On November 29th, a package arrived at my door from @rnsy in the United Kingdom. Thanksgiving was the week prior and I was taking off the 9th for FL states and the 16th for my sister’s wedding, so work had been rather busy and the package was set aside to open when I had a chance to actually take a moment to enjoy it as I had been looking forward to trying out the Stormberry I ordered during atmos’s November Market sale.
I go to open it: there’s the pads I ordered plus the Stormberry, but what’s this, a second box? Did I order a second yo-yo and forget? It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time I’d done something silly like that. So I opened it, not knowing what to expect, and there it is: the green flush side-effect Atmos proto 
the candy apple flush side effect proto in all its glory
stormberry and proto
top to bottom: noah, proto, stormberry
left to right: stormberry, proto, noah
I completely forgot Reuban was going to put some of in boxes from the November Market sale. I almost cried from joy 
(okay not really 
but I was extremely flattered and super thankful) over this amazing surprise after a very long week at work. I have been meaning to write something up and take some pictures but the weather just has not been cooperating. Which I realize now is a bit of a funny coincidence since I think this proto is part of atmos’ weatherman line? But enough of me rambling about my life, you all are here to learn about the yo-yo!
In the hand
First thing to mention is the flush ultralight side effects, which is a super cool design element; it looks like nothing I’ve seeen before and the aesthetics are just incredible. atmos has always had a very refined design language and this yo-yo is no different.
It has the rougher blast from the Fruit Loop and Abel. It can be a divisive blast, but personally I love the feel, it reminds me a bit of the Super Rough Blast that Turning Point likes to do sometimes. It can be a bit chalky, as you’ll see in one of the pics there’s a white “line” from when I set it on the deck wood/it rubbed against another yo-yo or my fingernail, but they just wipe away without issue, and I assume the blast will break in over time and that will happen less. The response bump was masked and left polished as well which should help reduce any premature string wearing so leave your leather belts or denim aside as they shouldn’t be needed!
I have not weighed it or measured any dimensions. It’s a bit slimmer than a Noah or Stormberry while being a similar diameter. Weight-wise, if I had to guess it seems similar to the Noah, but in a slimmer package with that weight distributed towards the center.
proto compared to a noah’s cup
Then, of course, it’s an organic, so it’s very comfortable to hold and catch. It has the same response bump as the Noah (which I personally prefer over the Cloudberry/Thunderberry/Stormberry/etc style aesthetically) and while of course it looks cool, there’s no denying it helps with play as I’ll mention next.
On the string
It’s kind of like a “slimline” Noah, like if you squished the rims together a bit and redistributed that weight into the side effect dome. This gives this yo-yo an added helping of centerweight to take that centerweighted feel side-effect yo-yos have by design to the next level. If you’re looking for your next competition yo-yo, you will have to look elsewhere. I love this feeling, it works really well weith this design, but others may not. On the other hand, @MarkD is not a big fan of centerweight yet seemed to really enjoy how it felt.
proto’s response bump compared to noah’s; notice atmos left the proto’s polished to reduce string wear!
As I mentioned above, it has the atmos response bump/schmoove groove. This definitely contributes to how nice it plays on the string. One consequence of the centerweighted design however is that the spin time is not the longest. I can just about get through my ~50 second combo on it but I have to be absolutely perfect while doing so. It doesn’t tolerate mistakes very well which makes it similar to some a-rt yo-yos in that respect, but, like those a-rt yo-yos, you don’t really care about that while throwing it because of how nice it feels on the string. The light weight also makes it very comfortable for longer throwing sessions, and it’s pretty nice for regens with it’s higher walls.
Conclusion/vids
All in all, I am very excited by this yo-yo and if you are a fan of the atmos Noah or Abel, I think you will be excited about this one too; I have been playing it the most of my atmos yo-yos recently. In the near future I want to try it with some larger side effects (flat caps, spikes, Markmont., Anti-Yo) to see how they look (I think they might look a bit silly but silly can be fun) and how they change the play. I also want to get it into more hands so more people can try it out. I brought it to FL states but only really had Mark and Bruce try it as it was a pretty busy contest, but I’m planning to bring it to the next Atlanta yo-yo club so others can have a chance to try it as well. @MarkD and @Raindog3030 could also chime briefly in with their thoughts on it if they’d like as well 
In the mean time, similar to my Kamuraiju impressions, here are two raw videos, the other of Bruce being a great sport letting me film them playing with it at FL states (there was also a video of Mark doing a really silly trick with it but I shot it completely out of frame 
), as well as one of me playing with the proto from after I first opened it and strung it up.
It was such a cool contest !!! Apologies if I hoged up your spotlight Bruce