Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsA weekend with frustration AND awesome video footage
Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2017
A weekend with frustration AND awesome video footage. **Update** I am returning this product. SO many reasons why. The main is under my heading "SECOND"
This is my first gimbal ever, I did the research and went with the newer (and less reviewed) Smooth II... and I'm still deciding if it is worth the money. You tube video reviews IMO do a horrible job reviewing this product. horrible. They don't talk about the small stuff like calibration or what to do if your gimbal starts acting crazy. I had to figure it out on my own. Maybe a more experienced gimbal user would know the small stuff, but I couldn't find answers to my questions ANYWHERE. So for the people who are new to this product - this review is for you!
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO KNOW ABOUT THIS PRODUCT - Your mobile phone MUST be mounted correctly!!! The "tilt axis" needs to be on the right when the gimbal is standing straight up. If the "tilt axis" portion of the gimbal is facing to the left the gimbal will try to move, and try, and try and you will hear the motor turning but the phone not doing anything but bumping into the pedestal. It is super easy to mount your phone in the wrong position. ITS A GIMBAL, it moves around constantly. I thought - as long as I put the bottom of my phone agains the tilt axis I would be ok. WRONG. There are no indicators on which way is up. There is nothing in the directions about this. There is nothing in the directions that tell you "when you first start the gimbal you need to make sure it is standing up (or being held in the up position). If you do not do these things - because no one SAYS to - your gimbal WILL NOT WORK. period. I almost sent it back until I pieced together all of this. It took a lot of trial and error. Today is when I finally figured out that sometimes I had the tilt axis on the left - which led to inoperable, and other times the tilt axis was on the right - which lead to an awesome experience.
FIRST - the directions are horrible. I mean it. I felt lost after reading it - especially the "calibration" and "initialization" portions, which I figured to be the most important areas. The initialization section tells you what to do if a certain "behavior" is observed. They tell the process how to initialize but FAIL to tell you the gimbal start spinning out of control... or what to look for... or how you know it's done. The first time I did it - I though something was seriously broke. Also - none of the stuff I mentioned above was even talked about. Like - which position to start the gimbal in.
SECOND - Sometimes it tilts. I don't know if it is because of my iphone case or what. I do know that when it was working correctly (because of me placing the phone in correctly) it would tilt, not always, but sometimes. Yes I had the counter weight on. I have an iphone 6+. **Update - the phone is tilted all the time - it can be corrected by "initializing" everytime I turn on the gimbal. I am going to contact amazon and return this. Maybe get the DJI Osmo mobile.
THIRD - You never know what mode you are in. Directions are junk explaining this. There is no indicator that tells you if you are in pan following, pan tilt, locking... you just gotta know that. And how you get there is equally confusing. One click can get you to two different modes - it just depends on where you are starting from (but you have no indication on where you are starting from).
FOURTH - Other than all of those things - it seemed to work fine when everything was flowing. I got a lot of footage this week that was decent. For the price I expected WAY more. But I am also new to the world of gimbals.
