Antigravity A1 drone: everything to know about this anticipated 360 drone

The following piece was written by Anderson Ta, the newest drone reviewer to join The Drone Girl team. Anderson has spent the past 6 years building up Benton Drones to be a top drone service provider (DSP) leveraging the latest and greatest in drone technologies filming action sports, developing autonomous drones, and creating “info-tainment” media content. You can follow Anderson on Instagram or YouTube.

“Capture the moment now, figure out the shot in post”. That’s the allure of 360 cameras – allowing photographers the freedom to not have to worry about missing the moment – instead enabling them to reframe shots after the fact.

And now, there’s a drone from Chinese drone maker Antigravity, made in collaboration with Insta360, where the camera is freed from the selfie stick and takes to the skies in the form of a drone called the Antigravity A1.

Antigravity sent me the Infinity Bundle of the A1 drone to review on behalf of The Drone Girl.

There have been 360 drones before. The Cine-bird from StanFPV, the X-Knight 360 from BetaFPV, or the QAV-Pro Mirage 360 by Lumenier to name a few. But most of them required end user assembly and very specific components.

In contrast, the Antigravity A1, is the first consumer-oriented, out-of-the-box, 360 drone on the market. A quick look at the specs of the camera onboard, you will quickly see that there are a lot of similarities to it compared to Insta360’s flagship camera, the X5. Like the Insta360 X5’s capability to delete the selfie stick, the A1 does the same by removing the drone body from the footage it captures.

The two cameras’ specs are almost entirely the same:

	Insta360 X5	Antigravity A1
Sensor size	1/1.28″	1/1.28″
Lens aperture	F2.0	F2.2
360 video resolution	8K: 7680×3840@30/25/24fps 4K: 3840×1920@120/100/60/50/48/30/25/24fps	8K: 7680×3840@30/25/24fps 4K: 3840×1920@100/30/25/24fps

As someone who has spent years flying FPV, the A1 goggles still feel like a unique piece of hardware. One of the face plates of the goggles serves as a live view of what the drone sees. To achieve this feature on other traditional FPV goggles would require additional cables/peripherals, making it easier than ever to share the views with anyone nearby.

Coming in at sub-250 grams (with the standard batteries), the drone itself is similar to the size and form factor of DJI’s Mini Pro line up.

However, the body just didn’t feel as sturdy. With a full body construction of plastic, and otherwise thin features, I would not expect this drone to hold up well in the event of a crash. I’d highly suggest opting in for the Antigravity Care offering, which is their form of extended warranty protection.

With any 360 camera, it’s critical to have end user replaceable lenses. Any sort of scratch or scuff on the lenses, it is game over for getting any sort of usable footage. I’m happy that Antigravity had thought about this and made the lenses replaceable. With a flying 360 drone, you are inevitably going to run into something and crash at some point!

The A1 comes with a motion controller only, though there are rumors of a RC/gamepad style controller coming in the future.

The motion controller style controls are actually quite accessible to beginners. Instead of relying on their knowledge of manipulating joysticks to manipulate the pitch, roll, and yaw of the drone, users can wave the motion controller as if their hands were the drone itself.

There are two modes of flying with the motion controller, Freemotion or FPV.

For Freemotion, you more or less mount where you want to go with the motion controller.
For FPV, the entire controller is representative of the drone and turning/banking the controller maneuvers the drone.

I found myself flying exclusively in FPV mode, as with Freemotion I kept finding myself constantly reorienting where I was facing to keep the drone moving in the directions I wanted. FPV mode allowed me to remain static and just move my arm/wrists/hands to get the drone to behave how I wanted. This definitely came in handy when I was flying in more challenging environments in terms of signal (more on that later when I talk about using the A1).

The A1 offers two battery options. The standard battery promises 24 minutes of flight, while the larger, high-capacity batteries are rated for 39 minutes of flight. I only had the standard batteries for testing, yet I got closer to 19 minutes of flight on average.

Using the included charger — I was able to cycle through the batteries with minimal down time. By the time I was done using the 3rd battery, the first one on the charger was topped off and ready to go again. For an additional buffer, I’d suggest getting a fourth battery to never worry about outrunning the charger.

To put the A1 through its paces, I opted to bring it in place of my DJI Mini 4 Pro on a work trip. I film a lot of action sports, in particular mountain biking, and use camera drones to compliment the high intensity angle of FPV. I find the wide angle to be great for establishing shots, while the medium-to-wide angle is ideal for follow shots when tracking a subject.

The A1 provides a very wide angle view by default, this makes capturing establishing shots even easier being able to capture more of the landscape in every frame. Here’s an example of a wide-angle shot from my drone:

And here’s another angle:

Unlike with typical gimbaled camera drones, I did not have to really worry about framing as much knowing that the A1 was continuously capturing 360 footage. I just needed to think about a general flight path, put the A1 up in the air, and just enjoy the flight.

For the medium to wide angle follow/tracking shots, the A1 does have a subject tracking mode.

I did not have as good of luck using this feature while shooting in the field. Most tracking modes are optimized for slow to medium paced subject tracking. Perhaps it was something of a user error, as I was trying to use it for very fast and steep downhill tracking. In the end, it just did not work out for my use case, as it would lose the subject if they accelerated or changed directions rapidly. I found it easier to try subject tracking in post via the Antigravity app instead of using while shooting.

Overall, the A1 performed well on the trip with a couple downsides. As with any 360 camera, the more you zoom in on your shot, the more detail is lost. For the most detail, leave the shot in its default Megaview or try and get as close as you can in terms of distance to the final shot of interest to capture fine details.

I was flying in an environment with multiple ridge lines and cliffs, which was challenging. The moment there was any sort of minimal obstruction, the signal deteriorated quickly. There was not a slow roll off that made it manageable to recover from, which made me keep things more conservative to mostly open, line-of-sight flights.

Antigravity seems to be actively working on improving the A1. In fact, over the time that I’ve had this drone — there has been an update every time I’ve powered on the device (for better or for worse).

While on this trip, a required update popped up. But — without internet or cell service — I wasn’t able to do so, limiting my A1 flight in functionality and flight capabilities. It’s good that they are actively working on improving things, but it should not have stopped me from using a previously working setup.

As with any 360 camera, it’s only as good as the footage that you can get from it. I used the Antigravity app to do all my editing (there is a Studio app for desktop as well). If you are familiar with the Insta360 editing workflow, it’s the exact same. I found it easiest to either use the phone or put the goggles on to capture live framing while reviewing footage for extracting clips.

Antigravity A1: who is it good for?

The Antigravity A1 is the first 360 consumer drone on the market. It brings a truly unique experience allowing anyone to get the most immersive flight experience ever. Putting the goggles on and being able to look around in full 360 is a game changer.

The A1 is a good fit for anyone new to the drone space. The motion controller makes it easy and intuitive to fly. The goggles have built in tutorials to walk anyone through the process of operating and flying the A1. The simplicity of just focusing on flying and not having to worry about framing/composition in the moment removes any anxiety on whether or not you got the shot. The app is easy to use and you can extract numerous shots, that would usually take an expert pilot, from a single flight. Rear facing shots, tracking shots, and panning shots are all just a couple key frames away!

And here’s another angle, but from the rear.

All the reasons the A1 is good for beginners is also good for more advanced users. Knowing that I can extract multiple angles from a single shot allows me to focus on coming up with creative flight paths and executing them. I can get shots where I would typically require a second operator when flying FPV on my own now. Rear facing FPV shots are always a tricky shot to pull off, now with the A1 it’s never been easier (as long as I can keep up with the subject).

The Antigravity A1 is ushering in a new generation of camera drones. As the first mover, it does an incredible job in incorporating 360 camera technology into a turn key drone solution accessible to anyone. Compared to some of the previous alternative options out there, I’d purchase the A1 over them any day. With any first generation product, there are hiccups, but seeing how actively Antigravity is working on updates, the product will only continue to improve with time.

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Antigravity A1: who is it good for?

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