5 best smartphone gimbals

Take your phone-based photography and videos to the next level with one of these handheld devices

As smartphone cameras have rapidly improved over the past few years (to the point where you can now use the term “iPhone photographer” non-ironically) so too have the various gadgets and gizmos associated with videography.

One of the most important and predictably popular of these gadgets is the gimbal, a handheld stabiliser to help you get professional or cinematic footage from the 4K camera in your pocket. When testing out models from the biggest brands, we looked for build quality, ease of use and the functionality of accompanying apps. All of the products we tested offered excellent stabilisation, which, after all, is the main point in investing in a gimbal.

Here we test out the best smartphone gimbals the market has to offer in 2018.

Zhiyun Smooth III: £173, Tech in the Basket

​The Smooth III gimbal, from Zhiyun, one of the most trusted names in the market, followed quite quickly after the release of the Smooth II, tweaking and improving upon some of the Smooth II’s more marginal features and issues. The result is a truly outstanding stabiliser with a slick design and innumerable features that you discover the more you use it (the various time-lapse features are among our favourites). The app, ZY Play, offers a welcoming interface with several functions, from panoramic mode to 4K shooting to manual ISO control, so you can easily control exposure. The Zhiyun Smooth III also boasts a formidable 12-14 hours of battery life, outdoing the four to five hours you can expect from most other smartphone gimbals (you can also charge your phone via USB while shooting). From the design to the performance, the Zhiyun Smooth III is our best buy. Compatible with smartphones that are sized within 6in, and the GoPro Hero3/4/5 action cameras.

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DJI Osmo Mobile: £189, Amazon

Like the Smooth III, the Osmo is among the slickest gimbals. It is also arguably the easiest gimbal to use of all those collected here: you slide your phone in, secure it with the clamp, connect with Bluetooth and the gimbal does the rest, explaining the various functions and features onscreen. As with the Smooth III, there’s a joystick for you to pan up and down and side to side, a trigger on the front to lock the camera on a specific scene or object (or, if you double tap, to enter selfie mode) and several other features included within the DJI Go app such as time-lapse mode and tracking mode – a feature for which the Osmo especially stands out. Compatible with smartphones with widths between 2.3in and 3.3in.

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Zhiyun Smooth Q: £134, Droid Box

The Smooth Q is a gimbal that is often mentioned alongside the Osmo and Smooth III, but it comes considerably cheaper than the others. It includes some but not all of the features of other gimbals (it isn't as good at stabilising footage from heavier phones or GoPros, for instance) but the stabilisation on iPhones and similarly sized smartphones is just as smooth and reliable as other high-end gimbals. In some respects it even outdoes the Osmo – namely with the solid 12-hour battery life and phone-charging features (you can power-up your device via a USB port while out shooting). The Smooth Q is a great gimbal for videographers who don’t want to splash out but still want professional-looking, stable smartphone footage. Compatible with smartphones of sizes within 6in.

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LanParte HHG-01: from £246, Amazon

The LanParte HHG-01 is another solid, reliably smooth smartphone gimbal that comes with different clamps and counterweights, making it one of the best gimbals for videographers with heavier smartphones or GoPros. The handle is among the most comfortable of the gimbals here, but one minor drawback is that the HHG-01 doesn’t feature a joystick, which is fine for the most part as it adjusts automatically to your wrist movements and keeps your footage smooth, but for the videographers who prefer a bit more control over their footage, this could be annoying. It comes with two clamps, one catering for phones with widths between 2.2in and 3in, and another for phones between 2.5in and 3.6in.

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FeiyuTech SPG: £101, Amazon

The Feiyu is another reliable, affordable gimbal that stabilises footage just as well as the other gimbals. It also features many of the same functions as the gimbals included on this list (one of the more notable being its portrait feature) and boasts an eight-hour battery life. Its main drawback is its design: compared to other gimbals like the Osmo and Smooth III, the Feiyu seems quite plain and basic, and isn’t as easy to hold as its pricier counterparts. Still, for its versatility as well as its low price, the FeiyuTech SPG is one of our favourite smartphone gimbals. Compatible with phones of widths from 2.2in to 3.1in.

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The Verdict: Gimbals

All of the gimbals collected here will ensure that you get excellent footage out of your smartphone camera, but for its performance, its extra features (from manual exposure control to the various time-lapse modes), its exquisite design, its formidable battery life and its user-friendliness, the Zhiyun Smooth III is our best buy.

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