When buying a drone I have 2 options to consider: brushed and brushless motors. Are they much different from each other? Does one have advantages over the other?
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2$\begingroup$ If this question is going to be considered the canonical question about general differences between brushed and brushless motors (of which other such questions are a duplicate), we might want to edit its title to a more general one. $\endgroup$– FlashCactusCommented Apr 17, 2020 at 16:32
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2 Answers
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They are very different.
Brushed motors
Brushed motors are good for toy grade drones for a couple of reasons: they are cheaper and don’t require ESCs, which would add extra cost and complexity.
Brushless motors
However, in almost every way brushless motors are better: they produce much more power, are more efficient, produce more torque and, my favourite part, they don’t have physical brushes and so, unlike cheaper brushes motors which are only designed to run for a number of hours, brushless motors can take a lot of abuse and can last for years. Additionally, they are very water-resistant.
There are downsides: to a brushless motor - they require ESCs and, due to the torque, can do more damage in a crash.
For info on how each works, see my answer here: https://drones.stackexchange.com/a/87/50
answered Apr 17, 2020 at 16:03
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$\begingroup$ I reformatted your answer, feel free to change it if you don't like it $\endgroup$– user149Commented Apr 17, 2020 at 16:05
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$\begingroup$ @Daniil thanks - I like the formatting. I spotted where autocorrect changed something in my original post so have changed it back. $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 17, 2020 at 16:06
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$\begingroup$ Specifically, BLDC motors have a higher power to weight/size ratio. Bigger DC motors are (of course) able to generate more power. $\endgroup$– id -unCommented Apr 17, 2020 at 17:38
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$\begingroup$ Additionally, brushed motors are typically found in toy grade quadcopters, because they are cheaper and do not last as long as brushless motors. $\endgroup$– MikeCommented Apr 18, 2020 at 3:12
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At first brushed are fine because they are cheap and easy to replace. The more you read about specs and tuning you will take interest in brushless. For example betaflight now has rpm filtering which allows the gyro to reduce interference based on the rpm of the motors. So above tinywhoops and toys you are going to be seeing brushless.