Costa Rican Adventures With The DJI Avata 360, Should You Buy It?

Añadido: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Welcome back to my channel. We are still in Costa Rica. We've mainly been making a lot of content on a couple's channel if you don't follow that. That's like our weekly vlogs. But there's lots of fun projects and things I'm doing on my channel still. One of which DJI have sent me their new Avatar 360 drone. So, I'm going to be doing a bit of a look at it this week, testing it out, comparing it to others in the market, and yeah, just seeing what I think. really trying to capture some epic shots. There's nowhere more perfect than the jungles of Costa Rica. We're heading down to a waterfall right now, so I'm going to fly it. And yeah, thanks to DJI for sponsoring today's video, and hopefully this will be helpful for you guys, seeing what this is capable of. I'm going to really try and put it to the test.

[00:00:52]Right, I'm going to try some car tracking now with the drone. So, I'm going to drive down the road and and hopefully it'll automatically follow us.

[00:01:11]>> All right, active track.

[00:01:12]>> After subject starts moving, aircraft will fly to set direction.

[00:01:19]>> It's working. And I've done it low enough so it hope hopefully won't hit any power lines, but I think it's got full 360 obstacle oil anyway. So Oh, it looks so good.

[00:01:28]>> Yeah, it does.

[00:01:37]>> I've just sent the drone up again and it's started actually like raining a little bit. So, I'm hoping the drone can cope in in a tiny sprinkle of rain. But I'm screen recording from my RC2 remote and I'm I'm just right on the co like just approaching the coast. It's a kilometer from here and it's coping quite well. I'm not even like direct line of sight. I've just got like a big house in my way but it's it's coping okay. Taking some photos. Shooting 8K 60 and Oh man. Yeah, this looks big. But yeah, this is amazing. The clouds look so cool just rolling in.

[00:02:16]What I love is I can change how I'm viewing this. I like that I can flick between different fields of view. It says 104°, 134°, and 272° field of view. I want to try and like sweep in from a bit lower, like around these trees. See see what happens. I feel like with any drone shots, the the most impressive shots are when you're skimming between closer objects.

[00:02:48]I see short colors.

[00:02:57]I see your colors.

[00:03:16]Dogs go feral for drones. I'm just parked up by the beach. I'm going to throw the drone up and have a little look around.

[00:03:25]>> Now, there's this beach right nearby where we're staying. And low tide, which was an hour and a half ago, there's this amazing, they call it the whale tail.

[00:03:36]You walk out onto it. It's like a bank.

[00:03:41]Oh, that's so cool. It's about a kilometer from where I am. Signal's pretty good when I'm high up. I think as soon as I lower the drone down to the sea level, like obviously there's so many obstacles in the way, but if I'm high up in the air, I've got a pretty direct line of sight. Wow. I don't think I've ever seen a beach quite like this.

[00:03:56]Okay, let me take a quick look around.

[00:03:58]It is a whale's tail. Wow.

[00:04:05]Oh, I hear parrots.

[00:04:10]Oh, that's cool. Right, I'm going to speed back.

[00:04:13]>> Obstacle sensing unavailable.

[00:04:15]>> I'm going to speed back to see if I can find those parrots.

[00:04:18]>> Oh, they're flying away. Okay, I'm going to try and sweep down a bit more past these trees.

[00:04:55]We've come down to a little beach here and we're going Check it out.

[00:05:16]Do you feel you want it?

[00:05:43]I feel the night with you.

[00:06:32]Right, I'm on the beach. The drone is epic. I'm checking out some of the tracking modes.

[00:06:53]And this allows me to track objects like it says like people cycling driving and then I can choose where the camera is in relation to what I'm tracking. So at the moment it's it's side on to me. But look if I drag it here. I can do it front on.

[00:07:12]So this moves so the drone is in front of me. So I can track with it looking back at me. Or I can drag it around so it's behind me. So now the camera is going to be tracking behind me as I'm walking. It's pretty epic.

[00:07:43]We're going to a waterfall. Nervy. Yay.

[00:08:08]Heat. Heat.

[00:08:34]Right, I've got the uh Avatar 360 up getting some epic shots. I'm trying a few things out, but I kind of just love flying around close to things. I think the advantage of a 360 any 360 camera, >> it's about getting unique shots that you can't really get with other cameras and especially as a kind of novice drone user. I'm definitely not pro. I can't fly like FPV and stuff. I feel like you can get super creative shots without needing hours and hours of training to become like prolevel drone pil.

[00:09:32]I'm going to select me in the quick shots. I'm actually going to do point of view. I'm going to spin around me.

[00:09:51]I played around with this yesterday, but no matter where I fly, it keeps me in the center of the shot so I can get really cool tracking shots.

[00:10:05]Heat. Heat.

[00:10:40]We've come down to a beach about 20 minutes from where we're staying. We're going to stay here till sunset.

[00:10:56]Oh, I a a oh a oh a a Oh, hey.

[00:11:53]I'm going to throw both drones up, the LTO X1 and the up to 360, and just do some low light tests cuz the sun set is popping. It's already set. The sky is amazing. Pink, vibrant. I just want to compare the two drones cuz 360 cameras are notoriously not great for low light.

[00:12:36]We're at another beach now. It's sunnier weather. I feel like the last few flights I've done just been a bit overcast. So, last night in the dark, I was playing around and I was shooting at 30 frames, 8K. I'm going to go back up to 60 frames, which I've been shooting up most of the time. Let's give it a little go.

[00:12:54]>> Take off. Home point updated.

[00:12:57]>> Okay, I'm going to shoot down to the beach. Oh, looks so cool. Coming through these palm trees.

[00:13:08]This is Hako. This is the popular beach town on the west coast of Costa Rica.

[00:13:13]There's a bunch of cool beaches around here and this is just like the main stretch, but yeah. Sweet.

[00:13:22]Don't see any surfers out. The main thing that I've noticed, two main things I've noticed from this drone. One is just how wide it shoots. You can go like fully like like this. It looks like fully fisheye, right? And then this is C. I would say this cropped like 104 degrees is like how wide a normal standard drone shoots. This kind of looks normal, but then I like switching to this 34°. It's just a very different look.

[00:14:00]Can capture so much more. That's amazing. And then what was the other thing? Oh yeah, and then just how fast it is. It is absolutely rapid. It's like a racing drone. It's one of the fastest drones I've flown. It's even out not even flying sports mode. It's just absolutely graphic.

[00:14:32]I think because it has the propeller guards, it's even better for the obstacle avoidance cuz you can get closer to stuff and even if it like slightly brushes the propeller guards, I don't think it's as much of a worry. And it's just safer for people, isn't it? if you've got propeller guards.

[00:14:48]>> Right, I've been out shooting with the Evata 360 and I've been enjoying it a lot. I realized for those of you that are brand new to the concept of 360 video, I just wanted to explain again how this works. So, it does have single lens mode, which is a super fisheye kind of I think beyond 180 field of view from one lens. That's how 360 cameras work with two lenses basically. But you can shoot single lens mode just super wide.

[00:15:15]That's what's beautiful about 360 cameras as well. You can completely reframe afterwards. But anyway, with the Abarta 360 to protect the lenses, it takes off with the single lens position.

[00:15:29]Once it's in the air, it rotates. So, you have one camera shooting downwards and one camera lens shooting upwards. So each of these cameras has a 1 over 1.1 in square sensor. And the idea with 360 video, whatever 360 camera you're using, is it seamlessly stitches those two different shots. So it creates a spherical video. Now the beauty of that is in post you can completely refframe the shot to any direction behind you, in front, up, below. you can do all of the panning and camera moves in post. So, it gives you maximum flexibility. It also means when you're shooting in one direction, you can pull it super wide, like beyond 18 all the way around, so it becomes this like tiny planet. And then also, before I jump into the editing process and how to get a finished video from this drone, I just wanted to show you a size comparison. So, I've got a few drones here. I haven't got all my drones, but So, this is the size of the Invato 360. Now, compare that to Well, let's compare that to the DJI Neo 2.

[00:16:43]This is the size comparison. And this is the Neo1 as well. This is even smaller.

[00:16:49]So, it's pretty big. And then obviously there's the foldup drone. So, these are like the fixed size built-in propeller guards. This is the new LTO X1. and it's definitely much bigger, but in terms of the actual footprint once this is unfolded, it's a similar size. And the weight differences, the lighter X1 is 249 g and the Evato 360 is 455 g. So, it doesn't fall within that lighter drestricted drone category, but it's still pretty lightweight. And then finally, the competitor that I've been using, the anti-gravity A1, is considerably smaller, similar footprint once it's folded, but it this is more portable. I think the difference is that this has bigger camera sensors amongst other things. I'll mention a few other comparisons that I've noticed, but I want to dive into the editing process of the Evata 360 now. So, I've opened up DJI Studio. This is the desktop app. You can also do editing on your phone if you're pulling in footage from the drone straight to your phone, but I always do my editing on my laptop. So, I'm just going to show you my process. So, if I click on the clip, you see on the right here, you can switch between a few different options. Firstly, the camera view is the viewpoint in which I was viewing the flight. So, I was viewing it obviously because it's on the controller and I'm not viewing it with a headset.

[00:18:18]I'm just viewing it from one perspective. So, typically the direction I'm flying, I can switch between those three different field of view angles.

[00:18:27]And then also, if I'm doing the quick shots or I'm tracking things, that's the viewpoint that is going to attach to this file. So, when I do camera view, it's going to essentially give me that ready to render video. Now, this is the easiest way. At this point, I don't really need to do anything. If I'm happy with the shot that I've captured, yeah, I can just export this one shot here. I can choose the resolution. I was exporting everything at 4K. From what I understand from the 8K spherical video, it actually gives you a high quality 1080 snapshot when you're just seeing a the normal field of view of the drone.

[00:19:06]So you're taking that section of the 8K spherical video, but I always upscale it to 4K and it looks great quality in my videos. So anyway, I can export that as is and then I don't need to play around with key frames and spending time honing it in if I'm just happy with the shot I got. Now, that is the smoothest and quickest process you can do. It's basically a tiny extra step of dragging it in and exporting it to a a final MP4 that you can use in a standard video.

[00:19:37]Now, if you want to jump into the potential that 360 drones have, you can now start refframing. You can play around with, well, that's Tiny Planet, ultra wide, wide. So you can even if you've shot kind of with a tighter field of view in camera, you can then play around with the field of view and and actually key frame zooming in and out.

[00:19:58]You can change the field of view just manually here. You can just scrub and and then key frame that in. You can track stuff all in post as well. Check this out. Camera view. If I do FPV mode, it automatically as I'm changing direction of the drone adds in the the the banking which changes it basically I think by standard the horizon's locked so it gives this ultra smooth steady shot. I think if you switch to this FPV mode it gives these really cool banks.

[00:20:31]So, if you're weaving in and out of trees, either you're getting this locked horizon. I I'll see if I can pull up a clip to to demonstrate or it does this kind of banking. So, let's see if it shows much here as I'm moving around now. I think as I was coming back. Yeah, here we go. So, as I'm approaching this tree here, look, it banks to the left as I turn. As I'm coming through these trees here, it's like banking. It gives this really cool FPV feeling. Yeah. So rather than having to hand animate these key frames of the horizon tilting, it just does it with one click. These are the shots you can't really get with your standard drone because these are kind of locked to level everything and stabilize everything as much as possible. Uh, and you can get these so many good shots with these, but I feel like if you want those super fast dynamic FPV style shots without having to spend hours training and how to fly FPV, this is incredible.

[00:21:30]I honestly feel like this is perfect for a beginner as well. Although you can get these amazing pro level shots, it's super easy to use. You can turn on motion blur, which gives this imitation blur effect as you're moving faster with the drone. So, it feels like your shutter speed's super low. kind of more of a cinematic look as well. Feel like you need to kind of dial that in for it to look authentic. So then if you're shooting at 60 frames a second in spherical video, you can slow down here by 50% which gives you super smooth shots. And if you're shooting things that look cool in slow-mo, like water or leaves blowing or people running, all of those kind of shots look even more cinematic, I think, at slow-mo. Though I didn't experiment much with the single lens mode, you can shoot 4K at 60, but at 2.7K, you can shoot 120 frames a second, which if you want super slow-mo, that's pretty epic as well. I can also switch here to different ratios. So, if I want to shoot 916, I can select in post and render that out. And then also, if I'm shooting specifically for vertical video, it's really good to be able to crop in and and reframe as you need to kind of get the shot looking good. This is where a super wide camera is so important because if you're having to crop in from another drone, a 9 16x9 shot to vertical, you you you're losing so much of what you're seeing. So to be able to go super wide. So, if I go back to flying over the forest here, I can go super wide with this. And then that's punched into what you'd normally have to crop down to. So, oh yeah, one other thing I want to show you with the tracking. So, with this shot, if I'm just going through my cam from my camera view, I flew down to these cows in this field. So, I spotted these cows in this field and I was like flying in between them, but I wasn't tracking them at the time. So, the key frame data that is attached to this video, if I just wanted to render as shot, I don't think I maximized how cool the shot could be with the cows. So, I just flew in between them and around him. Don't worry, they weren't getting spooked.

[00:23:46]They were actually super playful. So, check this out. If I now do intelligent tracking and I draw around that cow and I can start to track that cow. Now, the key frames are being added. The animation of the camera movement is tracking that as I move in between the cows. It just keeps that cow in frame.

[00:24:06]As I as I fly around it, it's just looking at that cow, keeping it perfectly centered to the video. This shows really the absolute control you have in post. And for me, it means I can just quickly throw this drone up. I can do one flight and then I can render multiple completely different videos from that one flight. So, I could have one just from the camera's perspective, one shooting behind. I could track things as I'm flying past them. There's just so much potential. It just takes a little bit more time in post. But, I'm happy to do that because I like and enjoy this process. I think if you're looking for something that's just quick and you just want it to just spit out a video that you can use and you're not too fussy about shooting cinematic creative these impossible amazing spinning shots, you could just go with something simple like the the Neo2 or if you're looking for a bit more cinematic, the Lido X1. But I feel like you really want to play around with these creative shots. I find that shooting 360 is the most fun and I feel like you can get the most fun shots from it as well. But yeah, for those of you that are wondering why would you go 360 over a standard drone, I would say this. You don't get quite the same level of quality because you're shooting spherical video. It's super wide. The way the lenses are, the way that it's capturing everything at once, it's different to if you've just got a one shot of something. you're not getting quite the same quality. I think in bright daylight it's barely noticeable, especially if you're shooting wide. I think if you're trying to punch in and you're doing a tighter field of view, it is a bit more noticeable. And I've shown some sideby-side shots in the video of the LO X1 and the Eva 360 sidebyside.

[00:25:57]Like you can kind of see a slight difference in quality. the advantages that this brings for cinematic potential, for exciting shots, for dynamic shots that you just cannot get with a normal drone. But yeah, I'd say the challenges are the workflow is a bit more involved. And then as I was showing you at the beginning, the size difference compared to different drones, it makes it a little bit less portable to me. I wouldn't say this is the dream travel drone because of the size, because of the weight. Maybe that's not a problem for a lot of people. It kind of still slips into a bag. But yeah, I guess there's a trade-off for not having collapsible propellers. I'd say the most challenging thing, and this depends what kind of stuff you're shooting, is low light.

[00:26:41]Now, notoriously 360 cameras don't do great in low light. I did do the comparison at very low light, dusk, and yeah, it it it does struggle. It does struggle. I think if you're shooting in the day, most of the stuff I'm shooting is not low light and it is in the day.

[00:27:00]Maybe worst case it will be like a little bit overcast or you're flying underneath trees which is a bit darker.

[00:27:05]But I feel like in those conditions it's fine. It's just when the light drops to a certain level, I don't think the footage is great. Oh yeah, another thing I didn't mention is that because these lenses are a bit more vulnerable, all 360 cameras have these lenses that stick out, you can't kind of put lens protectors on them. DJI have made them replaceable, which is essential for any 360 cameras nowadays. So, I'm very excited about that. And hopefully I don't need to. Hopefully, I won't scratch them. But the more confident I get, the more crazy I get with my flying, I predict that I probably will crash this and scratch a lens at some point. And then finally, for those of you asking about the difference with the anti-gravity A1, I it's hard to compare because I haven't flown this with a controller. I haven't flown this with a headset. I find this more immersive with the headset. It's definitely more portable. Maybe the sensor size is a bit smaller, so maybe this would perform even better in low light. I'm not going to do a full comparison video between these two drones. I think they each serve their own purpose. They're both great drones. But yeah, to wrap up, after flying this drone all over Costa Rica this week, I have really enjoyed it. I think it's the most fun drone I've got at the moment. The speed at which this can fly is mind-blowing. The closeness that I can fly to things, the confidence that I can get to things because of the obstacle avoidance and the propeller guards. I just feel like I'm an FBV pilot and I haven't, like I said, had to like go through all the training and become this expert pilot, but I get to do all these incredible shots and come out with super creative cinematic shots without a ton of skill level needed. So yeah, I would highly recommend this for anyone that is wanting to up their game. Maybe they've had drones in the past but want to try something new. This is a very unique flying experience. The kind of content you get is so different and creative and it gives you a lot more control and you can get super creative if you wanted to.

[00:29:04]You could sit for hours dialing in amazing shots barrel rolls FBV style. I want to get more flights in because I feel like I'm going to get more and more confident and the more I experiment with it, the more creative the shots I think I can get. If you're interested in getting this drone, I'll link it below.

[00:29:22]I hope you enjoyed the video. Let me know what you thought below. I've got a ton of adventure content coming out. I'm sure I'll be using this to shoot a lot of it. And I'll see you in the next video. Bits.