Potensic ATOM SE GPS Drone with 4K EIS Camera, Under 249g, 62 Mins Flight, 4KM FPV Transmission, Brushless Motor, Max Speed 16m/s, Auto Return, Lightweight and Foldable Drone for Adults Beginner

This is my first drone. I had $250 worth of Amazon gift cards that I had collected from Christmas and my 55th birthday and didn't need any golf stuff so i decided to look at drones. After 2 weeks of looking and reading reviews and watching a few videos, I decided to go with the Atom SE. It's a great drone. Very stable. Watch the many Youtube reviews of this drone and they are nothing but positive. I've had the drone for 3 weekends now and have flown it on 3 separate days. I had read the manual and watched a few tutorial videos before I flew it the first time. I flew it behind and over my house a few hundred feet above and beyond the house. It went perfect. Very easy to control and learn. The remote is awesome. I have a Pixel 7 Pro and it fits nice and snug even with a case on it. The batteries last quite a while, about 25 minutes on average. Today was the warmest day (45F) that I've flown it and the first time that the battery was warm enough to let me go into sport mode. Lots of fun flying around at 35 mph. The videos and pictures that I've captured thus far look a little bit better than the ones attached to Amazon reviews. I did have a close call today. My oldest son and his fiance were visiting and I was showing my son the drone controls while it was hovering about 50 feet off of the ground. My controller started flashing warnings about losing signal and then the drone started doing a death spiral shortly after that. It started moving towards the ground in a spiral fashion and I got control of it with an emergency stop when it was about two feet off the ground. It was then that I remembered the iPhone warnings that I had heard about in the reviews. They say to put iPhones in airplane mode when flying the drone due to interference. My son had his iPhone in his pocket while I was showing him the controls. I had him place it in airplane mode after that and started the drone back up and flew it for about 15 minutes without issue. Originally I purchased the 2 battery combo package but have since purchased the 3 battery charger with 1 additional battery. It's a great charger, easy to use and, fits nicely in the case. Speaking of the case, it's really nice and fits everything perfectly. Overall, I think this is a great drone for the money. I have no regrets in purchasing it. My drone weighs in at 248 grams with the battery in it according to my weight watchers scale. If you're in the US don't forget to do your TRUST training. I did mine through the Pilot Institute website and it was very easy to complete.

I have had the Potensic Atom SE drone now for over a month and have flown it every weekend, so now I feel I can post an honest review. This is reall a great drone. May not have all the bells and whistles of that other company, but it doesn't have the price tag either. This is my first drone with GPS and what a difference that makes. I also love the fact that if I'm ever in a panic situation I can just release the controller joysticks and the drone will immediately stop whatever it's doing and hover in place. That's saved me a few times already. It is very easy to fly, even for a novice flyer. The controller and app are easy to handle and understand. Very comfortable controller and I like how it holds your phone, very easy to read, and has a range of 4km (about 2 1/2 miles) but I'll never really know how far it can go since I have to keep the drone itself in sight the whole time while flying. The furthest I've flown it was about 3200ft (about .6 miles) and the only reason I could see it that far off is because it was at twilight on a cloudy day and I could see my anticollision strobe blinking. The drone is very easy to handle, very responsive, and FAST! In Sport mode I reached 35mph, per the app. The video quality is impressive during the day, not so much at night. Photos are OK for use online and smaller photographs, but as a photographer I would like to see a better camera where I can make small enlargements, but, again, you can't complain too much at this price point. It handles windy days pretty well and have had no problems with it there. The Follow Me, Waypoint, and Circle Flight works as should and the RTH feature is great. I've initiated it myself a few times and had it return on it's own because of low battery, all times landing within feet of the takeoff point. I get about 25 minutes of flight per battery charge which is decent. The manual is easy to understand (although you have to download it, no physical manual with purchase) and the Customer Service has been GREAT. Had some concerns about the way my drone was packaged and they got back to me almost immediately and help solve my problem. Overall, I highly recommend this drone and you get alot for the price. I LOVE FLYING THIS THING! The ONLY regret I have in purchasing this is that I purchased it off of Amazon - nothing against Amazon, I love them too - but I wish I had gone directly to the Potensic website and seen the new and improved Atom drone and I would have definitley purchased that instead. At the time it was not available on Amazon (is now though) and is not that all more expensive than the SE. Update 11/22/2023 I mentioned in my review a few weeks back that I had a good experience with the Potensic Customer Service department and I had another great experience dealing with them again. Unfortunately, I had an accident with a tree and broke off my front right landing gear (the arm was fine) and couldn't find all the pieces. I emailed the customer service site and told them what happened and sent pictures and they got back to me within a day. They said it was repairable and gave me a price, plus gave me the option of purchasing a replacement Atom SE for a discounted price (BIG discount). After thinking about it I just went about fixing it myself with an old credit card, toothpick, and epoxy - think Frankenstein, but it flies no problem. I was tempted to take them up on their offer for the new SE, but would rather fix this one and save for an upgraded drone. When they asked what I'd like to do and told them I fixed it myself they were almost apologetic that I crashed my drone and offered to send me a new set of paddles. If that's not great customer service, I'm not sure what is. An overall great experience.

Having flown the Atom for a few flights now, I can say this is an awesome drone. It's easy enough for a beginner, but has enough features for a more advanced user. The setup was easy and the drone paired quickly with the controller. The controller itself will hold a pretty large phone. My phone is a Samsung S25+ and it holds it fine. I'm really impressed with the picture quality. Much better than I expected. I did have a small issue with a battery and Potensic was quick to respond and help. Ultimately, they replaced the faulty battery. All in all, this is a drone I can really recommend.

So far, so good. Flys pretty good, can go pretty fast...and is super stable, for videos and all. and it doesn't appear to lag at all, which is great💯. 2 issues I do have, 1 in particular to my drone. And the other, for the Atom SE drone in general. For other buyers, and the drone in general, there no zoom feature. No "standard" zoom at least. Which you figure most all cameras come with. And a key feature I like and need. But you can adjust the frame speed, and kind of get a closer shot...nit the same, or near as good, as being able to zoom, IMO. But as good as this drone is, still worth it, again, IMO. But as for my drone in particular, My front, right motor, has a very distinct clicking, kind of ratcheting sound/feel when slowly spinning, testing and checking the propellers and motors. But if I twirl it fast, it gets smooth. And obviously seems to fly well. I don't think there is an issue with it. But I learned the hard way, to speak up. When you buy expensive equipment, tools, tech and gadgets...a little problem at the start, can turn big, if not catastrophic. If not caught, brought up and addressed, fixed, replaced, made right... especially again, when such matters concern any significant amount of $. At least we can only hope😌💯.

UPDATE: 5/15/2025: Today I discovered that if you don't use the drone for a couple of months the batteries will lose their charge, but surprisingly *not* the remote controller. Another disappointment is when recording video (or even snapping a picture) the drone does not include telemetry data on the video (i.e. - date/time; altitude; direction; speed; etc). I've searched the owners manual pdf file but have not yet discovered if this feature exists and, if it does, how to enable it as I think it would be nice to have the telemetry data on the video. Other than that I'm still quite pleased with this drone. ORIGINAL REVIEW 3/10/2025: Got interested in drones and thought I'd finally give it a go. Settled on this one. Good quality workmanship. Drone has a microSD card slot and will take a 256Gig card. Comes with a spare set of propeller blades, screws and tiny Phillips screw driver. Two batteries delivering a total of 60 minutes flight time. (30 mins per battery) Good quality carry case as well. Comes with three different connecting cables depending on what phone you have to connect your phone to the remote control. The instructions are easy to follow and includes pictures. My first time testing was indoors to get a feel for the controls. Everything seemed OK so outside I went. Drone is easy to control. Left joystick handles up/down/turn left/turn right while the right joystick is for going forward/backward/left/right. BTW, NEVER fly the drone backwards as you can easy hit a tree (Been there, did that, used my neighbors pickup to put my extension ladder in the bed to give me 4 extra feet in height so I was able to get my drone out of the tree!! Yes, that was an "Oops" moment. LOL) This goes back to the quality of the drone as nothing broke. Drone was in perfect working condition. Another feature I like is if the battery gets low then the drone software will automatically perform RTB and climbs to ~193 feet and comes right back to where it took off. I've already taken pictures and video; at 4K the picture quality is superb. My only con is the drone doesn't put a date/time stamp on the pictures or videos so you cannot tell when it was taken/recorded. If anyone knows if that can be done then please let me know. Finally, I've added two pictures of right after I unboxed the drone and another picture taken during the flight. Controls are easy to use with only a little learning curve (like, how to avoid trees LOL). I definitely recommend this drone.

This drone is a great beginner or veteran drone that has most of the bells and whistles of very high priced drones. I selected it because I travel often and I like to travel light. This drone has amazed me at this price point with all of the features and reliability that it provides at the price point. My only desire was that perhaps I should have waited for the gimbal version, but then again I like the look of flying by the seat of your pants and this drone delivers. It's a long story but I bought my initial drone and due to circumstances beyond my control it was lost and never to be found. I reached out to Protensic support who were very happy to discuss the matter with me and to work with me. I provided all of my data to them from the drone flight in which it was forever lost and they dove into it and found a way to make an improvement based on my data and in so doing offered to replace the drone for me as an act of appreciation for helping to improve the drone performance and control. In exchange of gratefulness I also provided them with a huge list of improvements, inventions, applications and ideas and concepts for future drone projects. We were all well pleased and they sent me my replacement drone as a courtesy. Last week I flew out to Utah for a week and I took it with me and I was able to fly and record in 4K such stunning scenery as lakes, rivers, mountains, meadows and even Bridal Veil Waterfall in Provo County. What a hoot! I advise to definitely keep it on training mode for a while to get very comfortable with it and be sure to try to keep it in site and to also keep an eye on the messaging on the phone screen. I had one instance in a highly magnetic area where I called the drone back to land at the starting point but in its journey back at 300 feet I received a notice that it was landing at a different point than the take off point. I was very concerned because of the huge lake and some other things in the area (I.E. a bridge and highway in the distance) but it all worked out well because I saw the message warning me and I was able to watch closely the screen the height, the heading, etc. and I was able to guide it in the final part of the return flight. This was an anomaly in an highly magnetic area but the warning gave me the heads up that I needed. The person who worked with me in Customer Service was a jewel of a person who was kind, considerate, appreciative and was working in my best interest as well as the company. Its a rare thing to find these days in a company who will stand by their product. The drone is awesome and the company is awesome. I have zero regrets. I did learn to also write my name and phone number on my drone with a permanent marker, to put an extra air tag on it and to absolutely make sure I have sufficient satellites and that I let it hover on take off to fully announce that home base is locked into the auto return system. I am one happy drone operator and I love that this one by weight requires no licensing. I may bump up the the gimbal control model but then again I can edit in my software to remove anything I want such as a crooked horizon. I also bought a take off landing pad, and a Mregh Solar Power Bank to recharge the batteries and controller on the go as well as extra memory cards. The memory card purchase was a bit dicey for me as I don't know that much about memory cards and there are a ton of versions and specs, but you can just go by the basic specs and see what others have purchased or call and ask the company if more detail is needed. They love to hear from their clients. Oh one thing more that I loved was that I had the very same tech support person via email the entire process of losing my first drone, sharing data, getting a review, getting a decision, receiving and setting up new drone. Same person, same great help. That's just cool. Oh I got a 8TB hard drive also because I love filming in 4K and it takes a good bit of data storage. As well a new laptop to remove files from my memory card while in the field.

I absolutely love this drone! I used it on our trip to Puerto Rico, and it was awesome. I really love how stable it is when it flies. My only regret is not upgrading to the one with the gimbal that self-levels, but that's my mistake since I didn't pay for that feature. The entire setup is well made, and the drone is easy to fly. I love the carrying case and the extra parts and the second battery! The connectivity to my phone and the launch sequence was a little challenging at the beginning, but after doing it a few times, it all made sense and was easy to do. I even flew this in some pretty heavy winds over the ocean and never worried; it was so stable and flew so confidently that I was truly amazed! The camera takes great pictures, and the videos we were able to capture are now treasured reminders from the vacation. My only remaining complaint is that I sometimes forget to use it as often as I should!

Warning, When you buy this you are not warned that this is under a new return policy if you should chose to return it. They will hold your money for up to thirty days or until they decide to take it off the container it is placed in when it hits their dock. This is not covered under their return when it is picked up by the carrier policy of pretty much everything else. They are apparently putting many items if not all over $100 or so ( I don't know the actual amount, they would not tell me) under this new wait for your money back policy. The drone was good in the wind and even for most of its flight characteristics. The GPS functions and such are all pretty nice for a basic set.This drone is ok for the price if you are aware of the limitations of the camera system and some issues with phones and DJI mics effecting the range of the drone. Not using that mic and switching your phone into airplane mode can help. More below. It can provide good pictures, if you have enough light and are willing to post process them to get the horizon back to level. There are only two directions you are getting a level horizon, straight into or out of the wind or breeze. That is the main drawback of the 2 axis gimbal. If you are okay with sideways pics your are good to go unless you run into the cameras other big issue, low light or high contrast will effect what I think is the electronic stabilization in a bad way. The picture may look good until you look at detail, then where you have contrast you may have a good view of the top of a building but a side in the shadows is blurred clear out and in such contrast to the clear parts the picture looks like a photoshop workup. I had to re-calibrate the compass on every battery even from the same spot. If you do not calibrate it then this drone will start doing the toilet bowl self destruct procedure. For you new dronies that means the drone will start looping in an ever increasing circle wider and faster until it loses control and crashes into something and essentially self destructs. The manual claims you only have to calibrate the compass once or if you move to another location about 50KM away from the last calibration point. This is something you should only have to do with a sub $50 drone in the first place but this one was requiring it every new flight after the first day.. I was having some interference lines go through the video at just 50 feet on a few occasions, they were becoming more common by 800ft. This was out in the country not anywhere near anything that should cause interference. It is well known now this thing does not get along well with your phones that are required for video. The range and video transmission can be destroyed by using a specific DJI mic near you when flying, This has effected many social media reviewers and some don't yet know this is causing their distance issues. Another thing that will help is only flying in airplane mode on your phone. I would love to try the new 3 Axis version of the Atom but it was not available on here when I ordered a mini 3 instead and now that it in stock is my money is still being held hostage so its not likely to happen any time soon. Since I bought the DJI mini3 in the mean time I am finding out they are not near as good at meeting their posted specs either but I would love to try the Atom 3X for a head to head vs the Mini 3 vs the value.