Zhiyun Smooth Q4 – Review with iPhone 13 Pro

We will take a look at smartphone, gimbal scion, smooth q4. This time it is a more direct upgrade of the q3, but it still reacts to the trends in mobile videography and brings some upgrades and the new features. That might be very useful for modern content creators. In this video. We will take a look at how it performs with iphone 13 pro at the feature set, and i will try to help. You decide whether you should consider getting one smooth q4 utilizes, a construction with a long and foldable vertical arm, which makes it especially suitable for shooting, with ultrawide lens and vertical use. A novelty in the queue line. Is the integrated selfie stick carried over from smooth x2? It weighs 370 grams, so it is definitely on the lighter side. Collapsible design makes it very compact in a folded position. Both arms can be locked in place, which is very useful for transportation. Fortunately, the folding and unfolding process is not overly complicated. It is mostly made of plastics, but the build quality is still very decent. The quality of the plastics is pretty good, and i also like the design. The included table tripod is carried over from q3 and it is pretty long, which means that you can use it as a grip extension for double handed use. The smartphone mount is deep enough, so it has no issues with flat edge iphones in any reasonable case. That seems like a trivial thing, but i actually cant use dji om5, because the holder is not deep enough for the iphone 13 pro in a case here, you just need to slide the smartphone.

In balance, the horizontal position adjust the vertical position if needed, and you can turn it on the gimbal always turns on in vertical mode. If you want to shoot in landscape mode, you need to triple press the trigger. I have the combo package, which includes this nice. Carry case fill a light, wrist, strap and one year, simon prime membership card combo package is 30 dollars more, and i think that it is worth for that carry case and fill light, which is rather useful, as i will show you later in this video. Regarding the smoothness or the stabilization itself, please keep in mind that im making these reviews specifically for iphone 13 pro and 12 pro users iphone 13 pro has pretty incredible video stabilization by itself. So when you add a gimbal, the smoothness is absolutely fantastic. As expected. Getting the flying camera effect when walking is super easy and you dont even have to try that hard. I have tested it on very rough or uneven surfaces, and i was always able to get pretty much perfect push shot. The response of the motors is very consistent and predictable, so i havent experienced any unexpected jerks maximal. Payload is 280 grams, so it has no issues at all with iphone 13 pro. It also works great with the ultra wide lens. Thanks to that long vertical arm, you will never see any part of the gimbal in the frame. I think that the iphone still have the widest lens at 13 millimeters, so it shouldnt be a problem with any smartphone ultrawide lens doesnt have optical image stabilization, but it has very effective electronic image.

Stabilization and here again it works. Great ultra wide angle is easier to stabilize, so we will get extremely smooth footage. It is probably my favorite lens to use on a gimbal, the telephoto lens on iphone 13. Pro doesnt have quite as good stabilization. So here the gimbal helps a lot even with static shots. It also makes the panning quite usable, which isnt necessarily the case without a game ball. The performance with extended selfie stick is also very good. The vibrations are basically multiplied with the longer axis due to the effect of leverage, but q4 can still deal with that very well overall, im very happy with the performance of the q4 with iphone 13 pro. I can say that the performance will also be great with iphone 12 pro. If you want to use it with other smartphones, your results may vary. Regarding the controls, there is the on off button record button mode button, joystick, zoom, wheel and trigger button mode button. Lets you cycle through the modes, so we can go forward by single, pressing and backwards by double pressing. The record button obviously works in the set by kemi app and it also works in a native iphone camera app and in filmic pro. If you turn on record with volume, keys single press of the trigger button, activates smart tracking, we will get to that later: double press resets, the gimbal position and triple press switches between horizontal and vertical mode. Regarding the modes you have five modes available.

You have the pen follow mode where the gimbal follows your pending movements and locks. Other two axes in the lock mode, all of the axes are locked and the gimbal will keep the camera pointed in the same direction in follow mode. The gimbal will follow your panning and tilting movements. Pov mode is similar to follow mode, but here the gimbal will also follow your roll movements. The last mode is vortex or flashlight mode, where you can rotate the camera to get the spinning shots. There is also a go mode, which is basically a sports mode. You can activate it by holding down the trigger button. The joystick has 3 speed settings. I am very happy with the speed at the slowest setting. It is pretty easy to make very slow panning with q4, which is quite rare, with smartphone game balls. There are only two speed or scene modes walk and run, follow speed and the dead zone settings in default. Walk mode are reasonably set, so i dont really miss more in depth settings. The fill light from the q3 is carried over, but the implementation is much better on q4, the light is detachable and it has magnetic connection. You can also attach it both ways, which is an upgrade over the q3 four color filters are also included in the box. You can turn the light on and off and adjust the brightness by pressing the zoom wheel. I think that it is very useful as a fill light or just a way to illuminate the subject in the low light.

Smooth q4 uses the zykami app and it is pretty good. It can shoot 4k up to 60p, including 25b, which is extremely important for users. In the bell region, it also has hdr mode which works pretty well. It also supports slow motion. Video motion lapses and very useful panorama mode. The tracking works great, and it is the main thing that i use the zykami app for smart tracking is one of my favorite features carried over from q3. This basically means that you just need to press the trigger button once and the app will find a subject to track. It works great with faces, and it was also able to find mr mole with no issues. The tracking itself is great much like u3. It is very smooth and reasonably responsive. This feature is very important for a lot of users and the q4 is definitely a good choice in this regard. It also has some nice editing, features filters and so on. I dont use those, but you can find out about those in tutorial videos from zion. I usually use the stock ios app to shoot the video because it can shoot in 10 bit and the in camera. Stabilization is still the best with the stock. App smooth q4 has an integrated 1200 milliamp hour battery. The battery life is up to 15 hours, which is great. I have only used one bar during the whole testing and production of this video, so i am obviously very happy with the battery life.

The charging is a bit slower at about 6 watts, but it is good for the longevity of the battery, so i dont mind that either to sum up, zion smooth q4 builds on an already very good q3 and it brings some useful upgrades. It performs very well in combination with the iphone 13 pro. The footage is super stable in every reasonable scenario, which is the most important thing. The folding design is an improvement over the q3, but it still wont limit the usability with ultra wide lens. The balancing process is very easy, and the controls are also logical. The tracking remains a standout feature of the smooth series. It is a fourth generation product, and that is quite evident. The only two disadvantages that i have found are also carried over from q3. The first one is that it is not possible to turn it on in the horizontal mode. The second thing that i dont like is that she needs to activate the gimbal before you can even use it, which is the case with basically all ladies, the gimbals, the overall performance and the feature set of zion smooth q4 is very good, so i can highly Recommend it so thats it for this video. Thank you for watching. I hope that you liked this video and that you found it to be useful, stay tuned for more videos and maybe consider subscribing if you dont want to miss my future content. I appreciate your feedback in form of thumbs up or thumbs down.