Potensic Atom review
I got the Potensic Atom sometime last year and it has just been sitting down untouched in my store. I got it out over the weekend, gave it a spin and I’ve got to say, even though this drone is so last year I was impressed.
So much that I decided to put out a full review. But here’s a TDLR; the Potensic Atom is a very capable mini drone if you’re looking for something budget friendly that does all the drone basics right.
What’s in the box
You get the drone itself, the drone controller, a couple cables, a manual and quick start guide and the drone battery.
Design and build quality
Build quality is quite good; in hand it feels very solid and you can immediately tell that this isn’t another backyard $60 drone from another drone sweatshop.
That good build quality extends to the drone controller. It’s nice to hold, even better to operate and the brushed metal Joystick finish perfectly sums up the attention to detail on this drone.
Quick setup
To get started with the Potensic Atom, you’ll need to charge both the drone battery and the controller. Both come with a USB C port and a good touch with the Atom is you don’t need to take out the battery to charge it. Charge to 100% takes up to 1.30 mins for the drone battery and up to 2 hours for the controller.
Once both are charged up, you’ll need to download the PotensicPro app. There’s a QR code that comes in the manual and you can scan to download the app.
Next, mount your phone on the drone controller and it to the app on your phone using the supplied cables. Potensic packs a USB C to C, USB A to C so pretty much all phones are covered. Once you’ve done that power up the drone by pressing the power button twice and holding at the second press.
The drone then immediately syncs to the controller and to your phone. Click go to device on the Potensic app to get a live video feed from the drone and at this point, it’s essentially ready to fly. But before flying you need to do the customary horizontal and compass calibration.
Navigate to the settings tab and then select calibrate and follow the onscreen prompts to complete the calibration – place on a flat surface and wait; pick the drone up and rotate clockwise; and finally turn it with the nose facing upwards and again rotate clockwise.
Initial flight
To get the drone started simply pull the two joysticks downwards, that will activate the rotors, use the left joystick to get it in the air by pushing it upwards. If this is your first time flying a drone, not to worry this is very easy to fly in my experience. I’d recommend an open outdoor space with few to no obstacles for your first flights.
The controller has two joysticks, an on\off switch, a return to home button, a video button and a photo button up front as well as a dial for controlling the camera’s vertical tilt.
The left joystick works as follows; up to propel the drone upwards, down for downwards, right to rotate the drone right on its axis and left for a left axis rotation.
Up on the right analog stick flies the drone forwards, down takes it backwards, right moves the drone to the right and left takes it to the left.
Clicking on the video button switches to video mode or begins recording video if you’re already in video mode. Similarly clicking on the photo button switches to photo mode or takes a snapshot if you’re already in photo mode.
And as I said earlier the left mounted dial helps you tilt the camera vertically up and down to adjust the view from the drone’s camera.
Flight performance
The Potensic Atom is very capable in air. I was genuinely surprised at how it managed to make light work the moderately intense winds we had on flight day – same winds that made drones like the SJRC KF 102 wobble a lot in flight. On paper, Potensic says this has wind resistance rating of 5 and that’s equivalent to being able to fly through winds of 38km/h without struggle and although I didn’t really experience this during my test flights, I can say I have very little doubt this is the case based on how well it flew compared to other drones I had on site same day.
Important to note that this doesn’t have any obstacle avoidance tech. Not necessarily a big deal as I’ve found most implementations of that feature on drones at this price point to be more of a gimmick than anything else but still fair to note that. The atom is also not rated to fly in adverse weather conditions so rain, snow or hail are pretty much off the table.
Advertised range is 6KM but anything above 1KM and the drones wifi signal begins to stutter. Matter of fact, of all the drones I had out this weekend the Atom had the lowest vertical range (altitude) at about … and horizontal range (distance) at about …
I noticed distance was inversely proportional to the vertical range, so the higher you fly the shorter the distance you can get the drone to go to which was puzzling because even the cheaply priced V198 didn’t demonstrate any issue of the sorts.
All that said, both vertical and horizontal range were very practical, more so for the average drone enthusiast, except you have extra needs I don’t think this would be so much of a limitation.
The drone can fly at a speed of up to 60km/h in sport mode but that’ll obviously affect the quality of footage. Video mode gets decent footage at a decent speed and its what I used for the most time I had this drone in the air.
Intelligent flight modes
The Potensic atom comes equipped with five intelligent flight modes
- Quickshot
- Visual tracking
- Waypoint
Quickshot allows you to record cinematic videos with a preprogrammed flight path. It’s a really nice touch and you can use it to create short very social media friendly type videos if that’s your thing. Activate quick shot by tapping on the Quickshot button and then select your preferred quick shot mode. You’ve got Boomerang, Spiral, Circle, Rocket and Pull away modes each with it’s own video effect.
With Visual tracking the drone can lock on a person in its view, track and then follow the persons movement automatically. Again nice touch and in many instances the V198 can automatically identify the subject and all you have to do is click the track button so it follows movement.
Waypoint allows you to set a predefined flight path using the map on the controller and then preprogram the drone to fly through that path automatically. It’s fairly straightforward process, click on the map icon, select waypoint and then tap on the points you’d like the drone to fly through with the last point connecting to the newest one. You can still adjust the flight height using the left analog stick and the camera view during automatic flight.
Camera quality
The picture and video quality of the Atom is all things considered very good for a drone at this price point. That’s thanks to its 4K capable F2.2 lens.
Video footage was sharp enough and although the contrast is a bit tuned up with some post processing magic, it’s footage that will work for most hobbyist, semi professional and maybe some professional use cases.
On paper it shoots 4K videos at 30fps. FPS can be cranked up to 60 if you sacrifice 4K for 1080P and what’s effectively a 2X zoom.
The handy video and photo button left and right of the drone controller makes capturing moment on the fly very easy. One click if you’re already in video mode begins recording, otherwise it takes you to video mode and vice versa for the photo button, one click and you get a snapshot or a redirect to photo mode if you’re not already there.
Flight safety features
As I said earlier this doesn’t come with any obstacle avoidance module but honestly it’s not a feature you’d miss too much as most if not all the applications of that tech I’ve used were essentially gimmicks.
What it does ship with is intelligent return, one click return to home, beginners mode and Intelligent return is activated whenever the drone;
- Gets to a critical battery level (less than 10% for the Atom)
- Loses connection to the controller module for whatever reason
Once activated the drone basically return to the last set home point. Home point is set on startup after the drone launches. There’s an icon to identify this on the map which for me is a nice intuitive feature.
One click return to home again navigates the drone to the last set homepoint once activated, there’s a dedicated button on the controller for this. The very few times I got a signal interference and was scared I’d lost the drone I just panic pressed this button and the reassuring beep of return to home in progress was just what I needed to hear at the time.
Beginners mode caps flight height and flight distance to a safe limit making it effectively impossible to lose the drone in flight. I didn’t need it cos I was not a beginner and honestly the return to home functionality at a click of button paired to intelligent return was all the safety assurance I needed when flying the drone.
Battery life
For the price and frankly for the size of the battery, I was particular impressed by how long the Atom was able to stay in air after a full charge. The official number is 30 mins, in practice I was able to get between 20 – 25 mins depending on how hard I pushed the drone. Not exactly up to the advertised battery life but certainly in keeping with the best drones at this price point.
The controller lasts way longer. On a full charge it can stay on for almost two hours which means you can run the drone through up to four cycles of battery life before needing to charge the controller. No complaints here whatsoever.
Should you buy the Potensic Atom
For the price very few drones match the Atom in terms of overall usability, battery life, camera quality and flight performance. There’s maybe the mini drones from Fimi or DJI mini but those are typically a few dollars pricier than the Atom.
If you’re thinking of getting a first drone for anything hobbyist or semi professional, the Atom is a solid choice in my opinion. You’ll love the videos it puts out, the photos it takes, how long it stays in air on a full charge, how portable it is and the just how convenient setting it up to fly and actually flying it is is.
