So is the FeiyuTech AK4500 the best gimbal on the market? Find out in this
full video review.
Ok so welcome to the video. Now before we open this up, I'll show you all of
the stuff that comes inside this huge carry case, let me get into some of the
specifics about the product now in the UK here it costs between £600 to £700
in the USA. that's around $749. Now it
can actually take a pretty serious weight it can carry around 4.6KG
which is around ten pounds in the US. Now we use quite a light set up
but you can already tell when we've used this there's some real strength behind
those motors. So we use a Sony a6400 which is what you're watching me on now
and we use a Sigma 16mm lens on that and it's quite a long lens
you'll see that in some of the shots that we have and one of the big big
problems with the sony a6400 is that there's no image stabilization
built into the camera and there's none in the sigma lens either so when you're
trying to vlog with it, it's a very very shaky camera so you do need to use a
tripod or a gimbal so this is a great test for this camera now the gimbal
comes with 12 hours of battery life and that's really great because some cheaper
gimbals actually run out really really fast and there's nothing worse when
you're filming and the gimbal just suddenly dies so having 12 hours of
battery life is is seriously good now for the price you know this is a proper
serious gimbal and with that comes a bit of a steeper learning curve as you'll
see in the video but actually I think it's really worth it so when you open up
the retail box you're greeted with this massive polyester suitcase which is
actually a pretty handy carry case and it adds quite a lot of strength to the
gimbal if you're you know taking it on the road with you but let's open it up
and let's see what's inside so when you open this huge case there's loads of
stuff within this box and I'm gonna run you through a bit about what's included
in this but let's start with the actual gimbal itself now it's a pretty big
gimbal it's not quite as heavy as it looks but you know there is a bit of
Heth to it but the main thing I like about it is the amount of locks it has
and it's good for a few reasons the first is that you can lock it into this
position in a vertical position and it makes it great for when you
have it in your bag you know if you're used to some cheaper Gimbels where you
cannot lock them you know this will be sort of shaking around and this will be
moving around and it can really upset the balancing if you've done that ahead
of time so this is great you can just put this in your bag like this you can
also remove and loosen this section here take this section off and then you can
actually take the top part off and then it will go down into kind of one half
this size so that makes it great when you're traveling with this gimbal and
then the second reason these locks are great is because you actually get this
kind of tripod section here in the bag you could screw this to the bottom so
when you've got the tripod a fix this makes it great for balancing you know if
you've ever tried to balance a gimbal before without a tripod attack it's so
hard you have to hold it up of one hand and you know try and balance it is the
nightmare so what is great about this is you have these little lock so if you
unlock each padlock here on the side you'll see that you can actually I'm not
that one out this unlock this one here on the side and you can see once they're
unlocked each part becomes independently movable so you can see I've just
unlocked all these three here but if we now lock these two again you can see
this doesn't move but this one will and it just makes it really great if you
want to accurately balance your gimbal super perfect if you're on the moon just
remember though to make sure to unlock these before you turn the gimbal on
because you don't want to damage those motors so the next thing I want to talk
about I've already attached as you saw but this is the tripod that comes
included in the box so you can screw this to the bottom and what I love about
this is that of course you can use it as a tripod and this really helps you get
some really nice steady shots especially if you're doing something like a
time-lapse but what you can also do is fold the tripod down and then you can
use it as an extension and pod for your actual gimbal and this is really cool
because you know normally if you use a gimbal you only have this one handle to
use you wouldn't have this piece here and you're limited in the height that
you can get so this adds up at another foot of height that you can get if
you're really trying to get those high or low angle shot which is really cool
okay so the next thing I want to show you is this super super light
carbon-fiber rod now this is really great because as I say it's super super
light but the beauty of it is that is that you can detach the tripod and then
you can attach this to the bottom of the gimbal and this gives you even more
height perfect for those super high shots or low shots but then there's
another section on the bottom so you can actually reattach the tripod if you want
even more height or if you just want to pop this on a table and make me have it
you know the high Headroom or just more height for various videos you might be
doing time lapse is that kind of thing so it's just great to have this in the
bag in the box as another option and you can actually use this as a second handle
on the back of the gimbal and we'll show you how to do that in a minute when we
look through the accessory pack - right and then next up we get the base plate
and this is really cool because in some gimble's you actually attach the camera
to the gimbal itself and then it means when you remove the camera any point you
have to rebalance the entire gimbal which is really really annoying so this
just means that you can loosen this here you can take off the base plate and
leave also we leave it on your camera take your camera off and then the gimbal
remains perfectly balanced the other thing they've included which is really
cool and you can attach this to the front of the base plate is a lens
supporter and if you notice it actually has some little wheels here so if you
have a lens like ours which has quite a large kind of focus puller you can
adjust your focus and it will allow your focus ring to to move around you know
some gimbals may have a base plate which actually stops this if it rests on
something which doesn't allow any movement you're not going to be able to
actually move the focus adjust the focus or the zoom at all so this is really
great it allows you to do that and you just simply attach it to the front of
the base plate okay so next if we bring in the accessories kit this comes with
the main box so we'll get into that I'll show you what's inside so inside this
box I want to show you this this is really cool this is the hyper link
controller now what this allows you to do is kind of usual gimbal a bit like a
magic wand if you move around like this the gimbal actually follow your motion
wirelessly as well so you know we don't tend to use this for much of our studio
work here you know two of us in here so we can film fine
but if you're filming on your own or if you just want to avoid touching
your camera to avoid any shakes you could kind of move this around and your
gimbal and camera will follow perfectly but the motion of your hand so this is
really really cool secondly you've got this focus pull-up motor now this is
great again if you want to use maybe the side of the gimbal here to pull your
focus without having to touch the camera so you know if your cameras on the
gimbal you're walking around instead of having to put your hand over and move
and possibly shake your shot you can just simply use this with this attached
and this will adjust the focus so it just means you avoid those shaky shots
and I just love that you control it directly from the gimbal itself it's a
really good selling point of the gimbal so also in the box you've got an adapter
which holds your iPhone and can also hold a monitor which is really really
cool but one of the best features one of the best accessories I love about this
is this and what you can do is you can pair it with the carbon fiber handle
that we showed you earlier and what you do is you basically screw this onto here
and then you attach this to the gimbal itself and what this does this gives you
a second handle so you know if you've ever used a gimbal before it can get
seriously heavy if you use any kind of you know heavy camera or large lens and
you're kind of scrunched around the back holding your camera for hours on end
this enables you to share some of that load and it just makes it easier to
angle the camera down to pull it back up it's a great little feature and I'll
show you exactly how this works too so now if we take off the carbon fiber
handle and have a great thing is you can actually attach the hyperlink controller
to this as well and you can use this as the second arm which is great but also
because you've got these extra controls on here you can do things like pan and
tilt for one and then you've got other features on here on the other and I just
love that you've got a second handle but you've also got the ability to record
and stop and take photos from this hand as well so if you're left-handed or
right-handed this is a great thing to have in the box so one reason I like
this is you can actually change all of your settings and features directly from
the gimbal itself rather than some gimble's where you actually need to get
a knife on Android app and you kind of do the
settings away from the gimbal this is much better because it's on the gimbal
it's balanced everything works as it should and it just makes your whole
workflow much faster on the back here we have a shortcut button so if your gimbal
isn't straight just double tap this and it will rebalance on this side we have a
function button which will lock the touchscreen display then we have this
wheel hip which is a multi-function button you can use it as a follow focus
digital zooming depending on your cam or lens and if you press and hold a knob it
will put the setting in pan tilt and roll mode so you just turn on the gimbal
by holding this button here and one of the best things about this gimbal in my
opinion is that you don't have to use an app to change the different modes and
settings you can do it all from the touch screen here a very good feature as
there's nothing worse than having to a phone now each time you want to change
the modes when you're out on a shoot you have four modes you have lock and this
locks all directions keeping the camera in the same position you have pan mode
and this only lets the camera move sideways and then you have pan and tilt
mode which is both side to side and up and down and finally you have the all
follow which is in every direction you can do other stuff such as changing the
payload setting and calibration in the menus you have the default mode which is
kind of like an auto mode smooth mode which is for very slow moving shots
action mode which is too quick wit pans and a customized mode where you can
change your own motor settings so you have a selection of different types of
positions you can put this gimbal in and you also have interception mode now this
makes the camera do a full 360 degree rotation you can also edit this and
change the speed as well as the direction it will turn in so if you want
just one full rotation you can choose this or you can rotate it just
continually until you want it to stop there's also a really cool motion
time-lapse option now this is a really good feature for when you want to film a
time-lapse or if you want to film yourself and have the camera pan
there's also an option to use your last settings and this is really good if
you're on the go and you want to get a quick shot it just saves you going
through all of your settings again and then finally two more features you've
got selfie mode which is perfect for those stabilized smooth blocking shots
and then you've got portrait mode which is really good feature for vertical
videos especially now it's becoming more popular with apps like Instagram and
tik-tok to put it in this mode you have to tilt the gimbal like so for it to let
you activate it another note is that there's a really good function in the
menu settings so you can actually control some of your camera settings if
you have it connected you can change the ISO exposure compensation and white
balance okay so that's our review and look at the FEA tech aka 4500 gimbal now
I've got to say I do really love this gimbal we've had it for six months and
we didn't want to rush this a review out because we've really been putting it
through its paces we've taken it to Amsterdam I've done a lot of our videos
and the b-roll you've seen in other videos with it and it's such a great
gimbal it's so versatile I love that it comes with this extra handle the touch
screen controls the tripod and what's the main reason you want to gimbal for
right you want steady shots and this certainly delivers on this now I know
it's a lot more expensive than some of the cheaper gimbals out there but I
think with all of the value you get in the pack and the quality of the build I
really do think it's worth it especially if you have a slightly heavier camera or
bigger lens like we have such as the Sigma lens we're using now the only
downside I would say and this is a fault I've seen on a lot of other YouTube
creators channels is that there's two screws that should go into here and we
found also that only one screw can go in here now it's not a huge problem because
this is pretty secure I mean there's not even any screws in here at this moment
and it's still pretty secure but we can screw one screw in and it's being
secured but when you're holding up you know a camera which could be thousands
of pounds or dollars it is a little bit risky so I would like to see feiyutech
improve that and then hopefully send us another screw
a section for this piece here but overall I would certainly recommend this
feiyutech gimble let me know what you think of this gimble in the comments
section below have you used one or are you thinking of getting one let me know
and I promise I do get back to every single comment so thanks for watching