The Smooth 5S features great stabilization, a built-in fill light, and faster charging—but its bulky design and awkward charging may be a downside.

The Zhiyun Smooth 5s looks and performs nearly the same as the Smooth 5, but now includes a built-in fill light as well as up to two optional magnetic lights. With PD fast charging, you be on the move again in as little as two hours. But the bulky design makes it less portable than the competition, and if you have a big phone, it's hard to use the secondary power port. It's almost the best smartphone gimbal, but not quite.

In a very Apple-like move, Zhiyun has updated its year-old Smooth 5 handheld smartphone gimbal with a new 5S model. The Smooth 5S delivers the same stabilization and object tracking, time-lapse, and panoramic modes, but with one major new feature: fill lights.

While the 5S also features some other minor upgrades over the previous model to make it more convenient, there are also several quirks, especially with its bulky design, which make it less ideal for taking on the go compared to the competition.

You'd be forgiven for confusing the Smooth 5S with its predecessor. Besides its fill lights, which we'll cover in the next section, the Smooth 5S has a few other less obvious changes. Perhaps most importantly, the Smooth 5S supports larger phones with bulkier cases thanks to its clamp, which now extends further out.

Although both gimbals have the same 2600mAh battery, the Smooth 5S supports 15W Fast Charge, which nearly doubles charging speeds from 0-100% to just 2 hours. With the fill light set to full brightness, you can expect battery life to be about 2.5 to 3 hours. The improved charging times help you get enough juice to resume filming within just a few minutes.

As for the body, the new Smooth 5S remains functionally identical. However, we now have a new white color choice in addition to the gray from last year. As we'll discuss further with its design, we hope to see some major improvements with the release of the Smooth 6. For just the base gimbal, the Smooth 5S costs approximately $20 more than its predecessor. For the added convenience of its lights alone, I would say this is worth the cost.

For most users, the Standard Smooth 5S will be perfect for their needs. This includes the gimbal, a mini tripod foot, and a USB-C cable. The Combo adds a wrist strap, a carrying case, and one magnetic light with four color filters.

Interestingly, it appears that Zhiyun has further tried to upsell users to the Combo package by including a Zhiyun Prime membership card, which is used to access its "pro" smartphone camera apps. While these apps aren't necessary to use the gimbal, if you want to take full advantage of a compatible app that supports the gimbal's physical controls, such as start/stop recording and zoom or focus wheel adjustments, as well as features pro shooting modes such as LOG and other manual settings, then you need the membership card.

The one built-in light might be enough if you opt for the Standard package, though you can always upgrade later if you change your mind. The Smooth 5S fill lights can be purchased separately for $36 each, which is extremely overpriced for what they are, especially considering you can buy stand-alone RGB lights which are significantly more powerful for less. Though again, for its convenience, it's somewhat justified. With the Smooth 5S Standard package costing $169 and $219 for the Combo, I would probably choose the Standard and simply purchase an extra fill light separately, saving around $20. In truth, I don't use the carrying case, or the extra accessories, nor do I like using their apps.

The big selling feature is its introduction of a built-in 5000k, 95 CRI, 650 lux fill-light, which is surprisingly bright and effective at lighting subjects within a few feet of the gimbal.

Although we've seen this on some of Zhiyun's larger gimbals, including the Crane M2, the Smooth 5S has an additional trick up its sleeve, which helps content creators produce high-quality videos with their phones.

As well as the built-in light, the Smooth 5S also supports two additional lights which can attach magnetically either to the top or bottom of the phone clamp.

Although adding or removing these magnetic lights will likely require you to re-balance the gimbal for optimal smooth motion, especially when using larger phones like the iPhone 14, the added brightness that they can quickly provide without needing to pack and set up a secondary external light is incredible.

While the lights can't be controlled individually, the Smooth 5s has a dedicated physical button for turning all the lights on or off and a dial for adjusting brightness for a peak illuminance of 2,040 lux.

The color temperature can't be adjusted; however, Zhiyun includes a set of magnetic color filters (yellow, red, orange, and blue), which can be attached for a more artistic look. I used this feature several times, though I would have preferred temperature adjustments to dial in the exact look. This would be a great upgrade to include in a future model.

Available in the same gray color we saw last year or the new white, the Zhiyun Smooth 5S uses the same high-quality plastic and rubberized grip found on its other gimbals. Just as with the Crane M2, which is also available in white, the Smooth 5S has a Storm Trooper aesthetic thanks to black accents on its grip, controls, and along its sides.

It looks quite ordinary, but it has some quirks that hinder the overall user experience, unfortunately.

Overall, it's well-built and has handled a few major falls without issue over the past two months. The white model seems more susceptible to showing scratches as my unit has several scuff marks, especially along its x-axis motor. There are also a few deeper scratches on its body, but nothing too noticeable unless you look closely.

The Smooth 5S is quite large for the mobile gimbal category, measuring about 12 x 6.6 x 2 inches and weighing close to 1.4 pounds. This may not seem significant, but compared with the Zhiyun Crane M3, which supports small mirrorless DSLR cameras, it's about 1/4 larger and 0.2 pounds heavier.

While the Combo includes a rather nice storage bag, I've never been a fan of using these as I feel it defeats the purpose of packing light and being able to set it up quickly. Instead, I usually just throw this into a small bag, backpack, or occasionally even my pocket.

Aside from its size and weight, there are a few other reasons why I don't like packing or carrying the Smooth 5S. The first concerns how the Smooth 5S folds and locks into place when not in use.

Unlike the Crane M2, which locks its axis parallel to the joystick, the Smooth 5S is horizontal. The joystick may be small, but it sticks out just enough to make it awkward to pack into tighter spaces. With smaller gimbals I've used, including the Crane M2, I've never had an issue packing them. However, with the joystick on one side and the control wheel on the other, the Smooth 5s frequently felt like it was poking against my back, and it was honestly quite painful.

One of the biggest limitations of the Smooth 5S is its smartphone charging. With larger phones like my iPhone 14, I must push it to the far right side against the tilt motor to balance it properly. Unfortunately, this means that I lose access to the charging port on my phone as it's now blocked, and as such, am unable to power my phone indefinitely for longer recording sessions.

One workaround I found was to purchase a right-angle charging cable, though, even with its more low-profile design, it sticks out enough to prevent me from achieving perfect balance. The Smooth 5S is still able to support this weight imbalance, but it's more prone to sliding around as the clamp is only holding from the side rather than the middle.

If you've used any of Zhiyun's recent gimbals, the controls with the Smooth 5S will feel very familiar. The rather simple user interface is just as easy to use, and the gimbal has the same 300g maximum payload and setup and pairing process, for better or worse.

On the front is a Mode button, which changes between Pan Follow, Lock, Follow, POV, and Vortex. You'll find a small display that lights up the active mode. It's not as impressive as the LCD screens seen on some of Zhiyun's more "pro" gimbals, but since the Smooth 5S doesn't support motor adjustments or other customization, the simplified interface is fine.

Similar to other smartphone gimbals, the Smooth 5S balances smartphones with a combination of their placement in the clamp, as well as moving the tilt axis arm, which has a screw to adjust the tightness and lock it in place once balanced.

Although adding or removing one of the magnetic lights requires rebalancing, it was quick to do as you only need to slide your phone up or down in the clamp vertically.

When packing up the Smooth 5S, the tilt and roll axis snap into place, while the pan has a physical lock button. Interestingly, the lock button only prevents the pan axis from rotating to the left. With minimal pressure, the gimbal can come loose and spin infinitely to the right. As I tend to throw the gimbal into my camera bag when I'm not using it, I usually find that one or more of its axis have come loose by the time I reach my destination.

The joystick is small but allows for precise movements with ease. The zoom/focus wheel on the left is surprisingly large but doesn't look too out of place. There is also a built-in record button in the middle. The wheel certainly gives the Smooth 5S a much more "pro" feel, though as someone who rarely uses it, I would have opted for a smaller design instead to save space. On its rear, a small trigger is found that can activate Follow mode or switch to Selfie mode.

Unfortunately, most of the physical buttons on the Smooth 5S require pairing to a compatible app to have any function. The Menu button is only used to open camera settings on your smartphone. The dial on the front rotates to adjust the brightness of your lights, but when paired, can be clicked as well to make adjustments to your ISO and other manual settings.

ZY Cami is Zhiyun's free app which is great for basic recording, though it lacks advanced features such as picture profiles and manual controls. StaCam has more pro features, but many are locked behind in-app purchases if you didn't get a membership card with your gimbal. The top-rated Filmic Pro app has a better user interface and easier-to-use features while being mostly compatible with the Smooth 5S' controls, though tracking and panorama modes will still require one of the Zhiyun apps to work.

The Smooth 5S has a USB-C connection for the rear trigger for charging the gimbal, as well a USB-C port on the arm of the gimbal to power your phone or connect to other smaller devices. As discussed previously, however, charging your phone is quite limited due to the design of the phone mount, especially with larger devices that will most likely lose access to their charging port.

I've had a love-hate relationship with smartphone filming, but it's sometimes necessary when packing light. My filming gear tends to be heavy as I use a Sony a7siii and a DJI RS2 gimbal for most of my videos. While a smartphone isn't as good as a DSLR, especially in low light, for "less professional" content, I'm willing to sacrifice quality for convenience.

In my time using the Smooth 5S over the past two months, it has been one of my favorite phone gimbals, but again, it does have a few tradeoffs. I used this for filming a few events, CES and Chinese New Year, and just your regular walking around. The Smooth 5S is more than capable of supporting my iPhone 14 Pro with its rubber case, allowing me to capture smooth footage. Performance feels on par with other gimbals at this price point, with very smooth and controlled pan and tilt movements, but still, the obvious bobbing up and down that is unavoidable unless you carefully "ninja walk".

Although the Smooth 5s has its awkward phone mount design and is very heavy and bulky, it has still been one of the better mobile gimbals I've used because of its fill lights. Anytime I've filmed indoors or in low light, the Smooth 5S dramatically improves the quality of my videos, and I'd argue in some ways makes it better compared to a similar shot on DSLR without any light.

This was especially true during my time at CES 2023, where most of the videos and interviews at company booths were filmed entirely using the Smooth 5S. While it's still larger than most competing mobile gimbals, the fact that it has built-in lights and is still easier to carry around than my DSLR setup made it an excellent choice for an event like this.

Overall, the Smooth 5S is a solid choice for getting more professional shots when using a phone, especially in low light. I understand why it's so big, but at the same time, it takes away from one of the advantages of mobile film-making... being mobile.

The built-in lights are a worthy trade-off, though its hard to look past all of the quirks. If Zhiyun could design a smaller gimbal, had better access to charging your phone, and still had built-in lights, it would easily be the best mobile gimbal on the market. One can only hope we see some (or all) of these upgrades in a future release.

Tech reviewer, YouTuber & video producer that specializes in pro camera & audio gear. Reach out to say hello or discuss future opportunities!