EVO GP 3 Axis GoPro Gimbal Unboxing and Test

I recently shot and published a short video of a trail run I did on a cloudy Saturday morning. I’ll admit it – it was bouncy and lame. It was overcast and I only have a headmount for my GoPro action camera. I can’t fix the cloudy, but I can fix the shaky. Kind of.

Enter the EVO GP 3 Axis handheld motorized brushless gimbal. That’s a mouthful. In short and plain English it means an expensive but relatively steady way to hold a GoPro camera. Steady, at least if you’re not running a backcountry trail, because the thing is probably too delicate to survive an hour in a daypack bouncing against trailmix and beating against a water bottle. That, and you can’t really use the EVO GP with the housing on the GoPro, so that’s another minus in the durability department.

Still, if you want steady video in a controlled or fair-weather environment, the EVO GP might be just the ticket.

A motorized gimbal is a little battery powered unit that uses three little motors along the axis of motion to control and dampen unwanted movement. It’s like the old compass mounts in ships – anyway the ship pitched in the waves, the compass stayed upright and level. The EVO GP does that to the GoPro, but it uses cute little brushless gimbal motors to do all the steadying. This essentially means that even handheld, your GoPro action footage comes out looking like you’re working with a  J.J. Abrams style budget. Maybe not quite that good. It is much steadier than handholding. A stabilized video is a good video.

The EVO GP gimbal seems well-built and it comes well-packaged. It’s easy to start and use, and it really does hold the camera steady. Handholding it easy and it’s not too heavy. You can feel the weight of the batteries, but it’s more like a reassuring heft than a heavy weight. I like it. I’ll post some video from the gimbal held GoPro as soon as I get around to it. Check out the video above for the unboxing and inital start up.

And here’s some video I shot with the Gimbal at the recent Moab Easter Jeep Safari event.

Enjoy.