Hohem iSteady X - SETUP & TUTORIAL

Hohem iSteady X – SETUP & TUTORIAL

Hohem makes smartphone gimbals and recently released a small, foldable device called the Hohem iSteady X. They are lesser known than companies like DJI and Zhiyun, which is probably why their marketing department is putting a lot of energy into sending them out to YouTubers. In fact, they’re so keen to get the word out, they’ve even sent me one – and here it is.

Over the last couple of years, Hohem have established themselves with some solid gimbals that are also a little cheaper than the competition. In this video, I’m going to go through the setup process and walk you through some of the features.

Foldable

Just like smartphones, smartphone gimbals come in a variety of sizes. While some of them are more heavy duty, the Hohem iSteady X belongs in the lightweight category. For that reason, it’s an excellent choice for video-shooters on the move who don’t want to get weighed down with bulky kit.

First Steps

So what do we get in the box? We get the gimbal itself, which feels very light compared to other gimbals I’ve used. For that reason, it doesn’t feel too solid and has a plastic feel to it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as you could carry this around and hardly notice it.

The Hohem iSteady X comes with a mini tripod included. You get one with the DJI Osmo Mobile 3, but you have to pay extra for that. So it’s nice they just include this, which honestly shouldn’t add $20 to your purchase.

There’s a wrist strap, power cable and storage pouch, too.

The small booklet has a quick start guide at the front. And it tells you that activation is required via the Hohem app and if you don’t do this, the gimbal won’t work.

This seems to be something gimbal makers are doing now. Rather than leaving that as an option, you have to give them your email before you can use your gimbal. So I scan the QR code and navigate to the Play Store.

Mounting & Balancing

The Hohem iSteady X is a foldable gimbal. So, once you’ve got it out of the box, the first thing you can do is unfold it. The gimbal basically has a simple hinge which allows it to flip open.

There’s a screw which then needs to be fastened tight, to lock the arm in place.

On the gimbal handle is a sticker with some quick start instructions. So you can remove that and keep it if you want to refer to it later.

Once you’ve mounted your smartphone into the gimbal grip, you need to adjust its position left to right. If your smartphone leans left or right, slide it in the grip until it’s roughly balanced. Note that the grip on this gimbal is nice and wide, so it should be able to handle bigger phones and cases.

Next step is to download and install the Hohem app. I simply used my smartphone’s QR scanner, which activates when I aim the camera at something. This takes you to a webpage which provides the Play Store link.

Modes

There are 4 modes. You can change them in the app in the settings (cog).

To switch between modes on the Hohem iSteady X you can use the gimbal buttons:

• Press and hold shutter button.
• Now tap power button:
  • 1 time for Pan/Tilt Follow.
  • 2 times: Follow.
  • 3 times: ALL Lock.
  • 4 times: POV

Hohem App

The Hohem app has a pretty low rating, which does not bode well. Having said that, Android apps often have a lower rating than their iOS version, which is probably down to the app having to serve hundreds or even thousands of different models of smartphone. For comparison, the DJI Mimo app has a score of 3.1 – Hohem, currently 2.4.

Opening the app launches an auto play quick start video. There’s also a list of “how to” videos available. But you need to register before you can start using your gimbal.

So, power on the gimbal by long-pressing the power button on the right. Open the Hohem app and follow the instructions, giving permissions where needed. You need to make sure Bluetooth is activated on your smartphone.

Once you have registered and activated the app, the app should find the gimbal and you can connect by hitting the connect button.

Unlock the Motors

At this point I had a real headache with the gimbal pairing with the app on my smartphone. I registered, activated the gimbal, switched on bluetooth, connected the device, but the gimbal kept beeping and then switching itself off.

So I finally discovered why it was doing this and that’s down to these locking mechanisms on each motor. So there are 3 points where the motors are locked in place, on each motor. So make sure you unlock these and each motor can move freely.

If you don’t do this, the gimbal will keep switching itself off. But once I unlocked the gimbal arm, the gimbal remained powered on. Now I was able to connect the app to the gimbal.

Note that for the gimbal and app to be connected, the bluetooth symbol needs to be blue. If it’s red, then it’s not connected. I turned the gimbal off while I did something else, and when I turned it on again, it did not immediately connect.

So I had to play around, switching bluetooth off on my smartphone then on again. Then back to the home page of the app and reconnect. It does work, but it needs some extra effort.

Hohem iSteady X Buttons

Tap the power button to switch between landscape and portrait mode. If you double tap this button, you can re-centre the smartphone in the gimbal.

Tap the left shutter button to take a photo or start shooting video. If you double tap this button you will change from photo mode to video mode. In other words, if you are in photo mode, one tap will take a picture. But if you are in video mode, one tap will start or stop recording.

Joystick & Slider

Using the joystick you can create smooth tilt and pan movements.

With the slider on the side of the handle can zoom in and out. Note, by tapping the F on the screen of the smartphone, you can switch this to focus. So now you can perform nice focus pulls using the slider, which I think is a really cool feature. Focus pulling can create some really nice shots, whereas zooming in or out… not so much.

Test shot

Here’s a test shot to try out the gimbal.

Looks to me as if the gimbal is holding the phone at a slant. So I guess I will need to calibrate the gimbal first.

Auto Calibration

Place the gimbal on a desk using the mini tripod. Now power up the gimbal, with the phone balanced. Tap the power button quickly 5 times and the gimbal goes through an auto calibration which should take about 40 seconds.

You can also set this running from the app menu.

Unfortunately, the auto calibration didn’t really make any difference. As you can see the phone is still slanted. Hopefully, your device will do better than this and I just have a bad one.

After calibration

Here’s what it looks like after calibration.

Face & Object Tracking

Tap this icon on the left to open up 2 tracking options: face tracking and object tracking. With face tracking switched on, it automatically detects your face and starts tracking. If you want to record yourself, you will need to start recording then move in front of the camera and get it to start tracking.

With object tracking, you must manually select the object to track by drawing a finger over it on your phone’s screen.

Gesture control

The hand icon on the right of the screen should activate gesture control. Make a V or high-five sign with your hand and hopefully it will either take a pic or start recording.

I’m told that this only works for Android devices and is in development for

Moment

Moment is for when you say “wait a moment while I fix my Hohem gimbal”. Just kidding. It’s a little bit like story mode in the DJI except rather than editing together 4 shots, this just gives you 1 shot with some music on it.

So there’s like inception, panoramic, timelapse, dolly zoom and fantastic rotation. Choose a setting then click start. Some of them require extra information before you click start again.

Then there’s a countdown and off you go.

Extra Settings

If you tap the settings icon bottom left of the screen, it opens up 3 new menus. Each of these gives you some extra stuff to tinker with.

The top icon allows you to change resolution. There’s also a Professional Mode which allows you to manually set things like shutter speed, ISO and white balance.

You’ll also find the setting for auto calibrating your gimbal, if you prefer to do it this way instead of using the power button.