Antigravity A1 vs DJI Avata 360 | The Ultimate Comparison

What's going on guys. In this video, I'm going to be comparing the Avada 360 and the antigravity A1. This has probably been the most requested video for the past several months for me. I think the antigravity launched back in November and right away, there were rumors that DJI was coming out with a 360 drone and we finally have it. DJI has been making drones for over a decade and this is literally antigravity's first drone ever. I think a lot of people were sort of waiting to buy the Avada 360 because they figured it would be better in every way than the antigravity A1, but that's not actually the case. I've had the privilege of testing both of these drones for a while now, and there is a certain section of people that the A1 is going to be a way better option for and certain people that the Avada 360 is going to be a better option for. I'm going to cover all of that at the end of this video, so make sure you stick around for that. All right. So the first thing that I want to talk about is the physical differences of each drone. But before I do that, I want to try to bribe you to hit the like button because honestly it helps the channel out a ton. And if you hit the like button, I will put a photo of an adorable kangaroo at the end of this video. All right, let's get into it. So the antigravity is a foldable sub 250 gram drone and basically has the same form factor of most of the drones we've seen over the past decade. If you use the extended battery, this does go above 250 grams, but with the standard battery, it stays below. Meanwhile, the Avada 360 is a whoop style drone, meaning it has these prop guards protecting the propellers and it does not fold up. So you got to pack this in your bag. Somehow the portability difference is actually huge. This thing goes in a little case and can easily slide in your backpack. It's basically the size of like a lens. Meanwhile, this is actually bigger than the Avada two and it's just kind of awkward to put anywhere. I have to put this in an entirely separate pocket in my bag just because it doesn't fold up or anything. But a positive of the prop guards is if you're flying close to objects, you're not going to be as worried about hitting them just because if you do hit something, it's protected. The A1 does have an optional set of prop guards. So the weight of the Avada 360 is about 450 grams, putting it well over the 250 gram category, which if you're not familiar, sub 250 gram drones are basically subject to less rules and regulations as anything above. The biggest difference here in the U S is that you're supposed to register any drone that's over 250 grams and you're subject to different rules and regulations on how you can fly it. And the biggest difference in Europe is you actually have to go in and take a test to legally fly anything above 250 grams. And again, it's subject to different rules. Both of these drones are obviously 360 drones, but they have slightly different designs. The Avada is actually pretty clever when you take off the camera is like this. And then once you're in the air, the camera rotates. So you have a camera at the top, the camera at the bottom, and then it stitches around the drone. So the drone is invisible over on the A1. There's no moving parts here, but basically you have a lens here, a lens here, then these little feet to protect the bottom lens. And again, it just stitches around the whole drone. Both of these drones have replaceable lenses, which is amazing because it's so easy to scratch the lenses. Okay, moving on from physical differences. Let's talk about the flight experience because that's a big one. If you're watching this video, you probably know the flight experience of the A1 and the Avada 360. But if you're new to this, here's a quick summary. So for the A1, you basically control it with this motion controller. You kind of just point where you want the drone to go and it will go. And then you put on these goggles and they will track your head movements. So while you're flying the drone sort of feels like you're in the cockpit and you can look around in 360 degrees. And it is such a cool, such an immersive feeling. This is the first drone on earth that you can do this with. And I can't stress enough how much fun it is. You genuinely just feel like you're flying. One downside of the A1 is at the moment, they don't have a regular drone controller, so you can only fly forwards. There's no reverse or sideways or anything with this controller. So you're kind of limited in what you can do. They are planning on coming out with a normal controller this summer. No word on exactly when that will be, but I'm super stoked to fly it whenever that comes out. Moving over to the Avada 360, this is where things get a little bit more complicated, but in a good way. So DJI has the same feature as the anti-gravity where you can put goggles on, use a motion controller and have the whole like 360 head track thing. You can use either the DJI Goggles 3 or the DJI Goggles N3. And on the motion controller, one benefit is you can actually go in reverse. So you can go forward and in reverse, but you can also fly it with the normal controller, which is incredibly helpful for very technical shots. For me as a filmmaker, this is definitely my preferred way of flying this drone. One reason being that I've flown drones with these types of controllers for over a decade now, and you can just get a lot more technical shots. Again, you can go backwards, sideways and forwards. Some people do prefer the motion controller, but I like this a lot more. One of my favorite features that actually, I think is completely game changing for aerial cinematography is the tracking feature on this thing. Basically here's an example of a shot that I got of my friend when we were down in Baja on a motorcycle trip, but I wanted to sort of track him through all these cactuses and I wanted to be able to fly through the cactuses. So on the controller, I just selected him and the track of him went to a little box in the bottom left-hand corner. So I could see forwards and also see how close I was to him. So I could fly forwards, weave through obstacles and know that he's still being tracked. So you get all these really cool shots of him, like following the drone, weaving through obstacles, stuff like that. This just really isn't possible with any other drone alone. You could use an inspire three and have two people operating it and get similar shots, but honestly not really, because with the Avada 360, you can just get really close to obstacles where you wouldn't want to do that with a huge $20,000 inspire. All right. So now I want to talk about something that I know a lot of people are interested in, which is flying this drone as an FPV drone with the FPV controller three. So this is something that DJI initially told me they weren't going to do when I went to an event in Whistler in December with them. But a couple of weeks ago, I got an update saying that you can use it with the remote controller three. So I was super excited and instantly went out and flew it. And unfortunately I'm going to be honest with you. This is just really not what you're going to want to be using this drone for. So at the time I was able to get it into manual mode. I tried like a week ago and manual mode wasn't available. So it's a little unclear if this is actually a mode that's going to be available, but I was able to fly it in manual mode. And the problem was there was no pitch feedback. So if you're flying the drone forward, the horizon just stayed right in the middle and that made it just really disorienting and kind of hard to control. You can fly with the FPV controller three in 360 spherical mode, but there's no feedback whatsoever. So in other words, if you're tilting or leaning, everything stays the same. So it's really disorienting. If you switch to single lens mode, which kind of defeats the purpose of a 360 drone, you do have roll feedback, but no pitch feedback. So in other words, if you're going forward, the horizon just stays right in the center. So you don't really know how fast you're going and it's just really disorienting and kind of weird. On top of that, I wasn't able to fly full manual. I was able to do barrel rolls, but I wasn't able to dive again. This stuff seems to be changing a little bit. So maybe it's something they update in the future. But from every conversation that I've had with DJI, it sounds like they don't really want to make this a full FPV drone. And I definitely understand it because they also want to be able to sell FPV drones. But DJI, if you are watching this, providing an update in the future where you get like full FPV mode, where you can fly in full manual and you get all the feedback of like an Avada two, that would be fricking amazing. So I really hope you guys do do that. Before I end this section, I kind of want to do a subsection just about the goggles. I've said this before and I'll say it again. I am so impressed on the anti-gravity goggles. When I was doing my testing, I was kind of going back and forth between using the DJI ones and the anti-gravity ones. And I just really enjoyed the anti-gravity ones a lot more. First off, the resolution is a lot better at 2560 by 2560 versus 1920 by 1080 on the Avada 360. On top of that, the A1 goggles have a 90 degree view compared to 44 degrees on the DJI goggles three and 50 degrees on the DJI goggles N3. So when you're in there, the screen's bigger, just feels more immersive. The anti-gravity goggles also have this screen. They're not plugged in right now, but I'm sure you guys have probably seen videos where this display is exactly what you're seeing. So when you're in the air, there's people around you. They can look at your goggles and just see exactly what you're seeing, which I think is a really cool feature. The A1 goggles are also quite a bit lighter coming in at 340 grams versus 470 on the DJI goggles three. The DJI goggles N3 are 536 grams. And the weight difference is largely due to a built in battery on the goggles three and the goggles N3. With the A1, you just have this battery pack that kind of goes around your shoulders. It's a little bit annoying sometimes, but the good thing is you can just buy multiple ones of these and just replace them if you run out of battery. But when it comes to the immersive feel of flights, the A1 goggles definitely win. The anti-gravity goggles just also have some cool modes that the DJI goggles do not have. One of them being virtual cockpit, which you can basically switch on and it makes you feel like you're flying on a dragon. It's actually kind of dope to mess around with. If you do a screen recording on these goggles, they also record your voice. So if you want to do like a behind the scenes flight or something, you don't need a microphone or anything. The audio that comes out of these is actually surprisingly good. And as of March 26, they updated voice commands on these goggles, which is really cool. You can do things like take off, return to home, start recording, stop recording, take a photo, et cetera. It's really nice because you don't have to mess around with the controller at all. All right, next up, I want to talk about range and connection. The Avada 360 has the latest O4 plus video transmission technology and it's rated for up to 20 kilometers on paper. Meanwhile, the anti-gravity range is listed as 10 kilometers on paper. The reason that I say on paper is because with ranges, you're never really ever going to be able to get out to the end of the range. And the reason for that is battery life. When you're doing long range flights, you not only have to fly out to the range, but you also have to get back and I've done a lot of range tests and you're just never going to make it out to that max range unless you're doing a one way flight, which we hate one way flights around here. So what's more relevant here is the connection through obstacles. So for example, if there are trees, a house, a big rock or something in between you and the drone, how is that connection? When I've been flying the A1, there have been several scenarios where the connection just kind of broke up when I wasn't flying in line of sight. Whereas on the Avada 360, there were a couple of situations where it got a little bit laggy, but nothing close to the A1. DJI has been in the game for so long and they have the best transmission system out there. So in this category, I have to give it to the Avada 360. Okay. So moving on to battery life now, now the stated battery life of the Avada 360 is 23 minutes for the A1. The stated battery life is 24 minutes for the normal battery and 39 minutes for the extended battery in the real world. I'm getting between 17 and 20 minutes with the standard battery and between 28 and like 33 minutes for the extended battery. And in all my testing for the Avada, I'm getting between 14 and 16 minutes, largely because this is heavier and the design is just less aerodynamic. So if you are planning on getting either of these drones, especially the Avada, I would definitely recommend getting a pack with three batteries, but regardless of what battery you're using, the A1 is going to be better here. If you're using the extended battery, it's almost double what the Avada 360 is. Next up, I want to quickly talk about max speed. The max speed of the A1 is 16 meters per second and the Avada 360 is 18. So the Avada definitely has the advantage here, but not by too much. As far as obstacle avoidance goes, both of these drones have 360 obstacle avoidance, but the difference here is the Avada 360 has a forward facing LIDAR camera, whereas the antigravity just has normal cameras for the 360 obstacle avoidance. So if it's like dusk or dark, that LIDAR camera on the Avada 360 is going to still pick up everything, but it won't on the A1. Okay. So let's finally get into the camera specs on both of these drones, because for me as a filmmaker, this is incredibly important. The antigravity has dual one by 1.28 inch F 2.2 sensors and shoots up to 8K 30 videos in 8-bit color. Meanwhile, the Avada 360 has dual one inch F 1.9 sensors with a max video resolution of 8K 60 in 10-bit color. The A1 can shoot 60 frames per second, but only at 5.2K. One of the biggest differences for me is the color modes. So the A1 with 8-bit can detect 16 million colors, whereas 10-bit on the Avada 360 can detect 1 billion colors. The Avada 360 is also going to perform better in low light because of its bigger sensor and lower aperture. But how do things look in just normal everyday scenarios? I'm just going to pull up a few clips and you can see if you can spot the difference. These were shot in the same location, same lighting, same general path. As you can see, the antigravity footage is not quite as good as the Avada 360. It's a bit more pixelated than the Avada 360. And there's the fact that on the Avada 360, you can shoot in D log M, which basically is kind of like a flat color profile, which just makes it easier to color grade in post while there's no flat color profile on the A1. A flat color profile basically just kind of desaturates everything, allows you to have a little bit more dynamic range, and it's just easier to color grade. You do have to spend extra time color grading that, but for me, I'm going to do that anyways. I did mess with the color profile a little bit on the A1 where I brought the sharpness down a little bit and then desaturated it a tiny bit. And that did seem to help, but I would love to see a flat color profile from antigravity in the future. By the way, if you're interested in color grading your footage exactly like you see here on this channel, I sell a pack of four video filter Lutz that you basically just apply on top of your footage and it just gives it that cinematic look. I'll leave a link for those down below. Another thing that you'll notice is looking into the sun. The sun just looks a little bit weird on the A1. I think that's largely due to the smaller sensor and just how it deals with the dynamic range. Both cameras do have a photo mode as well. 55 megapixel photos on the A1 and 120 megapixel photos on the Avada 360. Both drones also shoot time-lapses previously. This wasn't a feature on the A1, but as of March they made an update to allow you to shoot time-lapses, which is really cool. But in the camera category, I definitely have to give it to the Avada 360. Okay. Moving on here. Let's talk about post-production because for 360 drones, this is a huge one because unlike other drones, you're going to want to edit every single clip. And as far as like ease of use here, I definitely have to hand this to antigravity. Instant 360 has had a ton of experience making apps and just making things that are super user-friendly. And this is no exception. They have their own standalone antigravity app. Whereas DJI, you're basically just using DJI studio, which is the same app that you use to edit Osmo 360 footage. You can also edit footage from both drones on your phone. But again, I just really like the antigravity app a lot more. I do expect DJI to improve upon this in the future, and I hope they do that soon. But a quick example of how the antigravity app is better in my opinion, is a simple feature where you can kind of pick where the drone camera is facing. So you can just easily switch between forward, sideways, downwards, backwards. And in the DJI desktop app, you just have to manually do all that. Again, this category is super important because you have to edit every single clip that you shoot. Okay. Last but not least, let's talk about price right now. The cheapest, most basic bundle of the antigravity A1 is $1,279. That comes with the drone goggles, motion controller, one battery carrying case, and spare propellers. Moving over to the Avada 360, you can buy the singular drone itself for right around 500 bucks. So if you already have controller goggles, stuff like that, you can get into it pretty cheap. But if you want to buy the cheapest ready to fly pack with this controller, it's going to cost you 719 euros or $830. The reason I have euros is because you can't actually buy them in the States from DJI, which is very unfortunate. And if you are in the States, you're very aware of this problem. I did see several places online where you can buy these. I saw them listed for around $860, but the few that I did see were sold on eBay and they're kind of like unknown sources. So it's a little bit sketchy. So obviously the antigravity is more expensive, but I think what's more relevant to compare is the bundles that come with extra batteries. Because when you're flying either of these drones, you just want extra batteries. You're going to go out and fly cook one battery, and you're just going to want to fly more and not be able to. So when you are comparing similar combos with extra batteries, the antigravity is $519. And then from DJI, you can either pick a pack with three batteries and this controller or a pack with goggles and a motion controller. And that costs roughly $1,080. When you compare those prices, it's less of a big difference differences still there. And a big reason for that is because when you buy the antigravity a one, you have to buy the goggles with them. If you want a set of DJI goggles, these are $579. So you can kind of see where the price difference comes in in the future. I do hope antigravity will sell a pack with a normal controller. Maybe this summer we'll see, but for now the Avada 360 is cheaper. But again, one huge benefit to antigravity right now is that you can't buy the Avada 360 directly from DJI here in the States, but you can go to antigravity website and buy an a one today. All right, guys, that was a lot of info. So let's talk about who the a one is for and who the Avada 360 is for. At the end of the day, both of these drones are really solid. They offer super impressive specs and just so stoked to see an entirely new category of drones out there. So if you are someone who's a professional cinematographer and you really care how good the video looks, I would recommend going with the Avada 360, the bigger sensor, lower aperture and different color modes really give it a leg up on the a one as far as picture quality. However, I really wish it was easier to edit the footage. It's also pretty hard to travel around with and the a one does have a lot better battery life. Moving on to the a one. If you are someone getting a drone who is more interested in the flight experience, you want that super immersive feel and you're just taking kind of more casual shots and want a drone that's more portable and has better battery life. I'd say go with the a one. Like I said before, I really do enjoy the experience of flying with the antigravity goggles a lot more. They're lighter, more comfortable, have cool modes and have higher resolution screens. That's not to say all the shots you get on it are going to look terrible. You've seen a bunch of the shots in this video and I've gotten a lot of good shots on it. And as I said before, editing a one footage is just a lot easier in my opinion. I'll leave links to both drones down in the description. If you use my link to the antigravity a one, they'll throw in a free landing pad and extra high capacity battery. And it would mean a ton if you guys did use those links because I just get a small kickback and it just helps me make more videos like this. I'll also link my video filter Lutz below as well. All right guys. So that is it for this video. I hope you learned something. If you have any questions, make sure to leave them in the comments down below, but that's it for this video. I will see you in the next one. Also, here's a photo of a baby kangaroo. Peace.