Antigravity opted to go after the top end of the market with its first camera drone, the A1 ($1,599). It's not just the first drone from Antigravity, but also the first to feature an integrated 360-degree camera system, powered by technology developed by Insta360. For all intents and purposes, the drone is a flying version of the Insta360 X5 action camera, and its spherical video supports more creative edits than the 16:9 footage of single-lens camera drones like the DJI Flip. The A1 opens up some new video capture possibilities for savvy content creators and cinematographers, and is a heck of a lot of fun to fly, but proves to be a little too rough around the edges to earn top honors. Its battery life and wind resistance are both a bit short of what Antigravity is advertising, and it takes some effort and skill to get great results from its 360-degree camera system. Still, there's nothing else like it on the market, and an impressive debut given the amount of engineering that goes into a camera drone.

Concept: A Flying 360 Camera That Weighs Just 249 Grams

The A1 is the first product from Antigravity, but the company didn't come out of nowhere. Antigravity is a spin-off imprint from Insta360, a trailblazer in 360-degree video and photography. Curiously, it's not Insta360's first attempt at creating a spherical camera for drones; the company explored the concept with its short-lived Sphere, an add-on camera from 2022 that works with the DJI Mavic Air 2 and 2S drones.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The Sphere was more of a proof of concept that you could buy than a mainstream product, but it laid the groundwork for the A1. Like the Sphere, the A1 uses dual ultra-wide-angle lenses to capture everything around the drone, allowing you to extract any portion of the video using editing software. Savvy creators can insert footage that appears to have been shot with a single-lens camera, or take it a step further and add pans, zooms, and other transitions. If you're already into 360-degree cameras, you know the drill, but pilots who are used to traditional drones are in for a learning curve.

The A1 ships with everything you need to get flying immediately: the drone, a flight battery, the Grip Motion Controller, and the Vision Goggles headset. The drone itself is quite small, and its propeller arms fold in so it's easy enough to slide into a camera bag. The aircraft measures 3.2 by 3.8 by 5.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 249g when loaded with its standard battery and a microSD card. Like most drones, the A1 isn't waterproof, so it's intended for use in good weather only.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

One note, like most headsets, the Goggles don't have a built-in battery. Instead, it relies on an external power pack, connected via a wire. Unfortunately, the cord is only about 25 inches long, which is too short to cover the distance between my temple and my pants pocket. The drone comes with a nylon rope lanyard so you can wear the headset battery around your neck, but I'd rather just have a longer power cord and slide it into a pocket.

The standard flight battery is rated for about 24 minutes, which is on the low side for an ultralight drone. The DJI Flip gets 31 minutes with its battery, for instance, and the DJI Mini 5 Pro flies for 36 minutes in its 249g configuration. Antigravity makes a heftier battery for the A1 that extends runtime to a healthy 39 minutes, but it adds weight. The A1 weighs 10.2 ounces (290g) with its extended battery installed, which puts it into a class that must be registered with the FAA. Read on to the next section for more details on FAA regulations.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

I found the battery estimates to be a little overstated. I ran through a series of three test flights, each with the 39-minute battery, and got closer to 26 minutes of flight time on average before the drone warned me that the battery was low and that it would return to home and land, in each instance with an estimated 6 minutes of flying time. That means you should expect closer to 16 to 20 minutes with the standard 249g battery. I don't recommend pushing any drone battery to its extreme limits simply out of safety—you don't want it to run out of juice when it's fifty feet above the ground. It's a disappointing result for such an expensive drone, considering the 249g DJI Flip gets close to a half-hour between charges, and the entry-level DJI Neo gets 15 minutes of flight time out of its 18-minute rated battery.

In addition to the standard $1,599 kit, Antigravity sells the A1 with accessory bundles. The $1,899 Explorer Bundle comes with three standard flight batteries and a charger to top off all three at once, two sets of extra propellers instead of one, and a sling bag. It's the one to get if you want to fly for longer and still keep the drone under 249g. There's also the $1,999 Infinity Bundle, which includes one standard battery and three high-capacity cells, a memory card reader that works with USB-C phones, tablets, and computers, along with the carrying case and extra propellers. I received the Infinity Bundle for evaluation.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The A1 is expensive, even among professional drones. None of its competitors include 360-degree camera systems, and that's the compelling reason to spend big on this versus a standard single-cam drone. Antigravity's largest competitor, DJI, faces a sales ban in the US starting on December 23, however, so it's soon to stand by itself in the domestic market. No one else is making consumer drones with premium pricing and features, however. Potensic targets budget shoppers with its Atom SE ($269.99) and Atom 2 ($359.99), while HoverAir is all-in on selfie drones. 

Antigravity puts 30GB of storage into the A1, which is enough to record about 20 minutes of 8K video, so you are in decent shape in the event that you forget your memory cards at home. You'll definitely want to add a microSD memory card, though, given how large the video files are, and the A1 has a single slot with support for SDXC cards up to 1TB in size. You'll want to use a card with at least a V30 speed rating. It also includes a USB-C port for charging and data transfer, GPS for stabilization, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to connect to the Antigravity smartphone or tablet app (available for Android and iOS).

Regulations: Avoids FAA Registration Requirements, But You Still Have to Follow the Rules

There's a heck of a lot of engineering that goes into drones, even more so than handheld cameras, so I look at the A1 as an aspirational feat to attempt, and the end result is impressive. I'm slightly amazed that Antigravity managed to squeeze the guts of its X5 camera (itself around 200 grams) into a drone that weighs exactly 249g, an important statistic for drone pilots. If you're flying for pleasure, you won't have to register with the A1 with the FAA prior to using it outdoors in the US.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

There are some caveats to consider, however. If you're new to drones, you'll need to take and pass the FAA Trust test, a short online quiz that ensures that you know the basic rules of the air. And if you opt to add the optional Propeller Guards ($29.99) or use an extended life battery, the drone becomes heavy enough to require registration. It's not expensive—the registration fee is just $5 for both casual and professional pilots—but it's an extra step.

To register, you'll need to create or log in to your FAADroneZone account, submit the A1's serial number, and label the drone with a registration number. The A1 has built-in Remote ID, a broadcast system that lets authorities track the drone while it's in flight. Not every 249g drone includes Remote ID—the feature is omitted from the DJI Flip and DJI Neo for instance—but since the A1 is heavier with its extended-life battery, it's included here.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

There is another regulatory hurdle to consider, one that applies equally to pilots who fly under recreational rules and pros like me who hold an FAA sUAS certification. When you're flying a drone, you must be able to spot it visually, without the aid of binoculars or other assistants, during operation. The A1 requires that you wear a headset to fly it, putting it directly at odds with the rules. There's a workaround that will let you use the A1 and stay within the letter of the law: pilots are allowed to have a visual observer nearby to keep eyeballs on the drone. Basically, you need to bring a friend along when you're flying the A1.

Flight Experience: The Headset May Prove Divisive

Most drones ship with a remote control that uses two joysticks for flight control and has either a built-in screen or connects to your smartphone to show the camera view and useful information like altitude, flight speed, and location. The A1 is a little different. Its remote control works with one hand, and the included Vision Goggles headset shows the camera view and flight data, with head tracking that moves the camera view around.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The Vision Goggles look futuristic for sure. My visual observer (and spouse) told me that I looked like Anakin Skywalker in his Phantom Menace pod racing helmet when I put them on. Interestingly, it puts screens on both the inside and outside. The outside display is placed over the wearer's left eye and shows a view from the drone camera when you're flying it (the idea is that friends can check out the scene as you pilot), plus it shows the status of firmware updates, so you needn't strap them on to check the status of your download. The Goggles connect to your home Wi-Fi network for over-the-air firmware updates, with no app or computer required.

Inside, the Vision Goggles use two 1-inch Micro-OLED displays, each with 4K (2560-by-2560) resolution. Each lens uses an exterior knob to adjust the diopter power (from -5 to +1) and is positioned on a slider so you can tune pupillary distance to match your vision. The goggles aren't meant to be worn along with eyeglasses, however, and while Antigravity offers a 300-degree myopia correction insert as an optional accessory, you can't change the lens inserts to match your prescription as you can with headsets that are meant for content consumption like the Apple Vision Pro. This is a problem if you require a more complex prescription, for instance, I have a strong astigmatism in my left eye, so I only see sharp text and details on the right side of the screen, while the left half appears a little blurry.

(Credit: Elisa D. Keller)

Aside from my gripes about my poor eyesight, I'm happy with the picture I see in the Goggles. The view from the drone's camera takes up the entirety of my field of view, is sharp enough for navigation, and importantly shows no discernible lag. Telemetry data (altitude, speed, and distance from the remote) are displayed over the image, though I'll note that this information is only shown in metric, which is fine for nearly every country in the world save for the US, and there is no option to change them over to imperial units. The transmission range is definitely shorter when compared with DJI's O4 transmission system; however, the picture garbled and broke up when I flew the drone toward the extreme limits of my observer's line of sight (around 2,200 feet), but that's still plenty of operating range. If you do fly far enough away to lose connection, the A1 will initiate a return to home flight by default—you can also set it to hover when the signal is lost, but I'd recommend sticking to the defaults. You can set a custom altitude for the return trip via the Goggles' interface.

The Goggles work in conjunction with the Grip controller to navigate through menus. The Grip has motion and orientation sensors and shows a virtual pointer on-screen to scroll through the A1's floating menu panels. It's pretty intuitive—you can see its virtual cursor move around the screen as you wave the Grip like a wand.

The A1 has two flight modes, Free Motion and FPV. In Free Motion, you'll use the Grip controller to point in the direction where you want the drone to fly and pull the trigger to put it in motion. The throttle is analog, so you can press it gently to fly slowly and pull it all the way to go at top speed. Free Motion works in conjunction with head tracking, so you'll move your head to change the camera angle, and fine-tune the flight path by using the Grip to position a reticle that indicates the exact flight direction.

If you want to ascend, you can tilt your head back toward the sky, and you'll look down toward the ground to descend, and the angle of either path depends on how far you tilt your head. As an alternative, you can always ascend or descend without craning your neck. The controller has a slider that rests naturally under your thumb; it controls the altitude, as well as starts the motors, takes off, and lands the drone. Likewise, if you don't want to have to turn around to start flying in the other direction, you can use the Grip's control wheel to rotate the drone. The Grip also has a big red button that works as a brake with a short press and initiates automatic return to home with a long press.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

An FPV (First Person View) flight mode is available as an alternative to Free Motion. The FPV mode is pretty similar to Free Motion, but relies on the Grip's motion-sensitive controls and doesn't follow head tracking. I tried it a little bit, but I strongly prefer the Free Motion system for flight control. I felt like I had more agency over the drone's flight path in Free Motion. On the other hand, the FPV mode includes a "Virtual Cockpit" mode that adds a whimsical animation to the headset view. You can choose between a witch's broom, airplane, spaceship, or a few different types of dragons that you can ride through the sky. I tried some flying time with the dragon animation, and it definitely gave me the feeling of riding off to Alduin's castle on the back of a dragon in Skyrim. The animation doesn't show up in your finished videos, but you can enable screen recording in the Goggles, so you can show off the feature on social media if you want to.

In addition to manual flight, the A1 also includes a few automated modes: Sky Path, Deep Track, and Sky Genie. Sky Path is a waypoint system that lets you fly to different points in space, save each location, and subsequently have the drone repeat that path on its own. Deep Track lets you select a moving target and have the drone follow it automatically. And Sky Genie has the drone fly in a preprogrammed pattern; you can make it circle around a point in space (Orbit), pull back to reveal a subject (Comet), or fly in a corkscrew pattern (Spiral).

The A1 always flies forward. Its 360-degree video system reduces the need for lateral camera movements, as you can always pan over to the side or rear to get other angles in the editing room. It has two nose-mounted cameras that the A1 leverages for obstacle detection, and it also has obstacle sensors on its undercarriage. The drone automatically stops in place when it detects an obstruction, an effective, but basic, safety system. DJI has a leg up on this front; its Advanced Pilot Assistance System 5.0, included in the Mini 5 Pro, Air 3 and 3S, and Mavic 3 Pro and 4 Pro models, changes a drone's path to fly around a barrier all on its own. That said, the A1's obstacle sensors stopped the drone in place several times during my tests, both when I was intentionally trying to trigger it and when Sky Genie paths would have otherwise gotten the drone stuck in a tree.

The A1 is rated for Class 5 wind resistance, which means it should operate on days with 24mph gusts. I performed my test flights on a mildly breezy day; the weather report told me the wind was around 10mph with gusts of up to 17mph, and I was constantly inundated with high wind warnings when flying above treetop level. The drone never got stuck, but it definitely struggled against the wind at times, enough that I'd caution buyers to check the weather report and avoid flying on breezy days.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

I'd also caution anyone who is prone to motion sickness that you may have a hard time using the headset. I've had no problems with nausea when trying other FPV drones, I had a good experience with both the DJI FPV Combo and Avata for instance, but I felt truly awful after my first 15-minute shakedown flight with the A1—I had a headache for a good hour after landing and felt like I might lose my lunch and was worried that I might have to skip this review entirely. Thankfully, I didn't have any problems on subsequent flights. I spent more than an hour flying the A1 a few days later and didn't feel ill at all. But if you are prone to car sickness or reach for the Dramamine when you're out on the water, it's likely you'll feel ill when flying the A1.

Video: 360 Lets You Change Your Angle in the Editing Room, But Know-How Is Required

When 360-degree digital cameras first hit the market more than a decade ago, I didn't quite know what to make of them. At the time, most were low-end cameras or smartphone add-ons and just about all you could do with the video was to watch it in a headset or, more commonly, view it on a computer screen and pan through the footage to check out a scene. Insta360 was the first brand to rethink what you could do with spherical video, and its One camera, introduced in 2017, pioneered the concept of reframing for the medium. Reframing takes an all-around spherical view, cuts out a flat projection, and lets you add (if you want) animations like pans, zooms, and the iconic Tiny Planet projection that's become synonymous with 360-degree pictures and video. Others have copied Insta360; both DJI and GoPro now make 360 cameras with reframing software, and today, 360 video is more about editing than viewing in a headset.

The 360-degree camera system is the A1's headline feature, and it is simultaneously both its greatest strength and greatest weakness. Its twin ultra-wide cameras capture everything above and below the drone with crisp detail and pleasing color. And despite omitting a gimbal in its design, typically a hard requirement for smooth, stable aerial video, the A1's digital stabilization is rock steady. The all-around view makes the digital stabilization possible, and takes the worry about missing the shot away when flying—you can always change your camera angle, zoom in or out, or add virtual camera moves to video in the editing room. Those are the strengths.

As for the weaknesses, once you get the drone up in the air, you'll quickly realize that about half your frame is just sky. And while the video looks good out of the camera, it doesn't leave much room for color correction. The A1 doesn't have an edit-friendly Log color profile, nor does it work with neutral density filters, so cinematographers will have a harder time matching footage with other cameras and using a slower shutter speed in order to achieve pleasing cinematic motion. To put it in context, the A1 records action-cam-quality footage, which makes sense as its camera system is quite similar to the Insta360 X5. Competing drones that cost nearly as much as the DJI Air 3S are much closer to cinema grade, and while the DJI Mavic 4 Pro goes for a heftier $2,999 if you can find one on sale stateside, it's a true cinema drone.

I also find that the propellers create some interesting, but not desirable, flare effects when the sun is in frame—this was a common problem with early drones like the DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ that had near fish-eye lenses, but hasn't been a problem since the industry moved to models with narrower lenses and worked to put propellers further away from the lens. The A1 also shows signs of chromatic aberration in certain scenes. For instance, I noticed that the sun shimmering off the surface of a pond rendered as an unnatural bright purple, a classic example of the effect, and also saw some purple fringing around bare tree branches set against a deep blue sky.

You'll also want to be careful not to zoom in too much when reframing video. Remember that the 8K picture is spread across a 360-degree sphere, so you're already losing a lot of resolution when you crop down to a 16:9 frame. And for non-experts, the file sizes and editing workflow are both steep hills to climb. The A1 supports lower-resolution recording, like 5.2K60 for lighter file sizes and 4K100 for slow-motion, but the image is pretty soft once you reframe.

The A1 works with free software to help beginners along the way, though. Antigravity provides both mobile and desktop apps to edit the footage natively or convert it to a format that works with desktop video editing software. That is a time sink for longer clips; my Mac Studio with an M1 Max CPU and 64GB of memory converts a 1-minute clip in about 80 seconds.

I tried a few different approaches to working with the A1's video files. First, I tried the Android app running on a Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra, a 14.6-inch slab with a big screen that's ideal for editing video. Since the video files are so big—about 1.3GB per minute—I used the Antigravity Quick Reader, included in the Infinity bundle and sold separately for $49.99 to copy the footage. Wi-Fi is a fine option if you're copying short clips, but for big files, it's worth it to use the Quick Reader; I clocked its speed at around 4.3GB per minute. The Reader has a microSD slot plus Lightning and USB-C plugs to connect to older and newer iPhones and iPads, and newer Android devices.

The app is by far the easiest way to manipulate photos and videos shot with the A1. Its touch interface is easy to understand and lets you move the frame where you want it, as is its keyframe animation system. If you want to make a pan or zoom effect, set your starting point and angle, set a keyframe, advance to the part of the clip where you want a different angle, and set another keyframe. You can also use Deep Track, which keeps a point of interest in view; I used it in the preceding clip to keep the big red barn in view as the drone flew by it. And if you're looking for even quicker results, you can choose from a template or have the app auto-edit your video. The app also lets you reframe still images in the same fashion—the A1 snaps 55MP pictures that you can export as either 360-degree stills or animate with a reframing effect.

The Antigravity Studio software is far more intuitive. It makes it easy to adjust the angle of view and add animations with a more click-based WYSIWYG approach. It includes a basic nonlinear editing (NLE) timeline and puts the tools you want for 360-degree editing right at your fingertips. It's missing the automatic editing wizards and templates from the mobile app, but is a fine choice for anyone who prefers to work on a desktop. It also gives you the option to export clips with telemetry data overlaid if you'd like. And if you like to finish your videos in Final Cut Pro or another video editor, you can use Antigravity Studio to reframe your clips and then export them to drop into other software.

(Credit: Antigravity/PCMag)

Several popular editing suites support 360-degree editing, including CyberLink PowerDirector 365 and Apple Final Cut Pro, and others like Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve support free plug-ins like Insta360 Reframe and GoPro's ReFrame, which works with all kinds of 360-degree cameras, not just the GoPro Max2. I do most of my video editing in Final Cut Pro, but I found its reframing interface to be pretty obtuse. I'm sure you can use it to get great results if you know what you're doing, but I had a far easier time with Antigravity's desktop and mobile apps.

And it's not just a technical learning curve for 360 editing; you also have to take the creative side into account. It's a little too easy to make gimmicky reframes of 360 shots as a special effect. Little Planet transitions look cool for sure, but I can't help but think of Homer Simpson adding star wipe after star wipe to a video. It's not just about having the tech, it's about knowing when and when not to use a specific effect, and finding scenes that work well in the medium.

I'm the first to admit that I'm a little bit like Homer when it comes to 360-degree video, and even with decades of experience using cameras, I still haven't mastered the art of 360 capture and editing. I don't think I'm alone there, and that brings up one of the biggest omissions—the A1 doesn't include the single-lens recording option that's included in the Insta360 X5. The X5 and previous entries in the line are creative powerhouses because they can swap between dual-lens 360 and single-lens capture, effectively making them two cameras in one. The physical design of the A1 precludes this—the lenses have to be pretty close together to get a seamless spherical picture, which means a single-lens shot would just be the downward view. We'll have to wait and see what Antigravity does next, but my fingers are crossed that it's a more traditional drone built around the Type 1/1.3 sensor and lens from the Insta360 Ace Pro 2 action camera.