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Review on Zhiyun Crane M2 Official - Handheld 3-Axis Gimbal Stabilizer for Mirrorless Camera, Gopro, and Smartphone with Grip Tripod by Tiger Carpani

Revainrating 3 out of 5

Great product but won't keep my Hero9 up

First of all, I fell in love with this product as soon as I opened the box. Excellent build quality and the product fits your hand very well. I bought it with my new GoPro Hero 9 and had high hopes of using this product to enhance my creative talent, but unfortunately my joy was short-lived. I've watched many videos on how to balance an m2 faucet with GoPro. and from there my arduous journey began. Before I talk about that, you should know that along with my action camera I also bought the Hero 9 Media Mod and started balancing my Hero 9 with it. It was quite difficult to learn, but in the end I prevailed. I quickly found that my Hero 9 wouldn't stand up automatically after turning it on since the m3 crane's motor setting was set to 'low' so I changed it to 'high'. This fixes the issue for about 2-3 days and I was able to use the gimbal happily but it started doing the same thing again - after running the gimbal it couldn't shake the camera and the gimbal buzzed and went in blockage . I was so desperate to fix this that I did a lot of research and found instructions on how to calibrate the gimbal and how to do a six sided calibration but that didn't solve the problem. At some point I realized that the Hero 9 was probably too heavy for this gimbal and therefore couldn't function properly even at high motor settings. So it would be a great product, maybe for Hero 8 or older models and maybe smartphones. (I tried it with my smartphone and it works surprisingly well) but for some reason the motor doesn't get along with the Hero 9. Well, I mentioned other problems I encountered. 1. If you're using a GoPro media mod (which makes the camera bulkier), the plate you mount the camera on doesn't reach the end of the slot. Maybe that's why the camera isn't all that well balanced, but I have a video of a guy using a media mod on his Hero 9 to work well with the stabilizer. 2. The stabilizer will freeze Hero 9 when connecting via ZY Play app. In other words, you can connect the gimbal to Zhiyun app, but Hero 9 freezes as soon as you press the record/capture button on the gimbal. The only solution to get a frozen camera back is to remove the battery. Conclusion: Buy this gimbal for other models, but it is not good for Hero 9. Maybe I just have a faulty model and so am planning to return mine and maybe I'll buy another one. If it works well otherwise I would never buy this product again for my Hero 9 as I can't spend taxes over $199 on a product that doesn't do me any good.

Pros
  • Absolutely amazing!
Cons
  • Not bad, but...