Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The Smooth 4 works very well, but it’s got one minor flaw and one MAJOR design flaw. Note - I use it with an Apple iPhone X, so my comments are from that perspective. The minor one is the ZY Play software. It’s got several bugs and some of the features don’t work as well as they should. That said, bugs can be fixed and apparently Zhiyun is integrating their hardware with Filmic Pro which appears to be very good software. Nevertheless, ZY Play still works well enough enough to produce results. The reason for two stars is the MAJOR design flaw - with a larger phone, especially in a case and with accessories, it can NOT be balanced. Neither Zhiyun nor any other manufacturer have developed a good counter weight system for the Smooth 4. A smart phone with a stabilizer is a great, portable solution for on the go videos. But it has work! It has to be balanced with a large smart phone like an iPhone X or larger. It has to be balanced with a charging cable attached. It has to be balanced WITH a case on the phone. It has to balanced with attachment lenses. (I desperately needed my wide-angle lens attached yesterday.) Why is balancing important? It may work out of balance, but it will suddenly, randomly flip and go “wonky”. More important, is that it overheats - the motors get hot after extended use. MOST important is that it cannot be used with attachment lenses. Zhiyun needs to design and build a good, flexible counterweight system that will balance the Smooth 4 in multiple configurations... With and without a case. Or charging cable. Or attachment lenses. Without these enhancements, the phone + Smooth 4 is a modest combo for making simple. videos. WITH these enhancements, the phone/Smooth 4 combo has the potential to make seriously nice, high quality, very creative videos from a portable package. When a good counterweight system is available for the Smooth 4, I’l update my review. Regards, Dan. P.s.Charging your phone from the Smooth 4 a potentially AWESOME feature. If it can be balanced! P.p.s The ability to quickly snap the Zhiyun into a locked standby mode is an excellent feature. However all of the hack counterbalance solutions on the web make that impossible. UPDATE 4/9/2019 Changed rating to 4 stars. Adding “EACHSHOT Universal Counterweights” fixed the balance problem. I bought another weight set, but they didn’t work well. Search for “EACHSHOT Universal Counterweight” on Amazon.