The Ultimate Feiyutech A1000 Review!

Although the Feiyutech A1000 is a pretty old gimbal stabilizer these days, we still see a pretty large number of people reaching out about it each month with a number of different questions. Due to this, we have decided to publish this dedicated Feiyutech A1000 review to try and help any of our readers who are considering adding the A1000 to their collection of camera accessories.

Although the A1000 has managed to earn a solid reputation within the videography community, you have to keep in mind that the majority of this is from back when it was released. Since then, many competing gimbals have received price reductions making them cheaper or similar prices to the A1000 while providing much better performance and functionality.

For example, take the Zhiyun Crane v2 that was previously the undisputed king of the mirrorless camera space prior to the Zhiyun Weebill Lab being released. Back in its day, the Crane V2 was almost double its current price though but since then, it has released two major price reductions making it cheaper than the Feiyutech A1000 while still offering better performance and functionality for less money.

In our honest opinion, anyone who is considering purchasing the Feiyutech A1000 would be making a much better investment in their camera accessories if they purchased the Crane v2 instead. Additionally, even to this day, the Crane v2 has one of the best reputations amongst gimbals and is still steadily growing in popularity.

All that said and done, we will still be going over our full Feiyutech A1000 review to share why we feel this way as well as to help any of our readers who are still considering purchasing it. To date, the regular A range of Feiyutech gimbals are probably the best handheld gimbals they have managed to make for the mirrorless camera weight class as their newer AK gimbal range is plagued with issues and a poor design. Like we said at the start though, the Feiyutech A range is definatley showing their age now with there being better gimbals like the Zhiyun Crane v2 that are cheaper.

Performance And Functionality

When it was initially released onto the market, the Feiyutech A1000 actually offered a solid level of performance and functionality for its entry-level gimbal price tag. In our opinion, this is why it was initially successful with the community and managed to earn itself a solid user base, it is just a shame that Feiyutech has not reduced the price of the A1000 as much as the competition have for their gimbals over the years to keep it competitive.

Now, one of the most important things about a handheld gimbal is its load capacity and the Feiyutech A1000 is able to support a camera rig of up to 3.74 pounds of payload weight. This should still be able to support the weight of the majority of mirrorless camera setups on the market right now as well as a number of the lighter DSLR camera rigs too.

That said, you do have to keep in mind that just like the other gimbals from the same generation as the A1000, using a longer zoom lens can cause issues with center of gravity for the gimbal and make it a pain to get any decent quality image stabilization. Unfortunately, this issue plagues is present on the Zhiyun Crane v2 too although not to such a large extent. If you know that you will be using a longer zoom lens with your camera, even something like a 16mm to 35mm zoom then the more modern Zhiyun Weebill Lab or the DJI Ronin SC is probably going to be best.

Both of the gimbals have the latest technology with high torque gimbal motors to easily support longer lenses. Additionally, both of the gimbals have auto-calibration technology to help deal with longer lenses and although the tech on the DJI gimbal is better, this is reflected in its price tag. If you know that you will only be using smaller lenses with your camera when mounted to your gimbal though, the Feiyutech A1000 won’t have any issues.

After the maximum load capacity of a gimbal, the next feature that we usually see people asking about is the maximum battery life potential. Now, the Feiyutech A1000 has a pretty solid maximum battery life for when it was created coming in at around eight hours of juice per full charge. The gimbal also does a pretty solid job of ensuring that you get this with each charge too no matter how much of its load capacity that you use.

That said though, modern gimbals like the Zhiyun Crane Plus can provide you with up to sixteen hours of battery life while also being able to higher camera payloads with superior performance. Additionally, the Feiyutech A1000 has an minor issue with recharging where it will take as long as it wants to recharge with some random time fluctuations. Although the average seems to be between three and five hours, we have seen reports of the A1000 taking up to eight hours to recharge.

Now, it may seem that we are being overly negative on the Feiyutech A1000 but the simple fact is that at the time of writing, it is two generations of gimbal old now and its price has not fallen accordingly. This has enabled the competition to beat it with their superior performance and better price reductions. That said though, the video above was recorded using the Feiyutech A1000 and does a great job of showing off exactly what the gimbal is able to offer you.

As you can see in the video above, the A1000 does offer some decent quality image stabilization and can help you get a better image quality than you would be able to capture if you were recording handheld with your camera. For its time, the A1000 did offer some great entry-level performance for its price point and definatley had its own advantages over the competition, its just a shame that Feiyutech has not lowered the price of the gimbal appropriately to reflect the technology it has.

In this day and age, there are just better options available that blow the performance of the A1000 out the water, at the time of writing, the Weebill Lab is around $100 more than the A1000 but is one of the latest gimbals to market with all the latest technology. The Zhiyun Crane v2 is around the same price as the A1000 and although it is from the same generation of gimbal, it offers much better performance and battery life than the A1000 too.

Click Here To Check Prices And Availability!

User Interface And Control System

Now, you have to remember that the Feiyutech A1000 has been designed as an entry-level gimbal stabilizer so its control interface has been designed to be as easy to use as possible. This ensures that anyone who chooses the Feiyutech A1000 as their first handheld gimbal is able to easily get to grips with it with minimal time investment required.

The system is based around the standard joystick and button system that offers a decent level of control over the gimbal with minimal effort. The A1000 has an extremely responsive joystick that performs very well in all fairness to it and we would imagine that the vast majority of people reading this would be able to use the A1000 control system without issue too.

Just like most 3 axis gimbals from the past four to five years, the control system on the Feiyutech A1000 has been designed with simplicity and stability in mind. The system is as simple to use as possible while also requiring just a thumb to tweak the gimbal head. This ensures that the remainder of your hand is able to focus on stabilizing the gimbal to ensure it is secure with your camera mounted to it and won’t fall.

Smartphone App

Now, the Feiyutech smartphone app is in a dreadful state and there’s no way around it but in all honesty, this is nothing new for the gimbal space. Out of all the gimbal brands out there, only DJI and Moza have solid smartphone apps with Zhiyun rapidly releasing updates every few weeks to make their app usable too. Due to the issues that Feiyutech are having with their AK gimbal range we doubt that they will be focusing on updating their app any time soon.

Not only is the apps navigation menu difficult to work around, the app also has a number of connectivity issues, especially on Android devices. If you are able to get initial sync between your smartphone and A1000 then it is likely that the connection will randomly drop too. We hope that Feiyutech upgrade their app or ideally totally overhaul it in the future so, by the time you are reading this, things may have changed and the app may be useful.

Build Quality And Design

Now, as you can probably guess, the first thing that we are going to say is that the age of the Feiyutech A1000 is definatley showing when it comes to build quality and it holds it back. Although back when it was initially released on to the market, it did have an acceptable build quality for its initial price point, developments in materials mean that the modern gimbals like the Weebill Lab are much lighter and tougher and only around $100 more with superior performance. Even if you compare the Feiyutech A1000 to the Zhiyun Crane v2 that was released around the same time as the A1000, the Zhiyun’s build quality is much better.

When it comes to the design of the A1000, everything is pretty solid due to most handheld gimbals, especially in the entry-level price range following very similar designs. Although the issue with the center of gravity when using longer lenses that we covered earlier in the article does lose it some points, considering the a1000 is two gimbal generations old now, the design is still pretty solid.

Additionally, due to the advancements in things like gimbal motors and gimbal batteries, most of the modern gimbals like the Weebill Lab are much smaller and easier to travel with than the large and bulky Feiyutech A1000. If you are a travel vlogger or are involved in any type of travel videography niche, this is a massive restriction for the A1000 as it is heavy and large making it difficult to transport compared to the competition.

Balancing

Now, moving onto the balancing procedure for the Feiyutech A1000, we have chosen to just embed the official tutorial from Feiyutech on how to balance the gimbal above rather than type a tutorial up. Although we did previously used to make a written version of how to balance the gimbals, the general feedback seems to suggest that it is easier when following a video.

FAQs

Question – Can I mount my camera and lens setup to the Feiyutech A1000?

Answer – This is one of the most common questions that we see asked about all gimbals and there are just too many variables to offer a yes or no answer. Our advice is always to check the weight of your full camera rig and see if it is lighter than the maximum load capacity of the gimbal. In the case of the A1000, this is 3.74 pounds. Ideally, for optimal performance, you will want to be having a total payload of under 3 pounds with a short prime lens.

Question – Does the Feiyutech A1000 still have vibration issues with the gimbal head?

Answer – The firmware update a few years back did manage to massively reduce the reports of the head of the A1000 randomly vibrating. That said though, as the Feiyutech A1000 is not a very popular gimbal in the community these days due to so many new options being available, we would expect to see a natural drop off in the reports of the vibration problems anyway. Our advice would be to patch your gimbal to the latest firmware build as soon as you get it to try minimize the risk of the vibrations and their ability to spoil your video footage.

Question – Does the sound from the gimbal motors on the Feiyutech A1000 contaminate audio tracks?

Answer – We have not experienced this ourselves and have not seen any reports of this either. The motors on the A1000 are very quiet and we doubt that your device or cameras microphone will pick them up when recording.

Our Verdict

That brings our Feiyutech A1000 review to an end and you can read some additional third-party reviews of the gimbal for an independent insight into its performance if you want. As you can probably tell, we would recommend that any of our readers on a budget go with the Zhiyun Crane v2 over the Feiyutech A1000 as it is a very similar price and just a better all-round gimbal.

That said, both the Crane v2 and the A1000 are old and for around $100 more you can get the brand new Zhiyun Weebill Lab that blows both gimbals out the water in all regards other than the slightly higher price tag. In our opinion, it will make a much better addition to your collection of camera accessories and provide you with the best upgrade to the image quality that you can capture.

Click Here To Check Prices And Availability!