Pros & Cons
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- 360-degree camera supports creative edits
- Single-lens capture mode
- Faithful, vibrant colors with standard profile
- 10-bit D-Log M profile supports color correction
- Handheld and headset remote control options
- Obstacle detection and Remote ID for safe flights
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- Unimpressive battery life
- Learning curve for editing 360-degree footage
- FAA registration required for recreational use
DJI Avata 360 Specs
| Dimensions | 2.2 by 7.8 by 9.7 inches |
| Integrated Camera | Integrated without Gimbal |
| Live Video Feed | 1080p |
| Media Format | Internal |
| Media Format | microSDXC |
| Megapixels | 120 |
| Obstacle Detection | |
| Remote | Dedicated with FPV Goggles |
| Remote | Dedicated with LCD |
| Rotors | 4 |
| Video Resolution | 8K |
| Weight | 1 |
DJI usually leads the pack in drone tech, but it wasn't the first to put a 360-degree video camera into a quadcopter—Antigravity beat it to market with last year's A1. But the FCC-approved DJI Avata 360 ($719 with RC 2 controller) proves that being first isn't the most important thing. The Avata is better executed than the A1, with two remote control options instead of one, a more refined flight experience and camera system, and full 360-degree obstacle avoidance, all for less than half the price of the A1. It's a small category at the moment, but the Avata 360 easily wins our Editors' Choice award for 360-degree camera drones.
Design: Dual Lenses See the Entire World
The Avata 360 is the third drone in the series, and aside from its dual-lens camera, looks like a cross between the Avata 2 and DJI's tiny Neo. It has roughly the same footprint as earlier entries in the Avata series, but with a slimline body and integrated propeller guards like the Neo. Measuring 2.2 by 7.8 by 9.7 inches (HWD), it's short enough so that the dual-lens system captures everything around the drone, but leaves the aircraft out of the footage.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)The dual-lens camera system provides a full 360-degree spherical image for both video and photos. VR headsets haven't really taken off for content consumption, but the camera system is certainly up to the task for users who've embraced the tech. But despite this, 360-degree cameras have stuck around, as spherical images can be reframed for flat screens and added to special effects in the editing room. The DJI Studio desktop app lets you change the angle of view, pan to a different viewpoint, or create trippy Little Planet projections. And if you want to save time editing, you can also set the drone to record traditional widescreen 16:9 video.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)The Avata is rated for about 23 minutes of flight on a fully charged battery, according to DJI, but that figure is a little ambitious versus reality. In my test flights, I got closer to 15 minutes of actual flight time before receiving the low-battery warning that pops up when the power dips below 20%. It's not a good idea to push a drone battery too far, as you need to leave yourself time to come in for a safe landing. If you're looking to fly for longer periods without landing, you'll have to stick to a single-lens drone. The DJI Mini 5 Pro is rated for 52 minutes with its extended life battery, and the Air 3S got around 35 minutes in my tests.
The drone is available in a few different bundles. The basic $719 kit includes the drone, a single flight battery, the RC 2 handheld remote control, and a folding landing pad. You can also get it in a Fly More Combo, which includes three flight batteries, a multi-charger, and a shoulder bag for $979. There are two Fly More configurations available. DJI also has a Motion Fly More Combo for the same price that omits the RC 2 in favor of a single-hand RC Motion 3 remote controller and the DJI Goggles N3 headset.
Regulations: Certified in Advance of the FCC Drone Ban
The Avata 360 is pretty small, but it's not an ultralight. It weighs about a pound, nearly twice the 8.8-ounce/249g takeoff weight that allows you to sidestep FAA registration. That's not a huge hurdle; it just means that recreational pilots will have to pay a $5 fee on FAADroneZone if they don't already have an FAA number, in addition to taking and passing the free online Trust safety test.
Pro pilots with an sUAS certificate have to pay to register every drone (also $5), but will be happy to know that the Avata 360 includes built-in Remote ID, so there's no need to add an external transmitter.
It's also worth noting that, even though the Avata's release date came after the FCC's foreign drone ban, it had already received agency approval, so it's allowed to be sold and used in the US.
I'm happy to see DJI bundle the handheld RC 2 with the Avata 360 by default. FAA regulations require that all pilots, pro and recreational, keep a drone within their unaided line of sight during flight operations or have a dedicated visual observer on site to keep eyeballs on the drone while you pay attention to the controls. The handheld remote makes it possible to fly without a visual observer. You're allowed to look down at the remote to change camera settings or check your frame.
If you choose to get the Motion Fly More Combo instead, you'll have to fly with an observer, of course. The Antigravity A1 only works with a headset and motion controller, so you'll need to bring an observer along for every flight if you want to avoid being a scofflaw.
Flight Experience: The Avata Handles Like a Dream
There's a reason that DJI's drones are perennial award winners—typically, they deliver fantastic picture quality and responsive, stable flight control. The Avata 360 follows the trend. It's a zippy little drone that's steady in the air, responds to the remote instantly, and sends a lag-free video feed back to the controller. It's confident in the air, even on windy days, areas where the Antigravity A1 falls short.
In its 360-degree flight mode, the Avata supports all-around obstacle detection and avoidance, taking some of the anxiety out of flying low to the ground or in crowded environments with trees and buildings. The drone uses DJI's Advanced Pilot Assistance System (APAS) to autonomously fly around obstructions in its 360 mode, but only supports forward obstacle detection with braking in its single-lens mode.
The obstacle avoidance works very well, but it isn't perfect. Instead of putting dedicated sensors all around its body like the uncrashable Air 3S, the Avata 360 uses four forward-facing sensors, two LiDAR modules that point straight ahead, and two cameras that point at a slight downward angle, and supplements those with data from its 360-degree camera system for all-around coverage. In 360 capture mode, the lenses face up and down, so the drone works with APAS Bypass or Brake. In Bypass mode, it weaves around objects on its own.
(Credit: Jim Fisher)It can get tripped up by small branches and wires, however. During testing, the drone tried to ascend to avoid a tree branch but brushed against some small branches above it. The integrated prop guards prevented a crash, and there was no damage, but you'll have to be careful when flying the drone in a crowded environment. If you switch over to single-lens, 16:9 recording, you only get an automatic Brake for forward obstacles, and Bypass is disabled. This is because the Avata 360 only uses one of its two cameras in this mode, so it has no way to check for obstructions above, to the side, behind, or below.
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As mentioned, there are two ways to control the Avata 360. The RC 2 is a traditional remote with two analog sticks—one to change altitude and rotate the drone on its axis, another to move it laterally in any direction—and a 1080p touch screen that shows a live feed from the camera and includes touch controls to swap between different capture modes and access the menu.
The Motion Fly More Combo offers an alternative. It shows the camera view in a headset, the Goggles N3, and uses a one-handed motion controller with an analog throttle to move the drone forward and gesture control to change the direction of flight. It's fairly intuitive: The Goggles show a camera feed and a reticle. You'll tilt the RC Motion 3 controller to move the reticle and change the drone's direction, then squeeze the controller's trigger to accelerate. If you want to fly in reverse, you just push the trigger in the other direction. The RC Motion 3 also has a thumb stick that adjusts altitude (up/down) or moves laterally (left/right). It also has a big orange button that works as an emergency brake—press it, and the Avata 360 stops moving and hovers in place—and a Record button to quickly start or end a video clip.
Remember that if you opt for the Goggles N3 and RC Motion 3, you'll need a spotter for every outdoor flight to comply with FAA regulations. That's the same case with the Antigravity A1, which only works with goggles and a motion controller. DJI's Goggles N3 are better than Antigravity's, though. The DJI set comes with an internal battery, so you don't need to plug in an external power pack like with the Antigravity, and it's large enough to work with prescription eyeglasses. That's good news if you have a vision issue that requires a complex prescription. For example, I have astigmatism, so the Antigravity screen always looked blurry to me, while I have a crystal-clear view with my eyeglasses and the DJI Goggles N3. Of course, if your vision just needs a simple diopter adjustment, either set works well.
Video and Imaging: Double the Lenses, Double the Work
The Avata 360's dual-lens, 360-degree camera system is its neatest trick and takes some of the pressure off of getting the perfect shot when you're flying, but requires that you brush up on your software skills and spend some extra time in the editing room to get the best results. You can pan, tilt, and zoom through video to change your angle, plus create fun projections like Asteroid (DJI's name for the Little Planet effect) to craft showy videos that have more wow factor than regular drone footage, but it takes more effort than making simple cuts between different shots that most video editors are used to.
Still, it's not too bad to learn. The DJI Studio desktop software, a free download for macOS and Windows, reads the proprietary 360-degree OSV video format and gives you the tools you need to get it ready to drop onto a timeline in your preferred nonlinear editing suite. When you import a clip, Studio plays it back with the angles that you see on the remote controller during flight, which is nice because you can zoom out all the way to an Asteroid view, zoom in to a narrower angle, and tilt the camera 360 degrees around the z-axis during flight. The software also lets you crop for different aspect ratios—16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:3, and 3:4 are supported.
DJI Studio lets you do all that after the fact. It uses a keyframe animation system to set the view. If you're not familiar with keyframes, they're a pretty simple concept. Drop a keyframe on the timeline, set the angle of view, move forward, and add another keyframe with a different view; the Studio software smoothly animates between the two. If you want to hold a shot for a few seconds between animations, you just need to add two keyframes with identical settings and space them apart on the timeline. Each keyframe lets you set the Field of View (FOV), Correction Angle (horizon line), Pan Angle, Tilt Angle, and Roll Angle. Using a 90° Roll Angle creates the Asteroid view, which puts video captured by the bottom lens at the center and surrounds it with video from the top lens, while -90° does the opposite and creates a tunnel effect that puts the sky in the center and the ground around the edges.
The drone also supports single-lens capture, which is handy if you want to grab a shot without dealing with the file sizes or editing work that come with 360-degree footage. The Avata cleverly swivels its top lens to a forward position and records in 4K at up to 60fps in 16:9 (with the RC 2 remote) or 4:3 (with the Goggles N3 and RC Motion 3 remote). The footage looks pretty good, albeit not quite as crisp and with a little bit more noise than I see from the Air 3S's primary wide-angle camera. If you don't need 360 recording, it's a better idea to get an Air 3S or Mini 5 Pro, as both offer better rectilinear (16:9 with no distortion) picture quality than the Avata 360.
There's a reason for this—the Avata 360 has two fisheye type lenses and crops in to get a narrower angle of view (similar to a 24mm lens on a full-frame camera) when recording in its single lens mode to stabilize the video, whereas the Air 3S uses the entire surface of its sensor to record video and relies on a 3-axis gimbal for stabilization. The Avata's digital stabilization is great—footage is rock-solid when flying in forward or reverse, or changing altitude. The camera banks left and right when turning in this mode, however, because the digital stabilization can't compensate for roll. This is a desirable look for some shots—the Air 3S, Mini 5 Pro, and other one-lens drones can disable roll correction to match this FPV effect. If you want to keep the horizon level when banking left or right with the Avata 360, don't worry—its 360-degree recording mode stabilizes footage against roll and delivers the floating Steadicam look expected from a camera drone.
Of course, 360-degree recording is this drone's biggest trick. The drone records spherical video at up to 8K60, which translates to about 30MP for every video frame, an impressive figure on paper. But because those pixels are spread out over a 360-degree sphere, the apparent resolution really depends on how you edit your footage. The more you zoom in, either with the remote control or in the editing room, the softer the video gets. Even if you're punching in at a fairly tight angle, the footage looks good on smartphones, tablets, and televisions. I watched all of my edited video on a 75-inch HiSense U7N and found very little to complain about. It looks great from my armchair.
The Avata 360 has 42GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot for more storage. Spoiler alert: you're going to need more space. As you'd expect, 360-degree 8K video files are big, running at around 1.3GB per minute, so the internal storage is good for about 30 minutes of record time. The single-lens 4K footage is appreciably smaller, about 500MB per minute, while 120MP JPG stills average around 65MB, and Raw DNG pairs are about 120MB in total. The DNG format requires you to use third-party software to stitch together one photo, and it's not supported in DJI Studio, so you'll need to grab a third-party app to work with it. I've seen some recommendations for AutoPan Giga, an app developed by GoPro and now available as freeware, but I couldn't get it to work with my IT-managed Mac Studio, though I've seen reports of others who've used it with no problems.
I'm pretty happy with the JPGs for scenes with even lighting, though it's a good idea to enable DNG if you have a scene with dramatically mixed light, or if you want to fine-tune color to tone a photo with your own look. For video, the Avata 360 supports a standard color profile with the same naturally vibrant tones as its JPGs, or a 10-bit flat D-Log M profile with lowered contrast and saturation. D-Log M doesn't look good without editing, but it gives expert-level editors leeway to apply a color correction profile. DJI Studio includes a LUT that, with a single click, makes D-Log M look more like the standard profile, plus basic color correction tools to adjust shadows, highlights, and color. You can also reframe and export video in Studio without color correction and apply a LUT in your preferred nonlinear editing software.
All in all, the Avata 360's video quality is a step above the Antigravity A1. The Avata supports 8K60, while the A1 tops out at 8K30. I couldn't induce any propeller chop flare with the Avata either, where it was easy to get it with the A1 on a sunny day. I attribute this to the Avata's integrated propeller guards, which do a better job of blocking sunlight entering at steep angles. The A1's propellers are exposed, and its optional guards are too skinny to block incoming light.
The Avata 360 falls shy of perfection, I was still able to get some colorful reflections—ghosts of false color—when flying low to the ground with the sun hitting the lens from a steep angle, and small hot spots (a circular area of the image that's brighter than it's surroundings) in a few instances, but I wouldn't count either as a pernicious or serious issue. I caught sight of chromatic aberrations (purple color fringing) around tree branches with both the Avata and the A1.
Final Thoughts
DJI Avata 360
The DJI Avata 360 puts the creative possibilities of 360-degree video into a full-featured drone with sublime flight performance.