We are living in a time which is friendly to creatives. Nowadays, our smartphones hold all the basic features that we need to start our creative arts journey. Whether you want to write, record podcasts, or shoot videos, you can do everything with your smartphone. What your smartphone lacks can be achieved by using hardware accessories. Being a video aficionado, I am most interested in gear that enhances my video capturing skills and no other accessory does it better than a gimbal. While there are tons of gimbals on the market, I am especially interested in budget gimbals as they allow everyone to enjoy stable video recording without breaking the bank.
One such gimbal that we got our hands on is the MOZA Mini-S Gimbal. MOZA is famous for making quality budget gimbals and their new Mini-S had us really excited because of its price, build quality, and features. In this article, we are going to share with you our first of look MOZA Mini-S gimbal and give you our first impressions.
MOZA Mini-S Gimbal: First Impressions
We will start our first impressions article by first taking a look at everything that comes in the box. Then we will proceed to its specs, build quality, design, and more to see what if offers us.
MOZA Mini-S Gimbal Specs
The MOZA Mini-S Gimbal brings a number of interesting features especially for its price and also supports almost all the smartphones. Here are the main MOZA Mini-S Gimbal specs that you should know.
| Name | Moza Mini-S Gimbal |
| Dimensions | 116×95×317mm (W*D*H) |
| Gimbal weight | 495g |
| Max Payload | 280g |
| Supported Smartphone Dimension | 58 to 88 mm |
| Battery LIfe | 5-8 hrs |
| Charging Time | 1.5 hrs with quick charging adapter |
| Mechanical Axis Angle (Roll) | 315° |
| Mechanical Axis Angle (Pan) | 270° |
| Mechanical Axis Angle (Tilt) | 200° |
What’s In The Box
Along with the MOZA Mini-S Gimbal itself, the box comes with various accessories that are listed below.
- Portable flannelette bag
- USB-C to USB-A charging cable
- micro-USB to 3.5 mm headphone jack camera control cable
- Tripod
- Sticker
- Folding Guide
- User Manual
Design and Build Quality
The MOZA Mini-S Gimbal looks like any other premium gimbal on the market and that’s a good thing. The gimbal has been designed in a way that it can be easily folded and stored inside a bag or carried in hands. Its folding mechanism is quite good and it never feels flimsy. It also allows MOZA Mini-S Gimbal to be quite portable despite sporting a larger design.
The gimbal is mainly made of plastic but it feels high quality. It feels sturdy in hand and I never felt like I can break it. All the buttons are placed in the right location which makes it very easy to operate the gimbal with one hand. As mentioned above, the gimbal comes with a tiny tripod in the box which makes it great for shooting yourself while placing the gimbal on the desk.
I also love the design of its power button and the led indicator which always lets me know if the device is off, on, or in standby mode. Another thing that I love about the MOZA Mini-S Gimbal is that it brings a USB-C charging port which should become the standard charging port for all devices. That brings me to my only design annoyance with the MOZA Mini-S Gimbal which is the micro-USB port on the arm which is used for establishing a wired connection with your smartphone.
I hate this extra port addition and would have preferred if the gimbal used the charging port for the data transfer. If MOZA did it for making more functional (as some users might want to use them for recording hour long videos), it should have used the USB-C port. Thankfully, you can connect your smartphone using Bluetooth so you don’t have to worry about that port so much. Apart from this minor annoyance, I quite happy with the design and build quality of MOZA Mini-S Gimbal.
MOZA Mini-S Gimbal Features
As we have not had much time with the MOZA Mini-S Gimbal, we cannot share our performance experience with you right now but we can share the features that this gimbal brings that has us excited.
Starting with the most obvious feature, the MOZA Mini-S Gimbal makes it really easy to record stable videos with a smoothness which you can never achieve with handheld recording. Its no-tool adjustment algorithm can quickly set up the gimbal and balance the 3 axes without much intervention, saving you both time and effort. It also allows you to easily switch between portrait and landscape mode so you can capture videos just like you want.
The joystick makes it very easy to use the camera around and there are buttons on the sides which can help you change the focus distance. I love the object tracking features on MOZA Mini-S Gimbal as it’s something that is not found on many budget gimbals. Basically, once you have set up object tracking for a moving object, the gimbal will automatically follow the object without you having to guide it. This makes video recording quite easy and you also get a super smooth video.
Apart from object tracking, MOZA Mini-S Gimbal also brings a number of other shooting modes including a time-lapse mode, slow motion mode, vertigo shot, sports gear mode, inception and more. We are pretty excited about all these shooting modes and will definitely test each one of them out. For now, you should be content with the facet that MOZA Mini-S Gimbal supports all these features as they are mostly found only on premium gimbals.
MOZA Genie App
The MOZA Mini-S Gimbal is complimented by the MOZA Genie app which is available for both Android and iOS operating system. The app features a fairly simple user interface with big bold controls. You get various shooting modes even manual ones which you can select based on your needs.
That said, for me, the weakest point of MOZA Mini-S Gimbal is the app itself. It’s not as polished as I would have liked it to be. It’s not terrible by any means but it’s also not up to the mark. Thankfully, MOZA can easily improve the app with software updates so I am not worried much especially considering the fact that it has nailed the hardware.
MOZA Mini-S Gimbal: Pricing and Availability
Where MOZAl kills all the competition in the market is by pricing the gimbal quite aggressively. You get all the features you read inside a well-built the MOZA Mini-S Gimbal for just $79 with free shipping around the world. That is crazy pricing and I don’t think there are many other gimbals in the market which can beat its price while matching all its features. If you are looking for a budget gimbal which is built-to-last and has tons of features, you should definitely check out the MOZA Mini-S Gimbal.
Buy MOZA Mini-S Gimbal: $79
MOZA Mini-S Gimbal: Budget Gimbal for Beginners
If you are just starting out as a video creator and looking for an affordable gimbal, you should start with MOZA Mini-S Gimbal. Not only it’s cheap but it is also designed well and brings tons of features. Do click on the link to check out the MOZA Mini-S Gimbal and let us know how you feel about it by writing in the comments section below. If you have any questions for the gimbal drop them down too and we will try to address them in a future article.
Anshuman Jain
Sagnik Das Gupta
