Zhiyun Smooth Q2 Gimbal Review

Zhiyun Smooth Q2 Gimbal Review

Zhiyun have cemented themselves as a serious player within the gimbal market, coming in only behind DJI when specifically watching smartphone gimbals. The Zhiyun Smooth 4 (read my review here) has been the second best-selling smartphone gimbal for a short time now, and given how good it had been, I’d been eagerly anticipating Zhiyun’s next release.

And here we've it, the Zhiyun Smooth Q2.

The first thing to understand is that this is often actually the successor to the older Zhiyun Smooth Q, and not the aforementioned Zhiyun Smooth 4. The graceful Q was a light-weight , casual-friendly smartphone gimbal whereas the graceful 4 targets mobile filmmakers.

Given its tiny body, it’s clear that Zhiyun hope the graceful Q2 can compete with DJI’s new folding Osmo Mobile 3, the primary gimbal to be truly portable.

So have Zhiyun finally created a gimbal which will beat DJI at what they are doing best? Let’s determine.

What Is It For?

While gimbals seem to possess replaced selfie-sticks to become the new must-have phone accessory, a number of you'll still be unacquainted them.

In case you fit that minority, here’s a fast explanation: Gimbals are small devices that you simply mount your phone to, and that they essentially make use of three motors to form micro-adjustments to your phone’s orientation and keep the camera steady. The result? Buttery smooth video footage that even your new iPhone’s optical image stabilization can’t compete with.

 

Zhiyun Smooth Q2 Gimbal Review

You can learn more about gimbals and the way they add this post I wrote.

First Impressions

Out of the box, the primary thing that strikes you is simply how small the graceful Q2 really is.

When I first unboxed the DJI Osmo Mobile 3, I used to be blown away by how small it had been compared to other smartphone gimbals. Well, the graceful Q2 somehow manages to form the Osmo Mobile 3 appear too big, so full credit to Zhiyun for creating it to compact.

The other thing that immediately struck me was its heavily stripped down design. For controls, there's just a joystick, power button and record button. Aside from that, you get the standard quarter-inch thread for tripods and a USB Type-C charging port. You don’t get things sort of a zoom wheel/slider, rear trigger or balance adjustment knobs.

The build quality is additionally very nice, with a pleasant use of aluminum alloy and plastic getting used in its construction. All this actually makes the gimbal slightly heavier than its competition (when the removable battery is inside the grip).

Compatibility

The Zhiyun Smooth Q2 supports a maximum payload of 260g, which makes it (despite its size) one among the foremost powerful smartphone gimbals out there. It makes use of a spring-loaded adjustable clamp to carry your phone, which may accommodate even phablet sized phones.

As a result, it’s compatible with almost every smartphone you throw at it. However, there's a caveat. On some phones (especially those where the phone’s camera is closer to the middle, and not the corner, just like the Oppo Reno 10x) the rear of the gimbal arm gets into the camera’s view when recording. This problem isn’t exclusive to the graceful Q2, but it sure is more common.

Filming With The Zhiyun Smooth Q2

I’ve tested tons of gimbals within the past – Smartphone, DSLR, wearable, you name it. Among all of them, this gimbal is far and away the only to use. A few of minutes is all you would like to urge familiar with its controls.

After powering it on and hitting the record button, you'll use the joystick to electronically pan and tilt the camera. Press the joystick button and you'll now cycle through the varied shooting modes:

• Pan-following: Follows movements within the pan axis, but keeps the horizon locked and level.
• Locked: Your phone’s orientation is locked, meaning the camera keeps pointing within the same direction.
• Following: Follows movements in pan (left/right) and tilt (up/down) axes, but keeps the horizon level by locking the roll axis.
• POV: Follows all movements, albeit steadying things out for jitter-free footage.
• Vortex: a rather gimmicky mode that allows you to shoot am inception-style camera shot.

Zhiyun Smooth Q2 Gimbal Review

The gimbal features a LED indicator which makes it easy to see what mode you’re currently using.

Of course, pairing the gimbal with the ZY Play companion app over Bluetooth allows you to do other fancy things like motion time-lapse, object tracking and dolly zooms. It’s also where you'll configure various settings.

Performance

Over the last few years portable gimbals have come an extended way in stabilization performance. In fact, we’ve almost seemingly hit a wall up which all the gimbals are relatively similar when it involves what proportion they stabilize video.

Despite being ‘pocket-sized’, the Zhiyun Smooth Q2 offers a number of the simplest stabilization performance yet. Its motors are incredibly powerful and pretty darn quiet too.

However, the most important problem is that the motor speed is fixed. This will be a problem when you’re filming fast action sort of a formula 1 car zooming past you on the track. Most gimbals allow you to increase responsiveness by letting you modify the motor speed.

Zhiyun Smooth Q2 vs DJI Osmo Mobile 3

There’s little question that these are the 2 hottest accessories for your iPhone or Android immediately. They also both share a singular point of being highly portable, so it’s natural for people to draw comparisons between them.

In the Zhiyun Smooth Q2’s favor, it's a removable battery which also lasts longer (17 hours vs 15 hours under optimal conditions). It’s also the smaller of the 2, and may be stand by itself on a flat surface without having a tripod.

However, I’ve need to say the DJI Osmo Mobile 3 has more going for it. you'll shoot in portrait without running into as many problems, the grip’s ergonomics are superior and you get a zoom slider also as a rear trigger that’s immensely helpful during filming (e.g. to re-center the gimbal or temporarily boost motor speed).

 

Zhiyun Smooth Q2 Gimbal Review

There’s also a problem with the range of motion of the graceful Q2. While the figures on the spec sheet are good, in practice you regularly find the sides of your phone knocking into the gimbal because the short gimbal arms don’t offer enough clearance from the bottom grip.

Pricing

The Zhiyun Smooth Q2 features a suggested retail price of $139, making it costlier than its competition, but not by enough to form you disregard it altogether.

Verdict

Overall, the graceful Q2 may be a good gimbal that succeeds in being truly dense. For 90% of your filming needs, it does everything you expect it to try to.

However, it’s the opposite 10% of times where it lacks the features you would possibly want from a gimbal.

Sometimes i would like to concentrate while filming, and that I don’t want to possess to resort to pinching my phone’s screen or doing it in post-production. Sometimes I would like to film fast-paced action and that i got to increase the follow speed, but the graceful Q2 offers no such flexibility.

The DJI Osmo Mobile 3 can do all that, and while it's the larger gimbal, when it’s folded up it’s not that much bigger.

And while Zhiyun call it dense, we’re talking about the massive ones you discover on cargo pants here, so ninefold out of ten you’ll chuck it within the bag anyway.

Rating: 4/5

Looking for the simplest gimbal for your iPhone or Android? Inspect my updated YouTube Gears.