistant and as long as you shut power off as soon as you loose control. More often than not you will just need to put it back right and away you go again, The most we have to replace is the Blades after they pop off. It runs from the mains and you can get a heli complete, and the radio to fly it for around £70. Even though I can fly heli's I still love flying mine round the room chaseing the cat
It is the Hoverfly Heli you can see it at
www.snelflight.co.uk
It is sutable for all classes in this post but I don't want to seem Biased
For those that know they want to learn and can afford the repairs:
I dont really rate fixed pitch heli's (even though I have one) it is rubbish.
But if your going to twist my arm then I will recommend the Hummingbird made by century. It is by far the most stable fixed pitch heli I have flown. This is not to say that you will be able to fly it. But if you insisted on one then this is what I would advise. It is well built it has good quality standar motors. Parts support is good and there are plenty of hop ups for it. You can also convert this heli into a very nice flying Collective pitch heli.
For those that want to learn and want to do it right the first time:
My advice here is to get loads of heli's electric and nitro as well as fixed wing aircraft and gliders.
Of course you can get all these on a simulator. This is buy far the best Heli trainer that you can get by a country mile. A simulator and a good radio should be your first purchases if your serieous about going on in this hobby. When you have these if you really want to fly as your learning, Now get yourself a Hoverfly as above. between the hoverfly and the simulator you will have found the most cost affective way of learning to fly.
YES there are other options, I am giving this advice based on many years flying helis and other model aircraft. I don't know of any other combination that gives you what you want so affectively. still the choice is yours
I'm sure you'll have fun whatever you choose to do.