Antigravity cuts A1 drone entry price to $799 with watch-and-ring Follow Me kit

The $799 bundle includes the A1 drone, a Watch Remote, a Ring Remote and full-coverage propeller guards, and it is available now, according to both The Verge and Engadget. Antigravity also sells the accessory kit without the drone for $340. The two publications gave different prices for existing A1 owners: Engadget reported the owner kit costs $272, while The Verge reported the watch and ring cost $340 and the guards $40, with a 20 percent discount for owners who can prove they already have the aircraft.

The watch has a touchscreen preview of the drone’s camera, and users can launch the A1 from their hand, switch video modes, adjust flight paths and start preprogrammed moves, including vertical spirals, flyovers and orbital paths that Engadget said adjust around obstacles such as trees or buildings. Engadget said the watch combines visual tracking with built-in GNSS to lock onto moving subjects more reliably than visual tracking alone. Recent A1 updates added palm takeoff, so the drone does not need a landing mat.

The ring works as an extra button and gesture controller. The Verge said users can hold the ring’s button, point at the drone and move a hand left, right, up or down to nudge it; rotating the arm inward brings the A1 closer and the opposite motion sends it farther away, according to Engadget. The watch also provides sliders for forward and backward or ascend and descend movement. The Verge said the ring adds one-handed launch and repositioning but does not do anything the watch cannot do.

Reviews describe a system that is useful but not fully autonomous. The Verge said it took the A1 around a neighborhood on a kick scooter and was “cautiously impressed,” but the drone crashed three times and is not yet intelligent enough to dodge everything or stay with the user through all conditions. The reviewer warned about power lines, thin branches and the vertical guy wires that hold utility poles, and cited sluggish touchscreen swiping, difficulty landing on a hand without manual mode, manual steps to start tracking, an altitude error after cresting a high hill, and the drone drifting toward the street or a neighbor’s fence when told to follow closely. None of the crashes crippled the drone, and the watch automatically played the last seconds of footage before a crash, making the drone easier to find.

Engadget said the watch hardware is chunky and resembles an Apple Watch knock-off from about 10 years ago, with roughly five hours of use when paired with a drone and a fabric wrist strap whose connective links felt flimsy; the ring’s Velcro strap felt even flimsier. It said the gestures are responsive but cannot move the drone through all three spatial dimensions at once, and voiced notifications became annoying quickly, though they can be turned off. Engadget also said the A1 hit walls during its tests, scratching and chipping propellers, and that the lightweight guards clip over each propeller pair.

The A1 is Antigravity’s debut drone and uses 360-degree cameras from parent company Insta360, allowing users to reframe footage after flight by cropping into the 360 video. It previously required the FPV goggles and motion controller for its virtual-cockpit flight experience. The Follow Me bundle is intended for outdoor flying, and Engadget said Antigravity recommends at least 2 meters of vertical clearance; an experimental setting reduces that to 1 meter.