Full review now posted check it out at https://camerajabber.com/reviews/dji-avata/

DJI has announced the compact DJI AVATA and is selling this new drone as the Ultimate Immersive Drone Experience; sure enough, the new model will ship with the DJI Goggles V2 that enable full first-person view flight (With a spotter in the UK of course).

The new DJI AVATA looks to be a very neat and compact drone that follows the design styling of popular racing FPV drones, although the DJI AVATA does look quite different to the FPV drone released by the company last year. 

The big sell for DJI here is the immersive flight, when the drone is coupled with the DJI Goggles V2. This combination of drone and goggles enables you to get a live stream view directly from the drones camera back to the wearable goggles.

Of course, if you’re in the UK there is a slight hitch with this, drone laws state that you must always have a clear line of sight, but that’s just not possible if you’re eyes are covered by the goggles and you’re seeing what the drone sees rather than the drone itself. To overcome this in the UK, as well as many other territories, and in order to get the full immersive experience, you’ll need a spotter/watcher – these are generally inexpensive and can normally be purchased with the offer of food. Essentially a spotter is someone who carefully scopes out the flight space as you fly to ensure that you’re not going to break the law and that everything is safe while you fly. 

“DJI Avata was built to awaken a desire to fly in everyone, with immersive flight technology that allows anyone to explore the almost out-of-body experience of FPV flight,” said Ferdinand Wolf, Creative Director at DJI. “DJI Avata is breathtaking to fly for even a novice pilot and includes enhanced safety features that give anyone the freedom to try creative aerial moves. Paired with the DJI Goggles 2[1] and the DJI Motion Controller, DJI Avata seems to ride with the wind. Whether you fly for fun, to make great clips for social media, or to dazzle viewers in the production studio, DJI Avata will show you why its engaging flight experience pulls you into a new world of soaring possibilities.”

While the small drone looks in almost every way like a very product-designed FPV, DJI aims to open up this agile form of the drone to the creative market. 

Sure enough, the small size makes the drone a seemingly convenient option to pop into a backpack, and as it weighs in at just 410g, it will not add much weight to any load you’re already carrying. Unlike DJI’s other imaging drones, this model has fixed prop arms, so there’s no folding out before flight; pop it down and switch it on and you’re off. 

When it comes to imaging, despite the small size, the drone features a relatively decent 1/1.7-inch CMOS sensor with 48 million effective pixels that can capture at 4K 60fps. Other video resolutions include 2.7K at 50/60/100 and 120 fps. 

Flight times also seem good at 18 minutes, quite some way off the latest Mavic drones, but good compared with many of the racing FPV drones, in reality once this hits speed and the camera is recording I’d expect that time to fall dramatically. Finally, the camera is mounted on a one-axis gimbal although not for stabilisation; this is common for FPV and not for imaging drones. The gimbal simply enables the camera to be tilted up or down. Stabilisation is provided by the excellent DJI Rocksteady.

Essentially this is a mass market FPV drone rather than a creative drone. 

As already mentioned, the drone is designed to be paired with the excellent DJI Goggles V2, and the other addition is the DJI Motion Controller. The Motion Controller is similar to a modern gaming joystick using your hand’s position to control the drone’s flight rather than two joysticks on a controller. 

In the past, when I’ve used this type of controller, it makes perfect sense and is intuitive to use once you get the hang of it. 

The full review can be seen at 

DJI Avata is available from store.dji.com and most authorised retail partners in several configurations. 

A standalone version of DJI Avata retails from 579 EUR/ £499 without a remote controller, motion controller, or goggles, which is ideal for those with a compatible model to control and view from the drone. 

The DJI Avata Pro-View Combo retails from 1,429 EUR/1,229 GBP and includes DJI Avata, DJI Goggles 2 and the DJI Motion Controller. 

The DJI Avata Fly Smart Combo retails from 1,149 EUR/ 989 GBP and includes DJI Avata, the DJI FPV Goggles V2 and the DJI Motion Controller. 

The DJI Avata Fly More Kit retails from 249 EUR/ 215 GBP and includes two DJI Avata Intelligent Flight Batteries and one DJI Avata Battery Charging Hub.

For more information on all the new features, accessories, and capabilities, please visit https://www.dji.com/dji-avata. 

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