Here's my take on the Lanparte.. Having used a Glide cam (a lighter version of Steadicam) for a few years, and very recently a Varavon Birdycam 2 gimbal for my GH4, I didn't think that I would need a motorised gimbal for my go pro. After all when it's flying on a quadcopter it hangs from the quad's 3-axis gimbal and gets stable shots in strong wind, and when I use it in the surf it sits on the floating board or slowly swings under the water. And I've pretty much given up on getting stable running/orienteering shots unless it's in terrain that's close to a road. (Try lugging a glide cam and two Panasonic GH's with lenses, on a 10 hour epic run across the Tararua mountains when rain sets in and they become deadweight and you'll get the picture. Or not get any pictures.). I've also experimented with the GoPro at speed on the trail and it's not at all stable. But it is waterproof so you can get great shots of water drops and mist.

Until now. WOW. It took all of ten minutes chasing my sons around the soccer pitch to convince me that you can get steady footage at high speed. Hold this super lightweight setup as you would a steadicam and it will be good enough for a music video and cinematic chase footage. Especially with the GoPro 4 shooting 4k at 30fps (soon to be 48fps) where you'll have room for stabilisation if you crop in.

Take a look at the 1 minute snippet from the 10 minutes of running around - there is a tiny bit of micro movement in the longer chase section and the horizon is not quite level. It's shot at 2.7k at 30fps and rendered at 24fps HD 1080 with fisheye removal and slight colour correction.

Stepping back from all the excitement of getting this gimbal up and running won't take long. It took a few minutes to add the GoPro mount onto the gimbal and screw the GoPro in; then there was a small balancing weight which seemed to get it roughly balanced. It wasn't as finely balanced as the Birdycam gimbal which holds up to 1 kg, but with 80odd grams of GoPo weight it seems as though a rough balance is good enough.

Once started, there are no refinements or operational modes to choose between - just turn it on, wait a few seconds for the level-up and start running, dollying, trucking etc etc. The default mode is a slow follow so that as you pan or tilt it slowly follows your movement (see video at 17 seconds) making it super easy to pan steadily around your subject. It's so light that if your arm gets at all tired you just swap to the other for a while. Most of all it's fun to use, and brings a new dimension of pleasure to shooting those tricky moves. It remains to be seen whether it will still be fun after 5 hours of running over mountain ridges but I'm guessing it will still be.

Improvements? Obviously waterproofing and a mount for the go pro in it's casing would be fantastic. But seeing as the huge quadcopter market hasn't got a waterproof gimbal yet (everything else is though, from quad to cameras) it may take a while. And adding more weight might detract from the great performance. I'm expecting that irregular terrain may not provide footage as smooth as on the soccer pitch but we'll see in the next review!

Overall a great bit of kit for around $350 USD. Did I mention the word WOW yet?

Interesting idea - unfortunately I don't have a GM1. But have just shot a quick 10 minutes of my sons kicking the football around on a GoPro 3+ - which will be the basics for a full review - and in short this gimbal works brilliantly with the GoPro running at high speed on flat ground. It didn't seem perfectly balanced before turning it on but it is super smooth once on - not sure whether a heavier load would stress the motors more...go pro 3 is only 74grams, the 4 is 88g.

12:20 am. I just received this through PV deals, fired it up for a quick test and it's great! Looking forward to sunrise and a full speed test and posting a full review.

Present at our deals - Check Lanparte gimbal additional details and price..

I do not know what youtube did to the video linked in my first post. On my computer it is very smoooth, also while panning.

ok, the video is 60 fps. Firefox does not support that. If you youse Chrome, it should be better or download the file and pöay it directly, not through the browser.

Tom Antos gave this a glowing testimonial