Potensic T25 Review: A HD Drone with Advanced Flight Features?

In any consumer product’s lifeline, it is often the beginner crowd that comprises most of the unit sales, which is often boosted by the word of mouth of returning customers. The drone market is no different, with more production models being aimed at people who are venturing into the drone space for the first time ever.

The Potensic T25 was born out of such necessity, positioning itself in the sub-$200 drones bracket and standing out as one of the best beginner drones in the market.

This affordable price makes it such an attractive proposition to these newbies, as the Potensic T25 is an intelligent drone with full-fledged intuitive features and competitive specs.

Read on to see how the budget drone fares with its counterparts in this thorough Potensic T25 Review.

Quick Specs

Weight	Unloaded: 2.25 lbs
Size	Length: 10.6 in Width: 10.6 in Height: 4.7 in
Speed	Max: 25 km/h
Signal	Range: ~300 m Operating Frequencies: 2.4 GHz
Battery	Flight time: ~10 mins Capacity: 1000 mAh
Recording	FPV camera: 120°, 1080p HD

Potensic T25 Features

Custom Flight Plan

This is the Potensic T25’s waypoint function, allowing you to set a customized path on the smartphone app’s map with the drone following the path you set. This can be handy when you want to adjust camera perspectives while shooting videos or taking pictures, allowing you to take your mind off the drone’s flight controls altogether.

Follow Me

The Potensic T25 has a Follow Me function which can be used for aerial footage captures that require you to follow the subject (yourself, for example), or when you want to relocate without keeping tabs of the drone’s position.

This isn’t vision-based tracking, however, and instead uses the signal from your transmitter which the drone follows in order to access this feature.

GPS/GLONASS

For a drone of this price, it’s impressive that Potensic managed to fit in a dual navigation system for the T25. The GPS/GLONASS combination allows the drone to pinpoint its exact location, allowing it to fly and hover properly without drifting off.

This redundant navigational system is also handy in the event where one of the two systems fail, acting as a backup so your drone doesn’t get crippled mid-flight.

Auto Takeoff/Landing

The Potensic T25 has a dedicated button for automatic takeoff and landing, taking away the hassle of maneuvering it to do so, especially when landing. The drone takes off by hovering 5 feet above the ground, giving you enough room to initiate your next move.

Return To Home

The drone has a specific GPS-assisted Return To Home function that records its takeoff point, which it flies back to when you initiate the dedicated Return Button. This can be handy when you’ve lost track of the actual position of the drone in the vicinity.

This feature also activates in the event of signal transmission loss or low battery levels, keeping it from getting lost in these unavoidable circumstances.

Headless Mode

Another beginner-friendly feature is the Potensic T25’s Headless Mode. You need not worry about the orientation of the drone’s head and fly it the way you intend to. This means that the drone simply follows the direction your flight lever is pointed at.

Geo-Fencing

This allows you to set a boundary for your drone to fly in so that it can’t drift away too far and get lost. This feature makes use of GPS to set an area where you want the drone to stay in, either keeping it safe from a restricted territory or from flying out of sight and controller range.

Battery Life

The Potensic T25 has a 1000 mAh battery that provides up to 10 minutes of flight time, but will be dependent on your operating conditions and wind speed.

This short flight time might be a turn off for beginners who want to pour in valuable time to master the drone’s flight controls, or those who might be practicing their aerial photography and videography skills. It definitely can’t considered one of the best videography drones because of this battery life. However, at this price point, the battery life is pretty standard.

The charging time ranges from 1 to 2 hours.

To counter this, Potensic packs the Potensic T25 kit with an extra battery so you can switch them on the go and effectively double your flight time to 20 minutes.

The battery also features an intelligent design that shows you its charge level by way of LED indicators, so you can gauge the remaining flight time of the drone before replenishment or battery replacement is needed.

Camera

The Potensic T25 sports a 1080p full HD camera, which has a wide-angle view of up to 120°. This allows for a wider capture coverage of your subjects and the background. The camera can also tilt up to 90°, giving you control over its perspective on the fly.

Despite the impressive specs, we’ve found that video capture can sometimes be slightly laggy, and photos can be in a washed-out state — requiring some editing or filters.

Still, this is a potential bargain nonetheless — considering the price point of 1080p drone cameras are commonly a little bit more expensive.

The camera also gives you the ability to use the FPV function, streaming a live feed of video for you to navigate the craft properly.

Stabilization on the Potensic T25 is electronically-implemented, with the obvious lack of stabilizing gimbals for physical camera steadiness. But then again, you won’t need one with the Potensic T25 since it wasn’t designed to be a dedicated photography/videography drone, so you really can’t complain here.

Ease Of Use

The Potensic T25’s controller looks like it borrowed some ideas from popular gaming console controllers.

While it feels suspiciously familiar, the front of the controller is populated with an LED indicator table, which is rather unusual as most drone transmitters come equipped with a monochrome screen for real-time, dynamic readouts.

Still, these light up in primary colors, which are vivid enough for you to tell which are active or aren’t.

A simple dual joystick layout is responsible for the flight controls of the Potensic T25, while dedicated Power, Takeoff/Landing, and GPS buttons populate the bottom half of it. Camera tilt angle is controlled by the top and bottom left buttons on the front of the controller, while Follow Me mode and photo/video capture is taken care of by the top right and bottom right buttons, respectively.

For those who aren’t too familiar with the gaming console layout, it might be a bit overwhelming to learn every function by memory — but there’s practice for that.

The controller ergonomics aren’t all too bad as well, giving you maximum comfort while using it.

Design and Build Quality

When you look at the Potensic T25, it sure does ring some bells.

While it isn’t uncommon amongst budget-oriented drone manufacturers to be inspired by the DJI Phantom 4 model, it would have been nice if the T25 could be a little more unique in its appearance. That said, we appreciate why they didn’t see a need to reinvent the wheel.

The quadcopter layout is one of the most adopted implementations in the drone space, and the Potensic T25 does well to stick with something that’s been tried and tested.

While the manufacturer doesn’t specify what kind of plastic comprises the hull and most of the drone’s parts, it seems to be durable in quality. This isn’t some passport to crash your Potensic T25, however, so ease on the flying till you’ve mastered every control.

Propeller guards protect the propeller in case you crash or snag on obstacles, and the extra-long landing gear gives ample clearance between the camera and the ground so you won’t have to worry every time you settle it down for retrieval.

Performance

More than its smart and safety features that make the flight experience more enjoyable, the Potensic T25 is a very responsive bird, emulating every flick on the controller in real-time, and is capable of speeds of up to 25 km/h.

This is due to its build which weighs 2.25 lbs (a little over 1kg) and the powerful brushless motors that are more powerful and efficient in allocating power for flight purposes.

The 300-meter range of the controller is more than enough for beginner pilots.

Its three-speed mode allows you to choose from beginner to pro speed limits in a flash, which is handy when trying to transition from slower flight maneuvers to high-speed ones.

Do note that the lightness of the Potensic T25 compared to its size can make it a little unstable to fly at its maximum speed, which is also true at moderate to high wind speeds, so check first before taking off to the skies.

Final Thoughts

For those wanting to get into the drone scene, the Potensic T25 is a viable option given the features and specs it packs at its price point.

We think Potensic hit the nail on the head with this release, as it’s got everything a newbie would want in order to learn and experience drone flying, such as responsiveness, safety assistive features, easy controls, and stellar flight performance.

The battery could be better, but the included spare certainly goes some way to rectifying that.

The company had to skimp out on some features like battery life in order to fit the impressive arsenal of specs and functions the Potensic T25 carries at its price.

Is it the best drone around? Not quite. A good buy nonetheless? A resounding yes.

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