The Feiyu Tech AK4000 is a 3-axis hand-held gimbal designed for DSLRs and mirrorless cameras with a payload of up to 4kg.
You can watch our video review below:
The so called Magic Ring is the most unique feature of this stabilizer. Even though it just looks like a regular focus wheel of a follow focus it can control a variety of settings such as zoom, focus or rotation of the three axis.
The touch screen is quite big compared to other gimbals and is useful to control different settings like the modes, Wifi or Bluetooth to be able to use more features by controlling the gimbal via the Feiyu ON app.
The placement of the batteries in the bottom of the grip is a bit tricky because they are locked behind a little door which is tricky to close once it is opened.
The battery life varies heavily depending on the functions and modes that are used. The batteries sometimes only last for 6 hours even though Feiyu claims a battery use of up to 12 hours which is not very long compared to other camera stabilizers.
The gimbal itself is relatively compact compared to the Moza Air 2 or the DJI Ronin-S but can be extended with a rod so it’s definitely a tool that can be used when traveling compact and not wanting to bring big or heavy camera gear.
Besides being able to shoot motion controlled timelapses and hyperlapses the AK4000 offers a lot of features but the main task, to stabilize tracking and walking shots doesn’t always satisfy. Even though the camera is balanced correctly the gimbal sometimes seems to have troubles stabilizing the camera properly which results in vibration and micro jitter. While this issue can probably be fixed with firmware updates it’s something that I ran into a couple of times while testing the gimbal.
The AK4000 offers a lot of great features but the short battery life and vibration issue is something that should and hopefully will be improved with software updates.
Written by filmmaker Moritz Janisch, December 2018
