Smartphone Gimbal? FeiyuTech VLOGPocket Review

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I’ve always been a fan of the concept of a smartphone gimbal or smartphone stabilizer. Who wouldn’t want smooth video footage, even from your iPhone, right? But it always seemed like the clunkiness of having an extra piece of gear didn’t really make the tradeoff worth it to me. Recently, FeiyuTech sent me the VLOG Pocket smartphone gimbal, which folds up and isn’t obnoxiously clunky… so I tried it out. Here are my thoughts and review!

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Smartphone Stabilizers… are they really necessary? Here are my thoughts on smartphone gimbals:

I don’t really have any particular cons with the VLOG Pocket itself… It feels like a high-quality piece of gear, and it works: it stabilizes the footage, and it’s really easy to use!

Typically, as I mentioned, I’m not always sold on the trade-off a bulky gimbal for smooth footage for a YouTube or social media video, mainly because they are clunky and fragile. You kinda have to treat them like a baby, and depending on the make and model, they can be quite expensive.

Plus, lately, with the in-camera stabilization on cameras like the GoPro for example, I feel like if I had a crystal ball, I’d predict that at some point in the future, all smartphones will have stabilization built-in.

And do we really need another device in our life that needs to be charged?

I’m curious if you own a gimbal for your phone or camera, let me know in the comments if you actually use it or if it spends more time sitting in the box.

As for the VLOGpocket, yes, it does need to be charged, but I like that it is foldable, and all the wonky bits lock into place so it feels secure to throw it in the bag and into my purse. so because of that, I’m more likely to actually use it.

I like that you can download the free app, and using the app, you connect your phone to the gimbal so that you can use the button to record or switch from photo video mode.

You can still use the gimbal without the app, but if you want the ease of using your thumb to easily operate the phone then that’s a nice option
the app itself has a TON of settings and effects, I didn’t play with all of these but the dolly zoom was pretty cool and the facial tracking also seems really useful – it might actually be the most useful setting within the FeiyuTech app.

I could see me using this for Instagram stories and IGTV that I might be shooting directly on my phone, or getting B-roll on my phone. If I was using my phone for handheld, vlog-style YouTube videos, then absolutely this would be in use a lot for me.

Related: Video Editing for Beginners

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