when you're ready to upgrade from your manfrotto pixie Mini
for vlogging you might be looking at the manfrotto pixie Evo 2 as a possible upgrade
and if you are you're in the right place hello I'm Wanderer001 and this is my review of the manfrotto
pixie Evo 2. just like I said I had the original manfrotto pixie mini and used it as a not really
vlogging camera but I did use it as a means of kind of stabilizing my digital SLR so I decided
it was time for an upgrade the pixie mini was good at what it did it was small it was compact
it could hold my mini digital SLR perfectly fine but realistically you had two settings open
and closed and you had a nice grip on it there are a couple things about this that
after using for lengthy amounts of time I didn't particularly care for such as the top plate here
in order to get this into your camera you have to spin the whole thing well let's see if the
Evo 2 takes what it learned from the mini and improved upon that well first we're going to
start off at the top you'll notice that there is a rubberized plate right here with a screw
that screw is attached to a mechanism right here this mechanism is what turns and screws into your
camera so you don't have to turn the whole device which I really really appreciate however there is
something that makes this a little trickier to use now with the mini here I could push
down on the button here and I can move my plate wherever I wanted notice this one not so much
you actually have to twist your knob here to release tension on your ball joint up here now
this is both good and bad good and that you can really cinch this down and get it locked into
place however bad because now you are two hand operating this device as opposed with the Pixi
mini where I could just and re-center my camera but this is another thing that does fairly well
you've got a nice cutout for 90 degree angle and you can lock that into place thusly and you
can get some interesting camera angles with that having it facing this way or if you're just using
it for facing forward like I do you can hold it like that now coming down we have our legs the
legs are different they're made of aluminum and plastic and are six inches in length when closed
these guys have a little button here that can slowly ratchet out to a maximum of eight inches
so you can do some really creative things with these legs where you have them kind of standing
up all all weird because you have a rocky Crag or something like that it is an interesting function
but because of that and this isn't a solid piece anymore these they rattle a little bit and
depending on your hand size your grip here notice compared to the mini here I can get a good grip
on everything here if I try and grab it towards the top you can see it's a little a little tricky
to get to and if we expand all the legs notice the grip shrinks even more now I get extended
camera angles but it's a little trickier to hold however you also because of that
get a wider base so it's a little firmer and will stay in place there's another trick that the Evo
here has that the mini did not and that's right here this is a little switch and if you switch it
you can flatten the Evo out almost flat just like that now if we bring this back up so you can kind
of see this mechanism really just is a piece of plastic that comes out to prevent the leg from
going too far up so if we move this over notice the leg is there or the plastic is there and it
prevents the leg from opening fully but if we move this over say it's going on the other side
too move it over now the leg has free reign to go all the way up it's an interesting mechanism
but because there's moving parts I do fear that debris can get in here and cause issues
I haven't had any issues with that yet but just want to let you know about that going forward the
buttons themselves are large enough and slightly textured so you know that you are pressing on them
and here you can see if we flip this over you have four positions that you can do this in so each of
those ratchets and then your final position down there I'm going to bring that back up and close
it one of the things that I had commented with the original versus the new here was that the
the grip was a little slippery and here you can see this is kind of a shiny plastic that rather
slippery they have improved upon that with the Evo 2. it's a matte not shiny but it still could use
a little to be desired with texture you know eventually you might want to consider some
skateboard tape to wrap around this part not the actual leg itself to give you a little more grip
now if we come down to the bottom the Evo has rubberized feedings that help keep it in place
so that if you push it around it won't slide around on you too much now you did hear me
mention that I use this with my digital SLR I have the Canon SL2 and I know I've been talking
about actually being able to use this however you probably want to see well how does this actually
handle so let's take a look at some of the weird angles that I had the Evo 2 in with my Canon SL2
foreign
that is not to say that this is not without its faults the fact that this does not have
a quick release plate on the top means that you are going to spend some time fiddling with it to
get your camera on here the fact that this is now a two-handed operation and does take a little more
finessing to actually get yourself level if that's what you're trying to do as opposed to a button
push and then fiddling around with that like I said it it makes a little bit of rattling noise
because of the design of the legs themselves now it might be a little hard to hear because
I have a lapel mic on but I will let you know it is there you may depending on the microphone
setup that you have here audio from this and that could be a deal breaker for some if you're doing
it for digital photography you don't have to worry about sound but if you're doing videography that
could be a problem but the ability for this mini tripod to hold a camera that's up to 5.5 pounds
makes those little caveats not as detrimental in my book it is a little pricier than your
pixie mini here however it is not pricey enough that if I happen to lose or break
this that I'm going to worry all that much so if you're in the market for a versatile
easily carried mini tripod I highly recommend checking out the pixie Evo 2. with that being
said I have been Wanderer001 if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave
them in the area below and as always thanks for watching if you found this video helpful consider
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