REVIEW: Bomaker Smart XR 3-Axis Smartphone Gimbal – Smooth Videos & Manual Focus?

In the past, one of my favorite compact budget gimbals has been from home as part of their. I steady series, including the v2, and these are really useful. Primarily if you are capturing videos, because they can make the footage significantly more stable. Well, now were taking a look at yet another competitor to that from a company called bow maker, which we have seen in the past, primarily making wireless headphones, so its a bit of a curious entry for them. But this is their smart xr. It retails for around 130 bucks, but with coupons, often goes on sale for less than 70 dollars. Three axes for the stabilization so very similar to those models and again holds up any universal smartphone to make things less resistant to shakes as you are. Overall, shooting does come with a few special modes in terms of theres, a companion app, which can create some auto rotation effects as youre filming. One selling point here is that claims to have an oled display which can show you the status its in the mode as well as the battery percentage. It can even charge your smartphone as a power bank of sorts when youre not using the gimbal, so theres an optional secondary feature, has object and face tracking via the app. So it can follow you around and automatically rotate using its motors, and some of the controls here. Allow you to begin to record video, pan and tilt manually as well as focus in and out using some of the dials compatible with any phone from a 4 inch to 7.

2 inch display access to some accessories, which are inclusive of a soft carrying pouch for carrying The gimbal around quick start guide, as well as a usb type c cable for charging. We obviously have the gimbal itself, which folded up you can tell, is very compact, theres, also a free mini tripod, which allows you to further elevate it onto a desk, and it can stand upright while youre filming something uh such as follow you around or creating a Panoramic shot, you can also use a standard tripod of your own via the typical thread screws. Also, a lanyard strap so taking a closer look at the smart xr. One of the things i will say is it is heavier than the aforementioned. I steady series from home in terms of how everything tightens up and then loosens when you are using. It is a little bit more complicated in terms of the latches than on the eye, steady, its an area which takes probably an extra five to ten seconds. To get you up and running versus on the ice study, so if youre someone thats constantly folding this down for travel and then taking it out again, this might be just a little bit more convenient. I have to admit so. For instance, one of the things that you have to do is just unhook this and then pull this up. Then youre just ready to go aside from unlocking the hinge like this. You also have to unlock this particular arm, just by applying a bit of pressure to make it loosened, and also this arm here needs to be loosened up so its not too bad, but theres.

Just a few more parts and joints there, which you have to loosen up and as far as the build is concerned, it does feel quite solid. Its made of this polycarbonate plastic, along with soft touch rubber, which makes it grippy and easy to hold buttons. Also, pretty tactile and clicky zoom controls and focus wheel there on the side which, by the way, is a feature missing on the i study. So a bit more of controls at your fingertips, theres also the type c port there for input and output, standard tripod mount and then in terms of the top here just says: smart xr. It holds again any smartphone using the soft touch rubber pad. So it prevents the phone from sliding around and prevents it from getting scratched. You just have to release this to pop in the phone make sure its centered before you turn the gimbal on, and everything will then become normalized. The motion heel feels pretty smooth and responsive. No real issues as far as the fluidity of how the controls are concerned and its pretty comfortable to use. So this robotic action again is pretty cool. If you havent seen a gimbal before it does rotate pretty much the full way around now, move around my hand and the phones. Camera is still pointing in the same position. So you can imagine if youre walking around this optical gimbal is basically trying to do the work for you. We can also see it switch into the portion horizontal modes there just by clicking that power key once now.

One thing i will say, though, is on this model. Maybe there is a quality defect, because the oled display doesnt seem to be turning on. That is one thing i do have to point out, but again the unit is simple enough to operate, that you dont really need it, and here is the bow maker app, which is pretty easy to connect once you just have bluetooth turned on just open up the Viewfinder, which allows us to then control some of the settings and the ui here is quite similar to most standard camera controls where you can then slide left and right kind of inspired by ios, in fact, to go through the different modes, which at least do feel Quite fast, so i can take a photo record. Video time lapse, footage and all the special effects are also located on separate tabs. So it does require a little bit of scrolling to get to that includes things like inception, the aforementioned dolly zoom modes. You have to kind of move around to find, but, for instance, if i want to set up inception, i can begin this recording and you can see that the process will start. It will begin to go through this automated controls of slowly zooming around, which can be pretty cool if youre, shooting outdoors and just want to add a bit more spun fun special effects into your footage. This is a trick thats, similar to what we saw on the isteady, including changing the start position and position of how much its rotating and also the duration of number of seconds can also be adjusted from the camera controls.

You can also turn on things like a expert mode, which also tells you the current iso, a white balance and metering of the camera. We can also use the zoom, for instance, which is a digital zoom in most cases, but you can also kind of magnify your way in and out and it does feel pretty smooth. I can even change the zoom speed, so if i want to make it faster now as im pressing that dial, this also move a little bit faster and more quickly, and i have to say maybe one of my favorite hidden features on here – that i didnt expect Is that manual focus which works surprisingly well using this bluetooth connection? So if youre using the style, you can change the focus yourself to make it more in focus or less in focus, as you can see there just by twisting this, which is a feature that i just havent seen before on any other budget gimbal and especially if Youre, more of a pro photographer or pro videographer, i should say, can be really fun to create making something that is less in focus, become more in focus and then gradually fading away under the regular mode. You can also tap on these tiny controls here to turn on face tracking or body tracking, and as long as you are selecting kind of a general region on the viewfinder, it will be able to then follow that object around by itself.

Generally speaking, the motors will keep up and become kind of a virtual recorder for you. You dont have to be manually keeping things in frame or in focus, which is pretty neat. You can even start and stop a video by using gestures like this finger motion and doing that will allow it to begin automatically. So, for instance, if we do this, we can see that the motion has started for vloggers. You can also find some beauty filters. The battery percentage remaining on the top left hand corner and again this can be quite useful if youre the only person around, but you still want to be freeing up your hands to do other things or holding up something else. While you are recording, which you can then upload further edit or share as needed, theres even a quick button to share on tick tock as the default social media app. You can also change that by tapping on share and using a different service that you prefer so thats, more or less it as far as our hands on review of the bow maker, smart xr. As far as a budget gimbal is concerned, i have to say it gets a lot right. For instance, the stabilization still is very impressive. Can result in buttery smooth footage like most gimbals and overall, its pretty well constructed plus has again the manual focus style, which is something that is quite unique at this price range.