The Potensic Atom SE is an ultra-light, foldable, pocket-sized drone, modeled within the fashion of a DJI Mini 2 or Mini 3. Nonetheless, at a fraction of the price of the big-name rival, it’s a really fascinating entry-level drone .
Droneblog Verdict
The Potensic Atom SE is a superb entry-level drone with clever flight options and ease of use that make this an interesting drone for inexperienced persons.
The comparatively low worth level makes it accessible, with the trade-off of restricted digicam stabilization and management, and no impediment avoidance.
✅ Professionals
- Top quality for the value
- Sub-250g drone
- Straightforward to make use of for inexperienced persons
- Clever flight modes for ease of use
❌ Cons
- Overly delicate controls
- Restricted digicam controls and efficiency
- Hover stability is unreliable, particularly in windy situations
- No collision avoidance sensors
Atom SE design and performance
The Atom SE has folded dimensions of simply 3.5 x 5.6 x 2.3 inches / 88 x 143 x 58mm (w x l x h), sufficiently small to simply slide right into a jacket pocket.
The unfolded dimensions are 8.3 x 6 x 2.3 inches / 210 x 152 x 58mm, excluding propellers.
The load of 8.8oz / 0.55lbs / 245g, together with every little thing you’ll want to have on board to fly (propellers, a battery and a microSD card) means this drone is beneath the load required for hobbyist registration.
Batteries weigh 3.6oz / 0.22lbs / 103g and supply as much as 31 minutes of flight in very best situations. I bought a cushty 25 minutes of flight out of the drone earlier than it initiated a return to dwelling with 13% of battery energy remaining.
The drone is surprisingly well-built for its worth, providing nice worth for cash. Not solely that, the flight options are simple to make use of and the drone itself could be very simple to fly, even for zero-experience inexperienced persons.
It feels nicely made and sturdy to the contact, and even after touching down in some tall grass, the propellers appeared unphased.
No crashes to this point, but it surely appears this drone might stand as much as a bit of damage and tear.
The digicam is what you may name fundamental. Whereas it’s able to taking respectable pictures (in each JPEG and RAW), the gimbal controls are restricted and the stabilization isn’t stellar.
For these causes, you’re going to be restricted when it comes to high-quality video.
The controller is a novel design that extends to carry a wise gadget in between the 2 joysticks. A notch makes house for the wire plug to connect with the gadget.
My solely grievance with this format is that I needed to let go of the controller with one hand to achieve to the touch controls on the display – it was too distant to stretch a thumb over whereas nonetheless holding on.
The package comes with a wide range of cords designed to connect with any good gadget on the market, whether or not Apple or Android.
The controller feels strong and cozy to carry and holds a cost nicely, even when charging the cellphone whereas linked.
A small factor actually, but it surely made me really feel much less in management than I needed to be.
The Fly extra combo, which I bought to check out, contains an additional battery and a carrying case. The additional battery is useful in fact to increase flying time.
The batteries themselves are small and light-weight and straightforward to cost with the included USB-C cable. It’s good to not want a devoted charger for anyplace, on-the-go charging.
The carrying case is water-repellent and durable, with an adjustable, padded shoulder strap and sufficient pockets and compartments to maintain every little thing neatly tucked away.
Methods to arrange the Atom SE earlier than the primary flight
- Earlier than my first flight, I made certain to have every little thing charged up: the controller and each batteries.
- The subsequent step was to obtain and set up the PotensicPro app (out there on the App Retailer and Google Play retailer).
- Discover the right cable to attach your good gadget to the controller.
- Activate the controller. The app will then information you thru the entire downloads, updates and calibrations that must be carried out.
Be aware: It’s useful to do all this stuff at dwelling earlier than going out to fly to be sure you have an excellent web sign for the downloads, and so on.
Familiarize your self with the app interface and modify settings as wanted.
Verify RTH altitude, and limits on flight peak and distance. These are robotically restricted to 98 ft. in newbie mode.
If it’s your first flight, it’s a good suggestion to maintain these as they’re. You’ll be able to at all times flip off newbie mode when you’ve gotten the hold of issues.
Flight efficiency
Launching the drone makes use of the usual process of pulling each sticks down and middle concurrently to arm the propellers. Then push the throttle as much as take off.
The primary time I put the drone up, I used to be shocked at the way it bobbed round for a minute or two, apparently attempting to determine its location.
It didn’t go straight to a gradual hover, however rocked round inside the house of a number of toes earlier than locking right into a considerably steadier stance.
I used to be additionally shocked by the responsiveness of the sticks; I might even say over-responsiveness. The drone appeared to jerk round in any case enter, though this may be adjusted barely within the settings.
Extra concerning the hover.
In contrast to a DJI Mini 2 or 3 that may hover nearly completely nonetheless, the Atom SE wandered round inside a foot or two of its place. It additionally drifted within the yaw (heading) orientation a method or one other.
Just a few very gentle gusts of wind blew it about much more than that. This isn’t a drone that may get up in opposition to windy situations.
And though this can be a newbie drone, that lack of rock-steady hover might be a bit bit disconcerting.
To not say that it’s a nasty factor for a newbie drone pilot to wish to develop the ability of fine-tuning the controls to remain in place!
Placing the drone via its paces, I did really feel that there have been a number of occasions, particularly simply after launch, that the drone was scooting round by itself, exterior of my enter.
Apart from these few moments, the drone dealt with just about as I assumed it must.
The drone is default set to newbie mode, however this may be switched off once you’re prepared. Different pace settings embody:
- Video
- Regular
- Sport
Video mode slows every little thing method down for smoother video, and regular and sport do exactly as you may think.
I loved testing out the clever flight modes, together with follow-me, waypoints, and circle flight.
The circle flight mode carried out fairly nicely and saved the digicam oriented kind of towards the middle of the circle.
The waypoints mode labored nicely, and this can be a good function that related degree drones lack.
My solely grievance on this division is that the map was very blurry and laborious to pin-point the places to drop the waypoints. However this might have been because of the cellphone sign and never any fault of the drone’s.
The follow-me mode appeared to problem the drone a bit, although I did nothing extra sophisticated than jog round in a big circle. It didn’t appear to keep up an excellent distance, and the digicam didn’t orient as rapidly because it ought to have.
The return-to-home function is enabled by GPS, so you should definitely have GPS alerts locked in earlier than taking off if you wish to depend on this to get your drone again.
The return to dwelling is just not tremendous exact. Within the 4-5 occasions I landed the drone within the check flights, the return to dwelling introduced the drone to anyplace from 3 yards to 2 toes of the take-off location.
You even have the choice of manually adjusting the drone’s place with the sticks whereas it’s robotically touchdown, which helps loads in getting a extra exact touchdown.
You’ll nearly definitely have to do that if you wish to land again in your launch pad and keep away from trimming the grass along with your propellers.
One other factor to concentrate on with the Atom SE is the dearth of impediment avoidance sensors. That is commonplace with a drone of this measurement and worth, but it surely does imply that inexperienced persons particularly ought to you should definitely fly in areas with few obstacles.
The flight vary is restricted to 2.5 miles, and whereas that is a lot lower than you may get than with, say the Mini 3, it’s greater than sufficient to get the drone past your visible line of sight, which is a no-no with FAA drone rules.
If you happen to’re staying inside line of sight, you may take the Atom SE a lot far sufficient away with out dropping reference to the controller.
Digital camera efficiency
The digicam on the Atom SE is a 12MP Sony CMOS sensor. It supplies a 118-degree discipline of view and could be tilted vertically from +20 to -90 levels.
There isn’t a lateral gimbal management, and the one option to flip the digicam left or proper is thru the yaw management on the drone.
As I famous above the stick controls are fairly sensitive, and this could impression the smoothness of the video because the drone bumps round with the controls.
The picture stabilization is digital, and does a good job of minimizing video shake, however the lack of true gimbal comes into play with the horizon steadiness.
The three flight modes provide some measure of enchancment right here. Particularly, the video mode (cinema mode) slows down the drone’s actions and steadies the responsiveness considerably.
The opposite two modes prioritize pace, so should not very best for video.
Video could be shot in 4K at 30fps, 2.7K at 30fps and 1080p at as much as 60fps with a most bitrate of 40Mbps. Pictures could be captured in each JPEG and RAW in a 16:9 ratio quite than 4:3.
There aren’t any choices to manually set ISO, white stability or shutter pace.
All digicam settings (besides publicity compensation) are totally automated.
Whereas that is excellent for a newbie who could also be extra all in favour of mastering flight fundamentals than in mastering superior images methods, it’s a severe limiting issue.
The RAW picture seize is an fascinating choice that’s not out there in plenty of related degree drones.
It definitely opens up the artistic choices, though if severe drone images is your objective, this may not be the drone to land on, contemplating its different digicam limitations.
SanDisk Extreme 256 GB
Temperature Proof, Water Proof, Shock Proof and X-Ray Proof.
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05/13/2023 03:04 am GMT
Who can purchase this drone?
The Potensic Atom SE is a good selection for inexperienced persons on a finances.
At nearly half the value of the DJI Mini 3, it’s not stunning that you just get a barely underwhelming digicam and restricted clever flight options, to not point out no impediment avoidance.
For a hobbyist wanting to interrupt into the world of flight, the Potensic Atom SE supplies an awesome various that may present high quality and efficiency that shall be laborious to beat on the worth level.
It’s most likely not for you in the event you’re a severe photographer although, even in the event you’re a newbie on the subject of drones.
The shortage of digicam settings and the dearth of 3-axis gimbal will critically restrict your picture and video high quality.
This may even be an awesome selection as a journey drone, for somebody who would love a less expensive various to take alongside in your travels with out having to fret about getting misplaced or broken, as a lot as you may for a costlier drone.
The compact measurement and sub-250 g weight additionally lend themselves to journey, particularly because it falls beneath much less restrictive rules in most international locations.
I actually loved buzzing round with the Potensic Atom SE, and even see it as an awesome starter drone for my older children.
Potensic ATOM SE
ATOM SE drone weighs 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝟐𝟒𝟗𝐠, 𝐧𝐨 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐅𝐀𝐀& Distant ID Registration.
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05/13/2023 09:49 am GMT
