so ive had the original Avata for about a year and a half now, mainly flying it through trees and tight gaps at my local spot, got pretty comfortable with manual mode after a few months of struggling with it. my buddy just picked up the Avata 2 and let me fly it for like 20 minutes last weekend and honestly i dont know how i feel about it.

the stabilization is noticeably better, like the horizon lock stuff when you're carving feels smoother, and the image quality is a clear step up especially in lower light. but i kept feeling like the flight characteristics were slightly different in a way i cant fully explain - almost like it was fighting me a little less which sounds like a good thing but i kind of missed the feel of my unit. also the range on the RC Motion 3 vs my old motion controller took some getting used to.

anyone else made this jump and regret it or been totally happy? i'm not in a rush to spend the money if it's mostly marginal stuff for someone who flies the way i do

I made the switch about three months ago and honestly the first week I was kind of questioning it too. The flight model does feel different, slightly more planted I guess? But after I dialed in the expo curves and spent a weekend just flying cinematic stuff through the woods behind my house I stopped thinking about it. The 1/1.3 inch sensor genuinely makes a difference if you care about footage at all, especially in those golden hour situations where the original Avata was always a bit muddy and noisy.

If you're purely flying for the experience and not caring much about the video output I can see the argument for staying put. But if footage matters even a little bit the 2 is hard to argue against once you've seen it side by side. The battery life improvement alone kind of sealed it for me tbh.

the "fighting you less" thing you mentioned is real, i noticed the same thing when i demoed one at a shop. i think it comes down to how the turtle mode and stabilization interact with manual inputs, the 2 is definitely more forgiving which is great for most people but if youre used to wrestling with the original it does feel a bit different at first. id say if your footage from the first one is already doing what you need it to do just keep flying it honestly. upgrades for their own sake get expensive fast