Customer Ratings & Reviews

Great toy getting kids excited for math and science

This is just a okay drone, dont have your expectations high for it.. Charging dock didnt work out of the box, the style clips that secure the batteries do not like to release, rarely keeps a secure connection to phone/controller.

I got 2 of these with the same issues, battery would get extremely hot, the battery on the first one actually melted, gps signal sucks and just overall would not recommend

The Snaptain P40 Lite is my third drone from Snaptain. The previous two were basic units. The first one flew for about 20 minutes before disappearing into the ether on its second battery. Without GPS or a Return-to-Home (RTH) function, it caught an apparent updraft, lost signal, and kept climbing—never to be seen again. The second was a smaller, more basic model, better suited for my kid to play with. I also own an FPV drone from a company that’s currently hard to source. It’s a blast to fly, but FPV setups take more time to get airborne. I wanted something I could launch quickly with minimal fuss, so I decided to give Snaptain another chance with their new model. The build quality of the P40 Lite is surprisingly solid and reminds me of the DJI Mini 3. The foldable arms and compact design make it easy to carry, and the included rigid carrying case keeps everyting tidy. The unit also supplies extra props, cables and optional prop guards. The brushless motors keep it relatively quiet (especially compared to my FPV), and thanks to bottom-facing sensors, it remains stable with minimal drift as long as it has a solid GPS lock. Speaking of GPS, the RTH function works as advertised. Whether triggered by low battery, lost signal, or manually, it reliably returns within a foot or two of the launch point. The P40 also includes smart flight modes like Follow Me, Orbit, Rocket, and Point of Interest, which are easy to activate via the app and perform well. The Throw Away mode is unnerving but fun. I would advise only to use it once you have good GPS lock with over 9 satillites or it will have a bit of difficulty stabalizing. I still don't have the courage/faith to toss it anywhere than over grass. The camera setup is above decent for the price: a 4K video/48MP sensor mounted on a full 3-axis gimbal (which is rare at this tier). Footage is smooth even in moderate wind. I did notice some odd gimbal jerking while on the ground, but this didn’t show up in the recorded footage or live feed. Image quality is good for casual use, though not professional-grade. Expect some over-saturation and brightness issues, which can be manually adjusted in the app. Battery life is advertised at up to 31 minutes, but realistically, you’ll get closer to 25 minutes of flight time. I strongly recommend getting the bundle with two extra batteries, a charging dock, and a soft carrying bag (instead of the rigid case). The added cost is worth it if you want longer flight sessions especially since charging a fully drained battery can take over 90 minutes, and extra batteries are only available directly from Snaptain. The range and transmission are claimed to reach up to 20,000 ft with 5G support. That might be possible from a high vantage point with clear line-of-sight, but in a residential area, I only managed about 1,000 ft before losing signal and triggering RTH. The app also alerts you when you hit the 400 ft ceiling. The app itself is beginner-friendly, offering features like one-key takeoff/landing, beginner mode, RTH trigger, and even a gamified tutorial. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it doesn’t require account setup or login to function. Just install and fly. The Snaptain P40 Lite is a well-rounded drone for casual flyers who want solid features without the complexity or cost of higher-end models. At $450-$600 it's not a cheap drone but it’s easy to launch, stable in flight, packed with smart modes and a gimbal-stabilized camera that strives to compete with better known drone manufactures. It won’t satisfy professional videographers or long-range enthusiasts, but it’s a great pick for hobbyists who are looking for convenience, portability, and decent performance. Just be aware about its range, camera limitations, and battery logistics—and you’ll likely be pleased with what it offers.

Awesome device my sone couldn’t be happier wit it five stars

The device was extremely quirky and I had multiple issues with it. Snalptain’s customer service was very responsive and they seemed to know about a lot of the problems with the drone. They said they were trying to fix some of the issues. The gimbal needed calibration constantly. The phone/remote interface had connection issues and multiple times I almost lost the drone because the remote would disconnect mid-flight. I ended up returning the device.

As a drone hobbyist who enjoys comparing drone features and camera qualities on them, this is my fifth different drone I am giving a shot. Having used mostly DJI drones, when I heard that Snaptain was finally coming out with a 3-axis gimbal 8k camera drone, I was so intrigued and had to see what its capabilities were. Snaptain was generous enough to include a lot of accessories in this kit beyond the basic necessities, I like that they included spare propellers, a screwdriver, and a carrying case for everything. I also noticed Snaptain includes the three different RC cables, with USB-C being the most popular one of course. I really appreciate that this model connects the remote to your phone via a USB cable, rather than relying on unstable wifi connections. Setup, update, and calibration steps for this drone prior to its first flight were pretty simple and easy to follow. I have gone through hours of frustrations with previous drone models and not running into any hiccups with this one was refreshing. A feature Snaptain seems proud of with this model is just how lightweight it is as just 249 grams. Hearing lighting weight I was a bit nervous about how stable this drone would be in average wind conditions, I was so happy to see that it was actually pretty stable while in flight. Camera quality on this 3 axis gimbal is not too bad at all, considering I fly drones mainly for the camera abilities. For a brand not as big as others, I obviously had concerns about what kind of camera quality they could be putting out, especially at this price point but I was pleasantly surprised. I also appreciate the useful quickshot functions such as smart follow, parallel follow, and circle modes, although the accuracy of the modes do not seem there yet. It appears Snaptain has some software work to do on those, but the potential is there. The battery life on this P40 Lite is just okay, I have definitely seen better in other drones of this size, but I have also seen worse, I’d say it falls right in the middle on average. I would highly recommend purchasing a combo kit that includes 2-3 batteries because having just one will be tough. Overall this drone packs a punch for its size and price point, and it is a great entry level drone for someone who is just looking to have fun.

1 of 3 batteries malfunctioned, nearly melting the drone upon 1st charge. Battery swelled to the point it was barely able to be removed. Drone will not fly into a 10mph head wind. Camera signal is very poor. Considering price and battery meltdown it will be going back.

Drone did not connect to the phone since the beginning. Don’t recommend this at all.

Drone is okay but controls and quality is horrible

Recent policy decisions to ban the import of the market leader in drones has left me in a quandary. I have several drones spanning the range from low end recreational units to high end camera platforms and am now forced to evaluate the offerings from other providers. The bar has been set pretty high and so my expectations are lofty. Snaptain is upping their game and their new Model P40 Lite boasts an impressive list of features at a competitive price and is under 250 grams so I decided to take a look. The unit comes with all you need to get flying quickly. It ships with an attractive, rugged carrying case that houses the drone, controller, and has room for two batteries (only one battery is included in the basic kit) and for the spare parts and documentation. There are also prop guards included in the box but they must be detached to store the drone in the carrying case. Speaking of the batteries, at the time of this review Snaptain was sold out so I highly recommend that you get the Bundle which will provide you with three batteries and an external charger. Otherwise the only way to charge the battery is to install it in the drone as the USB-C charging port is in the body of the drone itself. There is no charging brick provided and Snaptain cautions you about charging voltage and current. A regular cellphone charger may NOT provide enough juice to get the job done and larger chargers (even the ones that switch voltage and current modes) can cause the battery to get extremely hot when charging. I wouldn't leave the unit unattended while charging. The controller did not seem to suffer from this issue. You will also need to buy a microSD card. The unit has no internal storage for video or photos. Also, be aware when installing or removing your card that the spring in the slot is very lively!!! I ended up shooting the card across the room the first time I tried removing it! Once everything is charged up and the app is downloaded and installed you'll find that connecting your phone to the controller is easy and feels secure. Cables are provided for connecting to an iPhone, a microUSB or standard USB-C equipped Android device. The app layout is familiar to those accustomed to the competition's software. One word of caution - be certain to run a calibration on everything before your first flight - gimbal, compass and magnetometer. This is quick and easy to do and assures that you won't experience drifting or a runaway when you take off and try to hover. Also, satellite acquisition takes longer than I'm used to and you definitely want to let that process complete or RTH won't function properly. I found the controls to be responsive and the drone's flying characteristics to be reasonably crisp and fast. The controller's sticks have a solid feel and the controls and buttons are placed where you expect them to be and are labeled in a familiar fashion. The range estimates are wildly optimistic. Keep this thing in sight while flying it. My experience while flying was that the video signal starts glitching out at pretty modest distance and re-acquiring signal can sometimes take a few seconds. I was satisfied with both still photos and video quality. There seems to be a bit of excessive edge enhancement and focus and zoom are digital only. The gimbal does a decent job while you are in the air but I did notice a peculiar thing that happened twice while I was carrying the drone. The gimbal began to whip around erratically and make motor sounds. I was not able to recreate the phenomena on demand but it was alarming. I also tested the built in Smart flight modes - circle, soaring, gradual retreat, drift, time lapse, and smart follow. All functioned but some required multiple attempts to engage and setting the POI was a bit tricky. Overall, it feels like these features need a few firmware iterations to operate smoothly. Which brings me to an extremely important caveat - the P40 Lite has NO obstacle avoidance sensors. Make dead certain that your entire flight path is free of obstructions before you engage these functions! Finally, I was completely unsuccessful at downloading video or pictures via the app. The only thing that seemed to work was ejecting the microSD card and downloading directly from that. In summary, the P40 Lite feels like a solid piece of hardware that needs some serious software polishing. I believe that with a series of firmware updates this little drone has the ability to go head-to-head with the competition at its price point. It's just not quite there yet.

This drone is very lightweight and makes for a good backpack drone to carry around. The drone comes in its own carrying case (this is what’s in the box), to which inside is the drone, drone controller, interface cables for mobile device connection to the drone controller, and spare blades. There are various drone modes to place the drone into for operation from beginner (limited operating capabilities), normal, and sport. Each mode differing in drone capability from distance, height, to controls. Normal mode provides smooth operational movement and removes the initial beginner mode restrictions, while sport mode makes the drone more responsive and moves through the air a lot quicker. In each of these modes, you can customize your range limits from height and distance. One thing I did notice during flight in windy conditions, the drone does get pushed around at times. The weight of the drone does not meet the FAA registration requirement, but does have its own registration id beacon built in. Once the included propeller guards are added to the drone, the weight increases to fall into the required FAA registration requirements. For storing the drone, there is a rubber bit the legs when it’s folded to prevent damage to the propeller blades and appears to protect the motors for the blades at the same time. One major con is the required onboard charging where as others offer an external option to charge directly to the battery or a separate charging base. The battery must be installed onboard the drone to charge instead of charging the batteries outside of the drone. It does use the latest USB-C port on both the drone and the controller. There’s also the two separate USB-C ports on the controller; one for charging and the other for interface with your mobile device. They are both clearly indicated. One unique thing about this drone is the thumbsticks for the controller are removable. They should be removed/reinstalled before/after each use of the drone, storing them on the bottom edge of the controller. The engineers did take into consideration the mobile device sizes being “odd” and therefore have changed the way the controller and the mobile device holder work. The changes make for a better future proof design. The included cables for. Mobile device to controller interface include: USB-C, Lightning Port, and micro USB (oddly enough). Video and photos are taken easily via the remote or mobile device. Both are clean and clear, having no sun glare issues. Overall, this drone can fly quite a distance before receiving out of range notifications, battery needs to be charge and returning to home point.

Overall, the Snaptain P40 Lite camera drone is fun to have if you have the budget for it. I love how everything, right from the box, is in its case so you can see where all the pieces are supposed to be. Therefore, you don’t have to second guess where everything goes, and so that you can close the case easily once you’re done using it. Aesthetically, it looks okay, but I don’t mind it at all. It’s very light, weighing 249 grams. As far as the camera is concerned, it has a 3-axis gimbal which helps capture smooth and steady footage. It has a 48 megapixel camera, and it allows you to take 8K photos. I also like the fact that there’s an option to buy one with 3 batteries for continuity if you’re really into capturing pictures/videos using a drone. Each battery lasts 31 minutes of usage so if that’s not enough for you, then get the other option. Setting it up was also simple. I had issues setting mine up because the GPS inside my home was weak. I had to set mine up outside. It was somewhat simple. I just wish the instructions clearly said something about sounds to determine when the drone connected to the remote. After turning it on, flying a drone for the very first time was a little overwhelming, but I got over my nerves and was able to have fun with it. I love the RTH button in case anything happens. Just press the button, and it will return to you. I like the other features of the software like the tracking modes. At least, with those, you don’t have to control the drone. You can just leave it, and it’ll follow your subject, whatever it/who it may be. It’s just too bad the battery life is too short. Playing with it is one thing. Trying to capture pictures/videos on a professional level is another. It will definitely not be long enough so you definitely would need to buy the one with the three-pack battery. I think the throw-to-go feature is pretty cool, but I don’t think it is necessary. I haven’t tried it yet, and I don’t know when I’ll be trying it. To throw a $500 object in the air is nerve wracking. Maybe one of these days when I’m really used to flying one will I try that feature. Taking 8K pictures with it is nice, but capturing 4K videos is okay. The video quality can get choppy, but maybe because I didn’t have a good GPS signal. Regardless, if you’re a professional trying to capture 4K videos, I would look for another drone. There are other drones with better cameras and longer battery life. Otherwise, this is a fun drone to have.

does not interface w Iphone 17 pro. As a result, completely inoperable. No indication including sales people this could be an issue.

Junk. Do not. It. Very disappointed but once you open you can’t return

Context: I never really figured I needed a drone, but the "that looks pretty fun & cool" factor has always been appealing. When I had a friend who wanted to take pictures of their house from an inaccessible angle (pretty much over a cliff), I now had all the excuse I needed to try out the Snaptain - P40 LITE 3-Axis Gimbal 8K Camera Drone! Pros: - The Snaptain app, instructional videos and beginner mode settings made my maiden voyage(s) really simple. The beginner settings walk you through your first flights step-by-step with in-air tutorials and with controls and speeds at manageable levels that (in combination with your own wisdom) should keep you from making rookie mistakes. Given a friend that wrecked a very expensive drone on his second flight- this was really my primary concern! - My initial pictures and videos are by no means professional quality, but the resolution is solid and I anticipate getting better with practice. Cons: - I don't know why, but the battery does take quite a while to charge. My two initial flights were very short because even after hours of standard wall-plug charging via a phone brick, I was only getting 25-40% of the charge. I haven't flown it yet, but it does seem that overnight charging with a laptop-grade charger finally got the battery fully charged Overall, my initial experience has been very positive & I look forward to more practice with the Snaptain - P40 LITE 3-Axis Gimbal 8K Camera Drone.

This will be the third drone I have owned. The first was an expensive larger drone in 2018, which is still in service today. The second was a smaller toy like drone and this is my first less than 250 g drone. The unit has several professional features, including a three axis gimbal And an updated app which has several nice features and tutorials for beginners. The drone is compact and comes with a nice carrying case and a single battery. The written instructions are OK but are somewhat limited. The remote control unit requires an android or iPhone and has nice cables for both. A Older micro USB cable is also included. Many phone cases will have trouble fitting into the remote control phone holder, but the legs are fairly flexible and it is unlikely you will have issues with separation of the phone and remote control unit. The drone is fairly stable and moves well and quickly. It seems to be less stable than my larger drone in even mild windy situations. The app is fairly intuitive and has good features. I do not see a way to provide a glare filter on the very small Gimbal lens. The images are fine in full sunlight. There are quality limitations due to higher end drones in photo and video image quality. The image quality is clear but color and dynamic range are somewhat limited similar to a $100 150 android phone. The app is nice and but lacks polish with spelling errors. The most annoying feature is the very slow down of a full quality video to a phone – A 15 minute video could take more than 20 minutes if it completes before batteries are emptied. Similar to my other drones it is much easier to remove the microSD card. (note one is not supplied with the unit) and simply transferring the video files manually. It is nice that the drone is less than 250 g and does not need to be registered(Unless used for commercial purposes); however, the Registration process is not too difficult. The drone is expensive enough to me that I would be upset if I damaged or lost the drone and I would not consider this a toy, but a lower end full function drone. Drones are very useful in inspecting hard to reach areas and for surveying property.

DJI is better. I don’t recommend. There are better drowns out there.

I have been flying drones for over 7 years now and have enjoyed flying Snaptain branded drones due to their affordability and pretty decent quality. So, naturally I had to try their newest P40 Lite drone. After downloading the Snaptain Go app, getting the drone ready to fly was pretty quick. I was able to pair the drone right away, but noticed acquiring the necessary 10 plus satellites, for takeoff, took a decent amount of time. The drone felt very responsive and steady the more satellites it locked in. The photos were a pretty nice quality, but I noticed the video feed was pretty choppy at times and the contrast/sharpness varied greatly with response to varying lighting conditions. I experimented with many of the features and quickly learned the downward facing sensors, used for tracking, was great only for open spaces. I learned trees and other obstacles forced me to regain manual control to prevent collisions. The most awesome feature this drone offers is the Throwing Away option. This feature must be activated in the menu before attempting this. I was amazed how quickly the drone was able to maintain a stable flight. This is the main selling feature of this drone and I enjoy starting out my flight this way. I had an issue with my drone, but was surprised with the great level of customer care I received. Annie made sure I felt valued and requested feedback to help her increase the level of service she was able to provide for future needs. It is nice to have a company stand behind their product and be so proactive in improving their customer service. If you are a beginner drone pilot and are looking for a budget friendly drone to fly without requiring a license, this drone should be on your radar. I would not expect great videos, but the pictures are very good for the cost of this drone.

The Snaptain P40 LITE is an 8K (4K video) camera drone. The LITE must refer to its weight and not specs because this is light while packing in a lot of functionality. As this is my first prosumer drone, I spent some time reading up on things and getting ready for my first few flights. There’s a reason this drone is light, being 244g, it’s under that 250g threshold which triggers needing an FAA license to fly. As it is, there’s technically still an FAA test one should take to effectively self certify to fly any drone. But being under the threshold means one can get going quickly and make use of a lot of cool features without necessarily needing to be an expert. There’s pros and cons to this. Pro, almost anyone can get started quickly and enjoy taking some amazing video with the P40 LITE. Con, Snaptain has made a lot of things easy enough to use that newbies, me included, may inadvertently develop bad habits. Getting started was straightforward: unfold the propellers, remove the gimbal cover, plug in the battery, and charge. Since there’s no charging port on the battery itself, you charge it through the drone, which feels a bit limiting. During this time, I grabbed a 256 GB microSD card (max that the P40 LITE takes) to install and installed the app on my phone. While it turns out you can fly the drone without the phone connected - unless you’re a pro, I wouldn’t recommend it. Just with line of sight, I got too close to things, having the camera view itself was useful. That being said, there is a dedicated return to home button on the controller so if you’re flying sans phone and need to be bailed out, there’s an easy to hit button so you don’t panic. After checking again that the gimbal cover was off (I read that this is one of the biggest mistakes newbies make), I powered on the controller, then the P40 LITE. You’re to have the drone on a level surface for this. My practically toy drone does this specifically to calibrate the gyros when powered on. I don’t know if the P40 LITE is doing that as well as the instructions don’t specifically specify this, but as they do specify a level surface, I’m following that every time. With the phone plugged in, you’d launch the app, wait for it to connect, then wait for the drone to be ready to fly. This is mostly waiting for the drone to have good GPS signal. You can fly without it, but it means you’d lose out on having a lot of automatic stabilization features from the drone’s firmware. After having flown the toy drone in light wind and struggling with that, seeing how easy the Snaptain is to fly when set up correctly blew me away. I quickly found my skill plateau, but it’s cool that I now have something that I can use to capture decent video, and then if I want a challenge or to push my flying skills, I can do so.

You’ve got three options for take-off. A stick sequence, using the takeoff icon/button in the app, or the throw away mode. I experimented with all three. The stick sequence did take a couple tries to get right but once I had it, I could repeat every time. The button in the app worked reliably. I never had a crash with my throw away experiments but it did feel like the most sketchy. Essentially holding the drone from the back between the propellers, you’d toss it up or forward. Each time, I was always a bit nervous about clipping my hand or that the drone would not detect being tossed and just topple down. While it’s cool, I don’t actually see a benefit right now. Perhaps if I was doing something where I tossed the drone from a moving vehicle, that I then have it follow, that makes sense. But given that the sequence is tap thru a menu on the app, hit the throw away button, wait for be ready, tilt the drone down, wait for confirmation beep, throw, then it will hover in place after being tossed until you give some command and you should maintain line of sight and keep the controller handy and active, I’m not sure that makes too much sense. It’s a lot of work just to take off when the one key takeoff or stick sequence is much faster. Maybe useful if you’re taking off from uneven terrain or a moving platform, but otherwise, it feels like more hassle than benefit. I was very impressed with the video quality of the P40 LITE. Yes, it could be better, but it’s amazing how great video looks, stabilized, with this 4K sensor from the air. Easily much better than some 360 action cameras. This probably points to the gimbal stabilization being something that lets one extract much better video quality that optical stabilization or post processing. I think one notices the relative camera quality more with still photos, but doing those circle or soaring shots are just amazing. Like the action cams, the drone’s camera quality, video or otherwise, does start to suffer in low light and it’s there that the typically larger sensors do better as they’re just able to get more light. While I expected to do a lot of video capture with me piloting the drone, a lot of the actual good stuff and what I ended up doing for most of the review period is using some of the built in capture modes. I particularly liked the circle and soaring modes where you set a target and the drone takes care of the effect. Retreat or follow are nice for motion shots though none of these are pretty fast. While the drone’s top speed is close to my EUC, it definitely could not keep up. While there was a lot of like, there’s also some things I felt could be better. The P40 Lite sometimes would lose connection (video would go out on my phone) while flying outside the house. Reviewing the recorded video later, there were never any gaps, but the first couple times it did worry me that I’d next see the drone fly away or crash into something. Neither connection gap was ever long enough that the drone came to a stop to hover in place or fly back home and I didn’t want to force testing that in an environment as cluttered as my back yard. Perhaps in a large open park after I’ve gotten more light time under my belt. Another issue was the battery life. Rated for 31 minutes, I never flew longer than about 20 and the one time I went past that, I got a low-battery warning prompting a return-to-home shortly after hitting the 20-minute mark. But more than the relatively short flying time, especially when you’re In the new phase of wanting to fly and try as many things as possible, is that charging takes almost 2 hours which seems a lot for only getting a fraction of that in runtime. There’s a SKU that comes with three batteries and an external charger. I imagine that helps - if you’re religious about going through pre-flight checks, then that’s probably enough that you would always have a full battery coming off the charger if you always pushed things to when the controller makes you return home but I can start to see why someone would graduate to a larger drone to get more runtime.

In all, I feel this was a nice intro to the world of drones beyond the $50 price point. There’s a lot of excitement as you find being able to get nice flyby footage for some family photos or some nice action shots does not require nearly as much skill as you might think. Don’t get me wrong, going beyond what the drone will do for you definitely needs skill and so having video seamlessly transition from one thing to the next requires practice, especially if you yourself are the target but it’s fun to jump in.