So I know theres been a lot of back and forth on here about whether the Avata 2 is worth it over building your own freestyle setup or even just going with the original Avata, and I finally just pulled the trigger because the combo deal dropped a bit at my local shop and I figured worst case I resell it.

Short version: genuinely surprised. I came from a 5 inch freestyle quad so I was fully prepared to feel like it was dumbed down and kind of boring but thats not really how it played out. The motion controller thing I was skeptical about but my wife actually picked it up and was flying reasonably well in like 20 minutes which was kind of wild to watch. I mostly use the regular RC-M though.

The footage quality is a pretty big step up from the original, especially in anything less than perfect light. Still not going to replace my Air 3 for anything where I need clean stable shots but thats not really what its for. The prop guards actually dont bother me as much as I thought they would for casual proximity flying through trees and stuff, though I did clip a branch yesterday and it just bounced off which felt great honestly.

Only real complaint so far is battery life which everyone already knows about so not a surprise. And the goggles get a little warm after extended sessions. But for what it is I think its kind of underrated in the conversation around beginner-to-intermediate FPV entry points.

yeah the battery thing is real and its the one thing that keeps coming up every time someone asks me if they should get one. you kind of need to just budget for extra batteries from day one and treat it like a given. once you accept that it stops being annoying and just becomes part of the routine.

glad it clicked for you though. i think a lot of people write it off because the FPV crowd sees it as a toy and the regular drone crowd doesnt know what to do with it, but for someone who wants to dip into that kind of flying without building something and tuning betaflight for hours it really does fill a gap. the image quality jump from v1 to v2 was bigger than i expected too

curious how you find it compares for like actual cinematic type moves vs your 5 inch - i built a cinewhoop a while back and kind of abandoned it because getting smooth footage out of it without spending a lot of time on tune and post was a pain. wondering if the avata 2 is just easier to get usable stuff from right away even if the ceiling is lower