Antigravity just dropped the A1 – the world's first "all-in-one 8K 360 drone." Totally sounds like marketing hype until you fly it and realize how revolutionary this drone really is. As Antigravity's Michael Shabun put it, "A1 takes the freedom of 360 capture and gives it wings."
Unlike every stick-driven quad before it, this thing was built headset-first. The Vision Goggles aren't an accessory – they're the cockpit. Paired with the Grip controller's "FreeMotion Mode," you literally steer by pointing which way you want to go. It's so intuitive it feels like a gentle dance with the wind rather than pursed lips and sweaty fingers trying to thread needles.
Most drone bros would agree that a motion controller is for kids and amateurs ... and while they're not necessarily wrong, the pairing makes total sense with the Antigravity A1. With full 360 vision, leaning and twisting your wrist – and your head – not only feels natural, but it adds to the experience. It's like carving the skies as a bald eagle rather than a drone.
That being said, it can't fly backwards, and there's no option for sticks. The yaw scroller makes it easy enough to spin it around if you overshoot a landing or objective, but a reverse trigger would be nice. Maybe a thumbstick near the emergency brake would make pinpoint manual landings easier. The A1's low-slung rotors require an almost perfectly flat surface, which explains the folding landing pad that comes in the box – though even the landing pad atop well-kept grass isn't always level enough for the props to clear.
Now that I've made every single complaint I have about the Insta360-incubated company's first attempt at a drone:
Flying the A1 is the most fun I've ever had in the skies outside of flying actual planes – period (negative g in a plane is a hoot, lemme tell ya). I'll often take it out just to fly for the sake of flying. I always hit record "just in case," but if nothing crazy happens, I'll delete the footage without ever even looking at it. It just feels alive being in the air with this little thing.
Here's some raw footage I shot with the Antigravity A1:
The Vision Goggles have top-of-the-line pancake lenses with dual 1-inch Micro-OLED (2,560×2,560) displays. And if you're like me and have four eyes, you don't have to worry, as the goggles have built-in adjustable diopters. You can comfortably fly without your glasses. If you don't wear glasses, well, consider yourself lucky.
Antigravity says it has a 6.2-mile (10-km) range in ideal conditions without interference, but I haven't tested it out that far yet ... which is pretty impressive considering the OmniLink 360 transmission gives you a live 2K resolution feed, though it has a ~150-ms-or-so latency. That's a bit on the high side in terms of latency, but not enough to feel like you're trying to chase the drone's movements. You still feel totally in control.
That VR-like immersion kicks in the moment you put on the goggles. From the moment you're about to lift off, looking up at yourself from the ground-level perspective of the drone, to a height that would cause substantial fall damage ... if you look straight down, you'll get the tummy tickles. At least I do, and I love it. The experience of simply flying the drone is worth the price of admission, in my opinion.
Yes, it records seamless 8K footage in literally every single direction all at once ... and shoots 55-MP RAW still photos if that's your thing. That, in itself, is amazing, but just the act of controlling the drone in the air as you look around and explore places you've probably been a million times, but have never seen from that vantage, is just downright awesome. I literally feel like I can't stress that point enough – how damn fun it is to fly – even to the point of sounding repetitive and annoying.
At its core, the A1 packs a dual-lens 1/1.28-inch sensor setup that records 8K 30 fps, 5.2K 60 fps, or 4K 100 fps in a fully image-stabilized sphere at a 170-Mbps max bitrate. No gimbal, no missed angles – just "fly first, frame later." You get cinematic pans, Tiny Planets, or clean tracking in post with zero reshoots. One pass, all the angles. Done. Nifty.
As with Insta360 cameras, that wide FOV does have its downsides. Sure, you'll never miss a thing, but that thing might appear so small and so far away that maybe it isn't even worth the shot. To get good, clear shots of your subject, you'll have to fly close to it, which can be risky sometimes. But the good news is you'll only have to do it once! And since it's like playing a VR game – and I personally have quite a bit of VR experience – it's pretty easy to get it right with the point-and-shoot controls.
When the Antigravity arrived for me to test it out, I was shocked by how small it is. It weighs just 249 g – which slips it under the mostly global "sub-250-grams-limits," so US users won't need to get an FAA license just to tinker around with it. Equally shocking was the long 24-minute flight time for such a small drone. That increases to 39 mins with the big battery – though, the extended flight battery pops the little drone into FAA category at 291 grams ... so have your papers in order. Not only that, but with the standard battery, max takeoff altitude is 13,123 ft (4,000 m). With the big boy in there, you lose a full ~3,281 (~1,000 m) max ceiling. If you're a high-altitude pilot, that can affect where you launch from. Raise your hand if you've ever walked the Earth at over 10,000 ft (3,048 m).
The A1 has a suite of sensors on the front and belly that will help you keep it out of the trees, but should you inadvertently falcon yourself into a pole, the A1 does have replaceable lenses and props. Though, based on the feel of the drone, I think it would meet a grisly demise, far worse than a prop or lens, should it hit a tree, a branch, another branch, then the ground. Weight-saving measures usually mean thin, fragile-feeling bits. And I have zero desire to crash it just to test durability. It's too fun to risk it.
The little A1 has Level-5 wind resistance, meaning in winds up to 24 mph (39 km/h), you won't be fighting it to keep it in check. And if things really go sideways, the drone uses GPS, Galileo, and Beidou satellites to track its position. Not only does that mean you'll be able to find it in the wilderness should it go AWOL, but it also has a super solid hover with almost zero drift.
The forward sensors can see up to about 60 ft (18 m) and will track obstacles up to about 28.6 mph (43.2 km/h), which isn't bulletproof, but should help. The bottom sensors have a crazy wide FOV at 107 degrees front to back and 90 degrees left to right.
The outer-facing screen on the left goggle is a really neat feature for showing people what your perspective through the drone looks like, but in practice, you're constantly spinning around in place while you're flying the drone. That means anyone trying to actually see what you're seeing is running in circles around you and jumping and ducking just to keep the screen in sight. So while it's theoretically really cool, I'd rather have the option to turn off the screen to conserve battery. I don't know exactly how long the battery-on-a-lanyard for the goggles lasts, but it feels like it could be around an hour and a half or more.
The A1 is capable of running automated flight paths with Sky Path. It lets you plot and replay complex flight routes automatically, which is gold for matching transitions over time or even just sitting back and enjoying the "VR" ride – or passing off the goggles to someone to enjoy the ride as the drone does its thing without fear of them augering your expensive piece of aerial equipment. Sky Genie is another mode for quick-fire cinematic moves like orbit and spiral. Deep Track can lock onto subjects, keeping them in frame while you fly. There's another mode too, which I found to be kind of silly, but others might appreciate it: Virtual Cockpit. As you fly, your POV gets skinned to look like you're riding a dragon. Yeah, seriously. It made me chuckle, at least. I hear there are more skins coming too.
From a piloting perspective, full 360 vision is a game-changer. There are literally no blind spots. If you're flying in one direction but looking away, a little picture-in-picture popup will show up on your screen so you can see where it's going, even if you're looking backwards. It's the first drone made that can see 90 degrees straight up, too, which offers a very unique perspective when you're flying under stuff, like bridges and lifted bro trucks. And like the damage indicator in a first-person shooter, your peripheral will flash yellow or red as you near danger. Sadly, it doesn't do it directionally, like in Call of Duty, but it's still really neat.
The drone has the usual modes on a toggle switch on the Grip motion controller: Cine, Normal, and Sport. The latter will get you flying to a 36-mph (58-km/h) top speed. It'll even do 18 mph (29 km/h) straight up. That's fast! The Grip has a big red button – not that color matters, as you can't see it with the goggles on anyway – where your thumb rests naturally that serves as a panic brake to go full stop if you want to avoid seeing your health meter go to zero.
Antigravity also ships its own video editing software for mobile and desktop that does all the usual stuff: reframing, color correction, and even automatic edits where the app will pick the best bits and cobble them together for you in all the common aspect ratios from portrait to landscape.
You can buy one in three flavors. Best Buy already has them in stock, just in time for Xmas. The standard package has everything you'll need to go "be a bird," and the higher packages, of course, allow you to fly longer. The Infinity bundle is what I received, and it even came with a nice carrying bag for everything.
- Standard Bundle – US$1,599
- Explorer Bundle – $1,899
- Infinity Bundle – $ 1,999
And just in case you either forgot to buy a memory card (it'll support up to 1 TB) or simply couldn't afford one after dropping all that cash, the A1 has 20 GB of built-in storage. They really thought of everything, didn't they?
I've been a fan of Peter McKinnon – who's not really a drone guy – for a long time, so enjoy his video about the Antigravity A1 (and making coffee).
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