First, some of my favorite drone freestyle videos, if you want to see what's possible. It's a hobby with an enormous skill ceiling. Even if you never get remotely that good, cruising around your local area can still produce some nice footage that's meaningful to you.

The fastest way to improve your piloting skill, especially from zero, is in a simulator. This is by far my strongest recommendation. The good ones are close enough to reality that your skills will largely transfer over, and you'll save a lot more money in broken drones than the price of the sim. I use tryp, which is on steam. People really into racing use velocidrone. I plug my radiomaster boxer in to my computer, so it's training on the actual controller, too. You'll have to check if whatever controller you get can do the same, or use a gamepad.

TL;DR on drone selection if you want everything in one purchase: Pick one of these. The nazgul ECO specifically, the cheaper ones are for indoor flying. Sadly, the goggles bump up the price tag, and make up a bit more than half of the total price. If you are willing to buy the goggles and controller separately, get this controller, it will work with all 2.4GHz ELRS drones, which is almost all of them. For goggles, get the DJI goggles 2 which works with the O3 camera, which is what most bind-and-flies use. For drone, you'll have a lot of options, iflight and geprc will cover you. 7 inch (propeller diameter) tends to be for long range, 5 inch is general purpose outdoor use, and the ones with smaller, ducted blades are mostly for indoor. If you've been looking at phone drones, the prices will probably seem crazy, but the performance difference is genuinely huge.

I'm going to be talking about parts you would use if you buy a "bind-and-fly", which is where you pay a company to build it but it's still made out of parts you can buy instead of a single piece, or build it yourself. I have never flown off-the-shelf single part drones like DJI sells, but the expensive ones especially are quite good. The DJI Avata 2 would be the one to get these days if you go that way and want a very capable one-piece FPV drone. However, the upside of building your own or getting a bind-and-fly is that you can get the performance where you want it to match whatever your flight requirements are, and if you break it, you can replace the broken parts instead of buying a completely new one. It is also easier to upgrade your drone, either in pieces or getting an entirely new one which will still work with your goggles and controller. iflight and geprc are both respectable bind-and-fly choices, and they also sell complete "ready-to-fly" options that come with everything you need. You do need to know how to solder and watch youtube videos if you build your own, but it's not that bad. Joshua Bardwell for youtube videos, Oscar Liang for text. Liang does a lot of reviews of both equipment and bind-and-flys too.

You can definitely increase your range by a lot. Entry level ELRS radio links will give you solid control to over a mile of open space with a lot of room to grow, but your video link will be weaker. Higher gain antennas on your goggles will give you more range, as will higher signal strength on the transmitter in the drone. People have flown the long range 2 watt walksnail transmitter to at least 55km in open air, but this was with a pretty extreme antenna receiver in a best-case environment and the signal strength on that transmitter is simply illegal, if you care about that sort of thing. A basic drone at a decent altitude with basic antennas with no obstacles between you and it should be good for a mile, but have a plan if you lose video unexpectedly. A "beeper" is recommended.

15-20 min of battery life is doable if you fly gently on a larger battery pack. Aggressive flying on lighter batteries will definitely give you a lot less. The usual way to deal with this is to just have several packs and change them out, rather than one very high capacity one, but look into Li-Ion packs if you really want to have long endurance, they will give you significantly larger capacity at the cost of less maximum output than you'd get from a standard lithium-polymer pack. Bind-and-flies have a standard battery plug, so you can pick your battery separately. Be careful with the batteries, don't overcharge or overdrain them, and don't charge them when you aren't in the room if you want to play it safe.

Goggles will take up more of your field of view, make easier viewing on sunny days, and increase the feeling of connection to your drone, but they will raise the price tag a lot, and effectively lock you in to one camera system. Compared to flying it through your phone, it will be a world of difference. DJI (they sell cameras and goggles separately in addition to complete drones) or Walksnail are basically the two good ones for most pilots, and the video quality is very similar, HDZero is used by serious racers and has less video quality but better latency, and anything that's not those three is significantly worse and I wouldn't recommend it. The plus side is you'll never crash your goggles, so it's a one time cost. There are cameras that transmit at 1080p and record at 4K available for both walksnail and DJI. Walksnail also has low light, very lightweight, or long range options. Honestly, the cost mostly comes from the goggles, not the camera, so you might as well get a good one.

Auto-landing (return to home) and position hold will be available on any drone with a GPS and the latest verison of betaflight, which is most of them. The performance out of the avata 2 would probably be better here, because it has a few extra sensors.

Downward pictures are normally achieved by just tilting forwards in flight. If you want to hover at the same time, gimballed camera mounts are available but uncommon.

First, some of my favorite drone freestyle videos, if you want to see what's possible. It's a hobby with an enormous skill ceiling. Even if you never get remotely that good, cruising around your local area can still produce some nice footage that's meaningful to you.

The fastest way to improve your piloting skill, especially from zero, is in a simulator. This is by far my strongest recommendation. The good ones are close enough to reality that your skills will largely transfer over, and you'll save a lot more money in broken drones than the price of the sim. I use tryp, which is on steam. People really into racing use velocidrone. I plug my radiomaster boxer in to my computer, so it's training on the actual controller, too. You'll have to check if whatever controller you get can do the same, or use a gamepad.

TL;DR on drone selection if you want everything in one purchase: Pick one of these. The nazgul ECO specifically, the cheaper ones are for indoor flying. Sadly, the goggles bump up the price tag, and make up a bit more than half of the total price. If you are willing to buy the goggles and controller separately, get this controller, it will work with all 2.4GHz ELRS drones, which is almost all of them. For goggles, get the DJI goggles 2 which works with the O3 camera, which is what most bind-and-flies use. For drone, you'll have a lot of options, iflight and geprc will cover you. 7 inch (propeller diameter) tends to be for long range, 5 inch is general purpose outdoor use, and the ones with smaller, ducted blades are mostly for indoor. If you've been looking at phone drones, the prices will probably seem crazy, but the performance difference is genuinely huge.

I'm going to be talking about parts you would use if you buy a "bind-and-fly", which is where you pay a company to build it but it's still made out of parts you can buy instead of a single piece, or build it yourself. I have never flown off-the-shelf single part drones like DJI sells, but the expensive ones especially are quite good. The Avata 2 would the one to get these days if you go that way. The upside of building your own or getting a bind-and-fly is that you can get the performance where you want it to match whatever your flight requirements are, and if you break it, you can replace the broken parts instead of buying a completely new one. It is also easier to upgrade your drone, either in pieces or getting an entirely new one which will still work with your goggles and controller. iflight and geprc are both respectable bind-and-fly choices, and they also sell complete "ready-to-fly" options that come with everything you need. You do need to know how to solder and watch youtube videos if you build your own, but it's not that bad. Joshua Bardwell for youtube videos, Oscar Liang for text. Liang does a lot of reviews of both equipment and bind-and-flys too.

You can definitely increase your range by a lot. Entry level ELRS radio links will give you solid control to over a mile of open space with a lot of room to grow, but your video link will be weaker. Higher gain antennas on your goggles will give you more range, as will higher signal strength on the transmitter in the drone. People have flown the long range 2 watt walksnail transmitter to at least 55km in open air, but this was with a pretty extreme antenna receiver in a best-case environment and the signal strength on that transmitter is simply illegal, if you care about that sort of thing. A basic drone at a decent altitude with basic antennas with no obstacles between you and it should be good for a mile, but have a plan if you lose video unexpectedly.

15-20 min of battery life is doable if you fly gently on a larger battery pack. Aggressive flying on lighter batteries will definitely give you a lot less. The usual way to deal with this is to just have several packs and change them out, rather than one very high capacity one, but look into Li-Ion packs if you really want to have long endurance, they will give you significantly larger capacity at the cost of less maximum output than you'd get from a standard lithium-polymer pack. Bind-and-flies have a standard battery plug, so you can pick your battery separately. Be careful with the batteries, don't overcharge or overdrain them, and don't charge them when you aren't in the room if you want to play it safe.

Goggles will take up more of your field of view, make easier viewing on sunny days, and increase the feeling of connection to your drone, but they will raise the price tag a lot, and effectively lock you in to one camera system. Compared to flying it through your phone, it will be a world of difference. DJI (they sell cameras and goggles separately in addition to complete drones) or Walksnail are basically the two good ones for most pilots, and the video quality is very similar, HDZero is used by serious racers and has less video quality but better latency, and anything that's not those three is significantly worse and I wouldn't recommend it. The plus side is you'll never crash your goggles, so it's a one time cost. There are cameras that transmit at 1080p and record at 4K available for both walksnail and DJI. Walksnail also has low light, very lightweight, or long range options. Honestly, the cost mostly comes from the goggles, not the camera, so you might as well get a good one.

Auto-landing (return to home) and position hold will be available on any drone with a GPS and the latest verison of betaflight, which is most of them. The performance out of the avata 2 would probably be better here, because it has a few extra sensors.

Downward pictures are normally achieved by just tilting forwards in flight. If you want to hover at the same time, gimballed camera mounts are available but uncommon.