The Ultimate Glidecam HD2000 Review!

So after we covered a few manual camera stabilizers from the Glidecam range a few months back, we have noticed more and more people reaching out about dedicated reviews of products from the Glidecam range. Due to this, we have decided to make the subject of today’s article a dedicated Glidecam HD2000 review as we have seen a number of requests about the HD2000.

Now, although the HD2000 is a solid manual camera stabilizer that has a great track record as well as an excellent reputation within the community we feel that it is overpriced as well as a little dated. This is a common trend with the Glidecam range that once stood for innovation and excellent quality but unfortunately, in our opinion, we have not seen much from them for the last three to four years of any note.

This has essentially made it a free for all amongst the various brands that compete directly with Glidecam and although the majority of them have failed, we feel the Flycam are really onto a winner with their Redking manual camera stabilizer. Not only is it much cheaper than the Glidecam HD2000 but it also supports a larger load capacity as well as supplies a very similar level of image stabilization.

If you are considering adding the Glidecam HD2000 to your collection of camera accessories, we would highly recommend that our readers seriously consider the Redking instead. We are confident that it will be able to meet the needs of many of our readers over the HD2000 while being almost half its price at the time of writing. Due to the excellent quality of the Redking, it has managed to quickly earn one of the best reputations in recent years in the manual camera stabilizer space.

Anyway, we just wanted to get that out of the way early in the article rather than have you read the full review of the Glidecam HD2000 only for us to turn around at the end and recommend that you go and check if a competing stabilizer is able to meet your needs. As we have seen a fair amount of demand for a review of the HD2000, we will still be going over the stabilizer to back up our opinion on it and share out thoughts on what it has to offer.

Performance And Functionality

When it comes to the performance and functionality of the Glidecam HD2000, it actually does a great job and we just wish that the stabilizer would be subject to a price reduction to help keep it competitive with new manual stabilizers like the Flycam Redking that take advantage of newer technology to outperform the HD2000 while also being cheaper.

The Glidecam HD2000 has a maximum load capacity of six pounds and a minimum load capacity of two pounds of camera payload weight. This should be enough for the vast majority of mirrorless camera setups as well as a large number of the lighter DSLR rigs that videographers commonly use. If you are using a very light setup, there are a number of counterweights that you might be able to use with a light camera rig to meet the two-pound minimum load capacity.

The various clips in the video above have all been recorded with a camera mounted to the Glidecam HD2000 and as you can see, the stabilizer does an excellent job of providing some high-level image stabilization for the user. This can help to ensure that you are able to capture the absolute best image quality possible but again, considering that the performance of the HD2000 is only marginally better than what the Flycam Redking is able to provide while being much cheaper.

Although this is no fault of the Glidecam HD2000, the advantage of natural-looking image stabilization that manual Steadicam style stabilizers were known for is also dropping off. There are now a number of manual gimbal stabilizers on the market like the Zhiyun Weebill Lab, DJI Ronin S, and Zhiyun Crane 3 that offer all of the advantages of a gimbal as well as the natural looking stabilization via their manual modes.

All in all, the Glidecam brand used to get away with their higher price markup due to the innovation the brand kept putting into their products to stay at the cutting edge of the manual camera stabilizer market. Over the last few years, this has definatley dropped off with their stabilizer range becoming stagnant while their price tags are kept high. When you compare the performance of the HD2000 to what you can get from cheaper, competing products on the market right now, we feel it is actually better to go with other brands.

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User Interface And Control System

Unlike a motorized gimbal stabilizer that has an actual control interface for you to tweak the gimbals settings as well as change gimbal modes as required, the manual camera stabilizer range has no real need for anything like that. The vast majority of the manual stabilizers on the market right now are extremely simple to use and basic be the fact that they are designed to do one thing and do it to the best of their ability.

Modern manual camera stabilizers like the Glidecam HD2000 even used closed gimbal environments so there is no need to actually doing much maintenance to the gimbal either. So many videographers were accidentally breaking their units during maintenance that brands simply locked the gimbal joint off in its own environment so you don’t have to oil it up or anything. This is actually a great benefit for the user as it cuts down on the time they need to spend maintaining their equipment and freeing up that time for other tasks.

Balancing

The balancing system on the Glidecam HD2000 couldn’t be easier and it is based around the standard base plate, counterweight system. Simply mount your rig to the mounting plate of the HD2000 and then mount individual counterweights to the base plate of the stabilizer to level it off. There is a much more detailed breakdown in the user manual that comes with the HD2000 as well as a number of video tutorials on YouTube that cover how to balance it if required.

Build Quality And Design

Now, the build quality is probably the best feature of the Glidecam HD2000 when compared to the competing units on the market right now like the Flycam Redking as Glidecam have an excellent reputation for the build quality of their stabilizers. Although the performance of the HD2000 is solid, stabilizers like the Redking really are not far behind it but nothing comes close to the build quality of the Glidecam range at the time of writing.

The whole range is robust and tough enough to take more than their fair share of bumps and knocks and relative to their size, performance, and load capacity they are also pretty lightweight too. On the flip side of this though, the main factor of a stabilizer most people care about is the image stabilization quality, the second factor is the price point with build quality being placed further down.

We feel that this is why the Flycam Redking has taken such a large share of the market in such a short space of time. It offers a very similar level of performance to the Glidecam HD while being so much cheaper. Many videographers will be fine with the image quality that the Redking is able to provide for them and rather save some money than go for the superior build quality.

FAQs

Question – Where is the Glidecam HD2000 made?

Answer – It is made in the USA.

Question – Why is the Glidecam range so expensive?

Answer – The brand used to stand for the latest cutting edge technology and innovation in the manual stabilizer space but this has fallen off over the last few years whereas their price tags have remained high.

Question – Will the Glidecam HD2000 work with my camera setup?

Answer – There are simply too many variables to give a definite answer to this but we always see people reaching out asking it. Provided the total payload of your camera setup is between two and six pounds and doesn’t use a long telephoto lens you should be fine with the HD2000 though.

Our Verdict

That concludes our Glidecam HD2000 review and we know that it is a pretty short one but in reality, it is a manual camera stabilizer, there really is not much to say or cover to review the unit. As you can probably guess, we would highly recommend that you at least check out the Flycam Redking if you are thinking of adding the Glidecam HD2000 to your camera accessories. Although the HD2000 will be the better option for some of our readers, we are confident in saying that a large number will be more than fine with the performance of the Redking.