Antigravity A1 review: free as a bird
4.12.2025
Translation: Eva Francis
Pictures: Samuel Buchmann
The first drone by Insta360’s spin-off is a good attempt at offering 360-degree aerial photography. It’s fun to use, but the video quality could be better.
I’m flying. Below me is a green meadow; above me the cloudy sky. I can look around and move freely. All I need to do is point in a direction to automatically fly there. This must be how a bird feels.
But I’m not a bird. I’m a human being who can’t fly – at least not against gravity. In fact, I’m standing with both feet on the ground. But I’m wearing the Antigravity A1 headset, a drone with a 360-degree field of vision, which simulates the bird’s-eye view.
Innovative concept
Antigravity’s the new sub-brand of Insta360. The A1 is the brand’s first product. It’s basically a flying Insta360 X5. Equipped with two fisheye lenses (one on top and one bottom), the drone captures its surroundings and puts the recordings together to create a 360-degree view.
I fly the A1 in first-person view (FPV), i.e. with a headset that makes it feel like I’m sitting inside the drone. Unlike regular FPV drones, the view isn’t fixed in the direction of flight. Instead, gyro sensors on the headset register my head movements and synchronise them with the image section. This means you can fly forwards while looking backwards, upwards, downwards or sideways – and record everything around you as 8K video at 30 frames per second.
But how do you decide where to fly? Antigravity’s copied and modified the joystick controls of the DJI Avata. In 360-degree mode, the joystick becomes a virtual pointer that indicates the direction of flight. You regulate the speed with a throttle lever. If the target is within your field of vision, you see it as a small circle. But you can also point backwards, in which case a small feed is displayed picture-in-picture in the direction of flight, while you can continue to look around.
This may sound complicated, but it’s actually amazingly intuitive. I get the hang of it right away. Same goes for my friend. I hand him the A1 and he masters the controls within a few minutes. Antigravity’s managed to implement an innovative concept in an impressive way.
The wow factor wears off quickly
How practical and useful is this concept? Well, that’s another story. Sure, at first it feels cool to be a virtual bird in the real world. But as with many FPV and VR gadgets, this wow effect wears off quickly – especially with the ability to look in any direction. After no more than fifteen minutes, I’ve lost interest in looking anywhere else than forwards, even if it’s fun to do so.
Spectacular flight manoeuvres like with regular FPV drones aren’t possible with the A1. Unlike other drones, it only flies in one direction and that’s forwards. The other directions aren’t necessary from a cinematic perspective because the 360-degree camera records everything anyway. The advantage of this setup is that the A1 doesn’t need omnidirectional sensors for obstacle detection.
However, changing direction feels slower than with other drones and you can’t take very tight turns. In addition, point-to-fly control is less precise than with a regular controller, making it difficult to fly in straight lines or consistent curves, which can result in shaky videos. The Sky Path function helps by allowing you to set waypoints and then fly the route autonomously. However, this only works if you can plan the scene.
The A1 shares two other disadvantages with all FPV drones. Firstly, in addition to the flying object and controller, you always have to take the headset with you, too, and keep all three fully charged. Secondly, I start to feel slightly unwell after about half an hour. If I fly for longer than that, I get a headache and feel nauseous.
Good technology in compact form
From a technical standpoint, I have little to complain about. The Vision Goggles are comfortable and powered by an external battery that dangles around your neck. As someone who wears glasses, I’m particularly happy that I can adjust the dioptre setting of the headset (+1 to -5), so I don’t have to wear contact lenses. To adjust the pupil distance, you can move the lenses to the left and right. Unfortunately, the mechanism has so little friction that I keep adjusting it by accident.
The resolution of 2,560 × 2,560 pixels per eye produces a sharp image – but only in the centre. The focused area is quite small, so the parameters and menus at the edge of the image can be difficult to read. The external display in front of the left eye is a nice gimmick. It allows people outside the drone to see what you see, so they can fly along with you, so to speak.
I find it impressive that Antigravity managed to fit the 360-degree concept into a drone weighing less than 250 grammes – at least with the standard battery. This gives me 23 minutes of flight time. With the high-capacity flight battery, you can fly for up to 36 minutes. However, the drone then weighs more than 250 grammes, meaning it needs to comply with more rules and you’re required to have a certificate.
OmniLink Transmission delivers a stable image signal as long as there’s visual contact between the drone and the headset. This is mandatory in Switzerland anyway, as is having a second person who keeps the FPV drone in sight at all times. If you accidentally fly behind a tree, the connection is quickly lost. The Antigravity A1 then automatically climbs to a height specified by you and returns to the starting point.
Image quality’s not good enough
The idea behind the Antigravity A1 is that you don’t have to worry about getting the perfect shot when flying. Instead, the drone simply films everything and you can decide afterwards which perspective to use. This also allows for FPV-like camera movements without the need for FPV skills. Alternatively, you can export the complete 360-degree videos for VR headsets.
The manufacturer provides its own software, Antigravity Studio, for selecting the image section. If you’re familiar with video editing programs, you’ll get the hang of it quickly. You can create camera pans either manually using keyframes or via tracking. The latter works more or less reliably. If you want to get truly beautiful camera movements, you need to fly smoothly. Nervous changes in direction result in juddering – even with keyframes or object tracking. This is a problem because the imprecise controls I mentioned earlier makes it difficult to fly smoothly.
The drone itself is invisible in recordings because the cameras have a clear field of vision above and below. However, this means two things. Firstly, a drone-high pane of glass will not be filmed. Secondly, the two videos have to be stitched together. Both of these factors occasionally lead to artefacts, especially with close objects or fast flight manoeuvres. This is particularly unfortunate because the seam is right in the middle of the image in the direction of flight.
And then there’s the video quality itself. Yes, the A1 films in 8K resolution, but this is spread across the full 360 degrees. 4K sections look okay, but the perspective’s still extremely wide-angle. Noise performance, sharpness and dynamic range could be better. Overall, I’d only use recordings from the A1 in a real video project if I absolutely wanted an FPV effect. For regular bird’s-eye perspective or simple manoeuvres such as orbits, the DJI Mini 4 Pro is a cheaper and better option.
In a nutshell
Innovative gadget with limited practical use
Antigravity aimed for an ambitious first product launch: a drone that takes 360-degree recordings, features a new type of FPV control and weighs less than 250 grammes. An impressive debut, which works surprisingly well. I manage to manoeuvre the A1 and to look around freely in the air without any problems. It’s intuitive and fun. Congrats to the manufacturer for the innovative concept.
However, I’m less convinced by the A1 as a creative tool. The fact that you don’t have to concentrate on capturing the right image section while flying sounds appealing. I also enjoy the fact that newbies like me can pull off FPV-like camera pans. But as so often, the devil’s in the detail. The imprecise controls make it difficult to capture smooth videos. Artefacts and generally disappointing image quality reduce the usefulness of the recordings. On top of this, 4K sections have an extremely wide-angle perspective, which results in terrible distortion of objects at the edges. Extracting clips from the raw material also requires a considerable amount of post-processing.
Bottom line, I can only recommend the drone for occasional effect shots – or as an expensive toy. Having said that, I do appreciate Antigravity challenging DJI’s dominance and am curious to see the manufacturer’s next product launch.
Pro
- Innovative concept
- Cool experience
- Intuitive controls
- 360-degree recordings from the air
- FPV effects without FPV skills
- Compact form factor
Contra
- Wow factor wears off
- Average image quality
- Frequent image artefacts
- Extremely wide-angle perspective
Samuel Buchmann
Senior Editor
Samuel.Buchmann@digitecgalaxus.chMy fingerprint often changes so drastically that my MacBook doesn't recognise it anymore. The reason? If I'm not clinging to a monitor or camera, I'm probably clinging to a rockface by the tips of my fingers.
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