[symowallo]

Bob, I think that there is no "best" frame.

If you fly any of the 250 frames into things, or onto the ground from height, they will break.

There's so many to choose from, so if this is your first quad I would go for modularity rather than looks or performance.

I've got 4 quads -

An Eachine 250 racer (looks good, plastic arms, carbon body, RTF). The good thing with this one is that the plastic arms, which are cheap, will collapse in a collision and absorb impact, which prevents damage to the main body.

A Carbon Fibre 250 ZMR. Detachable arms. They're cheap and parts are plentiful, but there's no impact zones as such.

A HK/Diatone colour 250 frame. It's made of nylon/plastic and can certainly take a beating. It was only $20 with a built in PDB and it is nice and bright. Mine has hit many trees and the ground, however it's a Unibody so any arm damage requires replacement of the lower frame. This has happened to me, just today actually, but its my favourite frame so far. It has dihedral so it flies better, or at least it's easier to fly.

I also have a DAL DL220 frame which is a Unibody Carbon Fibre frame. Very tough and well made. Haven't flown it yet. Rob D has the 180 version of this and it flies beautifully. They feel very, very solid and the carbon is of a good quality.

All frames have their own nuances and flaws and no one frame is better than the other in all ways. For a first quad, I wouldn't be worried about getting the strongest or highest spec frame... because you are going to destroy it no matter what. Both my son and I learnt to fly on the ZMR and we haven't destroyed it yet but it's not as enjoyable to fly as the others.

The QAV issue you mentioned... I'm not sure that holes in the arm are a bad thing. They could help the arm collapse in even of a collision which may prevent damage from spreading to the rest of the frame, which is not a bad thing. Look at concrete for example. Concreters will place lines in the concrete to contain cracks so that they don't spread. Most ZMR frames have holes in the arm to pass cables through. That doesn't in effect make them weak though.

I just accept the fact that if I crash them hard enough, or repeatedly, they're going to break no matter what. My favourite so far is my orange plastic diatone/HK frame but it's not as tough in a full frontal collision as the Unibody DAL frames, or the QAV frames I would guess.

I instead focus on having spares on hand in case I do have collision damage, and I have multiple quads to fly so that I'm not waiting on spares from China.

My conclusion is - they will all break so unless you're an accomplished and comfortable pilot, don't waste money on expensive frames. Having said that, if someone gave me a Vortex I wouldn't complain...