DJI has launched a new cinematic drone called Avata, which was made to work with the new DJI Goggles 2 video headset. It isn’t the first FPV drone that DJI has released, but this one has a more usual “cinewhoop” form factor with prop guards protecting its quad propellers. Since it’s a cinewhoop, the Avata was designed to have the speed and agility of racers but with the stabilization technology needed to be able to capture smooth and vivid footage.
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The DJI Avata can fly for almost 20 minutes on a single charge, and it can hover, accelerate like a racer and zoom in and out of tight spaces while shooting videos. The Avata is equipped with a stabilized camera that has a 1/1.7-inch CMOS sensor with 48 million effective pixels, an f/2.8 aperture and an ultrawide angle lens. That camera is capable of shooting 4K videos in 60fps and 2.7K videos in 50, 60, 100 or 120 fps. And users can shoot quite a bit of footage before worrying about space, since it has 20GB of internal storage.
While it can be controlled using the existing DJI FPV Remote Controller 2 and the DJI FPV Goggles V2, it was designed to be used with the company’s newer models. DJI Goggles 2 is the brand’s next-gen video headset with a clearer micro-OLED screen than its predecessor and an adjustable diopter, so that people who wear glasses wouldn’t need them while using the device. It can wirelessly stream the drone’s live footage from the user’s phone or computer for an immersive first-person viewing experience. Meanwhile, the DJI Motion Controller gives pilots the power to perform complex flight maneuvers with one hand.
As was expected before launch, it isn’t a cheap piece of hardware. It costs $629 on the company’s website, with no word about local pricing as of yet.
