When I thought about a smartphone gimbal for my phones, two brands immediately came to mind, DJI and Zhiyun. Zhiyun manufactures gimbals / stabilizers for cameras and smartphones. It smartphone models have the product name Smooth and I have been testing the Smooth Q3 for the past few months.
The Zhiyun Smooth Q3 is available for $ 89 or $ 109 if you want the combo package with a few extra extras. Storage bag, ZY Cami Prime Service Card for one year and a wrist strap. The zippered carry / storage bag itself is worth the $ 20 extra charge. The Smooth Q3 is affordable and also a great first gimbal if you’re interested in improving your smartphone video results.
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Gimbals provide 3-axis stabilization with internal motors that are activated after you mount your phone and then turn on the gimbal. The gimbal stabilizes tilt, pan, and roll while providing various controls on the gimbal for panning, zooming, and moving through various camera options. Your smartphone is connected to the gimbal via Bluetooth and the smartphone software helps you record content with interesting perspectives. The gimbal also functions as a selfie stick or even a tripod and is an indispensable tool for video artists.
To like
- Compact gimbal
- Including tripod attachment
- Powerful smartphone software
- Payable
Don’t like
- Battery life not as long as expected
- Many options can be confusing at first
hardware
The size of the Zhiyun Smooth Q3 is very close to the DJI Osmo Mobile 4/5, but it is also cheaper. Its smaller form factor makes it easy to take the case and gimbal with you wherever you go. The Smooth Q3 also comes with a tripod mount for the bottom, which acts as an extended rod to hold the gimbal in place. The tripod base is very wide and creates a stable platform to use the gimbal hands-free.
Take the gimbal out of the box and charge it via USB-C. I highly recommend reading the Quick Start Guide which will show you how to fully unlock, expand, and set up your gimbal for use. It takes just a few steps to set up the hardware, including sliding up the main vertical arm and tightening the screw, rotating the tilt axis mounting buckle, and then rotating the roll axis mounting buckle to which the smartphone mount is attached. Slide the smartphone clamp apart, it has rubber braces on both sides, and insert your phone so that the cameras are facing away from you.
With the vertical arm screw, note that this is not intended to fully lock the vertical arm in place, so don’t crank the vertical screw down too hard. It is used to adjust the smoothness of the sliding slot and lock the contact points in place so that the force flows through the rest of the gimbal to the motors.
Before turning on the gimbal, you can do a little manual balancing. In landscape orientation, move the phone to the left or right within the phone clamp until it is stable and almost level with the floor. In portrait format, you can slide the phone holder to the left or right, between the two clamping pieces there are metal rods that slide from left to right in the holder until it is almost level with the floor. You don’t need perfect balance as the gimbal will align everything when you turn it on, but it does help to achieve balance so that the phone doesn’t get awkwardly positioned or the gimbal works too hard to maintain balance.
There is an LED light above your smartphone that can be rotated 180 degrees in landscape mode, so you can also use the light when taking selfie videos. Tapping and holding the top of the light turns it on and tapping it toggles between three levels of brightness. The built-in light is a great feature that we don’t see on the DJI competitor.
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The power button and the trigger button are located on the back of the gimbal handle. The USB-C charging port is on the right, the zoom rocker on the left. On the work surface of the gimbal, accessible and controllable with just your thumb while you hold the gimbal, there are indicator lights, mode button, record button and a directional joystick.
Four of the buttons have multiple access by pressing them once, twice or three times. The trigger button is one of the most used with a single press to toggle Smart Follow mode on and off, a double press to reposition the phone to center it, and a triple press to switch your phone between landscape and switch to portrait mode. Pressing and holding the trigger also toggles the PhoneGo mode. Explore the multiple button options for the mode button, record button, and power button. The joystick simply moves you left, right, up or down.
Specifications
- Bright: Integrated LED with 180 degree rotation and three brightness levels
- Smartphone capacity: 150 to 280 grams
- battery: 1300 mAh for 7-15 hours of battery life and three hours to fully charge
- Dimensions (folded): 45 x 154 x 180 mm
- Dimensions (unfolded): 90 x 127 x 279 mm
- weight: 340 grams
software
You can use the gimbal on its own as a stabilizer for your phone, but you won’t experience all of the special effects and creative options using the software that came with it. The ZY Cami software is available for Android and iPhone models and offers you a complete recording and editing alternative to the camera software on your phone. There are options for video, photo, panorama, dolly zoom, time lapse, hyperlapse, and smart options.
The main purpose of a smartphone gimbal is to record video content and the mode button on the gimbal is focused on that experience. The pan-follow mode (PF) means that the motors of the tilt and roll axes are locked and the pan axis follows the movement of the stabilizer handle. In this mode, the joystick is used to control the tilt and pan axes. When the lock mode (L) is on, the three motors are locked and will not follow the movement of the stabilizer handle, with the joystick again controlling tilt and swivel. Follow mode (F) locks the roll axis motor with the tilt and pan axis motors by following the movement of the stabilizer handle.
Point of View (POV) mode is pretty radical as all three motors follow the movement of the stabilizer handle. Vortex mode is entered from either POV or PF mode, with the POV indicator light flashing in that mode. PhoneGo mode is activated by pressing and holding the rear trigger button. The F indicator will flash when this mode is activated, and in this mode the camera will pan and tilt according to the movement of the stabilizer at high speed while the roll axis is locked.
The ZY Cami app also has a powerful editor that allows you to fully edit your recorded content right on your phone. You can crop your video, add music, add subtitles, add stickers, change the playback speed, invert the video, zoom, rotate, add filters, change colors and much more. The Prime Service, which is included in the combined package for one year, gives you access to online editing, online video storage and other templates for advanced editing of your videos.
User manuals, tutorials, and content from other creators are all included in the ZY Cami App. Viewing other content is good for inspiration and ideas on how to improve your content.
Experiences and conclusions
I recorded videos with the Zhiyun Smooth Q3 using a OnePlus 9 Pro, Google Pixel 5a, and TCL 20 Pro 5G. My Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 has a form factor that is too strange to work in the gimbal which was expected. The phone clamp held these phones securely and the rubber inserts protected the surface of the phones. You can even put your phone in a case if it’s not a bulky case.
The Smart Follow mode was very impressive, where a green box appears that you place on your subject and the gimbal then follows this subject wherever it goes. This is also useful when using the tripod to record yourself doing activities in front of the camera.
The panorama mode with the tripod is great as you place the Smooth Q3 on a stable surface, activate the panorama in the software, then press record to watch the gimbal at work with your phone to take a perfectly aligned panorama shot. I always seem to move up or down a bit when trying to record these with just my phone.
The dolly zoom option is an interesting effect that we’ve seen in movies in the past and is sometimes referred to as the Hitchcock effect. You’ll move toward or away from the subject as you zoom in the opposite direction. This effect has been used with great success at Chief Brody in Jaws. The smart / template options were fun too, as they give you some filters and methods to experiment with where you just select the template and then record the video.
Overall, I was very satisfied with the performance, price, and powerful recording / editing software of the Zhiyun Smooth Q3 gimbal. The light is a great addition and it’s a pretty compact gimbal. While Zhiyun advertises 7-15 hours of battery life, my experience has been that the 7 hours are more typical and should be expected. That said, that’s enough time to record video content all day.
