Please note that some of the links in my video descriptions are affiliate links where I earn from qualifying purchases. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Intro
If you take a ton of video on your smartphone and you’re looking to take that next step to enhance your video, the Insta3 Flow 2 Pro has you covered. On top of stabilizing your footage using three-axis stabilization, it also has native Apple Docket support for easy and reliable tracking, which is great for live streaming. There’s active zoom tracking using their Deep Track 4.0 tech. There’s 360° of unlimited pan tracking, a unique free tilt mode, a built-in extendable selfie stick, built-in power bank, a selfie mirror, responsive button, swipe, and smart wheel controls, the ability to use another device to remotely control the Flow 2 Pro as well.
An optional AI tracker lets you track with any Android phone, and there’s a bunch of other accessories to make you into a one-person filming crew. So, let’s take a closer look at just how well it performs. And a big thanks to Insta3 for sending this out for review.
Flow 2 Pro Box Contents
In the box, we have the Insta3 Flow2 Pro gimbal along with a phone clamp, USB type A to type-C charging cable, quick start guides, and documentation sticker and a soft pouch carrying case. In the
Mic Air Box Contents
box for the mic air, you get quite a bit of accessories. So, we have the transmitter and receiver units along with a windshield. We also have a bunch of magnetic mounting options. So, there’s a clip style, a button style, and a pendant style. There’s also a magnetic charging base, a hard shell carrying case, a manual and quick start guide. In the AI tracker box, you have
AI Tracker Box Contents
the AI tracker unit, and a manual. In
Magnetic Mount Box Contents
the magnetic mount box, we have the magnetic phone mount and a manual. The
Flow 2 Pro Design
Insta3 Flow 2 Pro gimbal comes in at around 371 g. This is how big it looks like compared to the iPhone 17 Pro Max. And you can see just how compact this is once it’s folded. You could just really slip this into your pants pocket. But looking at the front, so you can see I can actually press these buttons in any direction and it’s a tactile press. Notice that there’s three LEDs on this side here. So that means I have about 75% battery. There is also a ring here that you can go ahead and slide up and down. And this is what we’re going to use to adjust zoom levels. The joystick button is textured for easier grip on your finger, and you can move it up, down, left, right, or diagonally as well.
There’s a USBC port on the side, and this is what we’re going to use to charge up the 1,100 millia battery that’s in here. There’s also a USB type-C port labeled out, and that’s because we can actually use the built-in battery here as a power bank if we really need to. On the top, we have an NFC tap area, and we can tap our phone to go ahead and instantly launch the Insta 360 app. There’s also an LED status light as well. The magnetic clamp has this kind of soft feel material here just to prevent your phone or phone case from getting damaged. There’s also an LED ring light indicator to let you know when you’re actively tracking subjects or not. There’s also a built-in selfie stick, which is really cool. So, I’ll just grab this top part here, and I can go ahead extend it all the way out.
So, I’m getting about 8.3 in of additional range. Now, what I’ll do is I’ll just go ahead and angulate this up just like so. So, now I can just go ahead turn it back on right here. And now, I have it perfectly ready for a selfie stick mode. Note that there’s actually a built-in selfie mirror right here. So, if you’re using the rear cameras for highdefinition video or photos, you can go ahead and frame yourself right in that selfie mirror, which is really handy. There’s also an LED indicator light that you could see through this type of smoke clear plastic. There’s also a textured button, and this is what we’re going to use to activate tracking and disable tracking. There’s also a built-in tripod on the base. So, notice there’s this small indentation. and just put your fingernail there.
Pull it all the way down. And do that for the other
Mic Air Design
two sides as well, just like so. And then we can just go ahead flare these legs out just like so. The tripod’s also very stable. So, even with me banging on the desk, it’s barely moving or budging. Since the design gives us three axis of angulation, we have a ton of options for pan and tilt ranges, which I’ll demo later. There’s also a thread mount at the very bottom of the body that you could use to screw it into a tripod for even more height or stability. If you’ll
AI Tracker Design
be using the optional AI tracker unit for active tracking, you’re just going to plug it into this USB type-C port that shows out right here. And notice that it has some retention areas here which are going to interface with the retention clips on here. So, I’ll just go ahead press it until I hear some clicks. Just like so. and it’s now securely in there ready for tracking. The AI tracker also has a built-in LED light for low light situations and you could change the brightness of this along with the color temperature. The mic air transmitter and receiver are extremely lightweight. So, the receiver is about 5.2 g and the transmitter is around 7.6 g. The transmitter unit is extremely compact and small. So, on the front we have an LED indicator status light.
On the side there’s a pressable power button. You can turn it on, off, you can mute, put it into noise reduction mode, or you can change the connection mode type. On the top, we have a large speaker grill. This is an omniirectional mic. And we also have a windshield or wind guard that we can use to just seat everything in. And once it’s in there, this is really not going anywhere. It’s nice and secure, and you still have access to the power button. The magnetic hold is extremely strong, whether you use the magnetic button, the clip, or the pendant. And even from a distance, you can see just how easily it just grabbed that for a stronghold. The receiver unit has a USB type-C connector and it can be used to plug into your phone, laptop, or tablet.
There’s LED indicator status lights along with lights at the bottom to show the current gain input level. So, right now it’s on the second level with two LEDs, but you can use the button on the side, this multi-function button to switch between the first, second, or third gain levels. The hard shell case is a zippered case that has room to carry the transmitter, receiver, and all of the accessories.
Magnetic Phone Mount Design
The magnetic phone mount comes in at around 34 gram. So, it’s made of metal. It’s not plastic. Feels very well constructed. Now, if we take a look at the back, it has this soft feel or soft touch type of material. So, it’s not going to damage the back of your phone or your phone case. You just go ahead line it up till it snaps into place and then just line it up with the actual gimbal just like so. And you’re good to go. Now, what I can do is just pull down on this area here, and then I can either use the phone vertically or horizontally because this actually rotates. Here’s a
Specs
quick look at the specs. Feel free to pause and review or jump ahead to the
First Time Setup
next section. Setting up the Flow 2 Pro is extremely simple. So, first off, you can use this both with an iPhone or an Android phone. So, to get everything set up, you’ll have to download the Insta 360 app. Go ahead, turn the gimbal on by pressing the bottom M button. Just press and hold that. And then in the Insta3 app, you’re going to tap the camera icon that’s at the middle bottom. It’s going to automatically find the gimbal. Then you can connect it, download any type of updates or firmware updates, and you’re good to go. You can also tap the NFC area on the gimbal to get a quick connection. But I highly recommend going into the Insta3 app and turning on the automatic pop-up connection.
That way, as soon as you turn the gimbal on, it’s automatically going to send an app alert on your phone. You just tap that app alert and you’re in the app and ready to
Using The Flow 2 Pro
start shooting. To attach your phone to the Flow 2 Pro, you’re going to use the supplied clamp. So, you’re just going to attach it midway on your phone. And there is a camera icon on here. Just make sure that that’s pointing up towards your camera lens. Once that’s done, you’re just going to snap it magnetically into place on the mounting arm. And that magnetic hold is so strong, you never have to worry about your phone falling out. You could see I’m really shaking it, tilting it, flicking it in basically every type of direction. And it is not going anywhere. It’s a rock solid hold. Once you attach your phone to the Flow 2 Pro, you’re just going to take this arm here, lift it right up, and it’s automatically going to power on the gimbal and balance everything.
To power the gimbal off and to remove your phone, you’ll press the M button at the bottom here for a couple seconds. That’s going to turn the gimbal off. Then just do the reverse of what you did. So, just angulate the arm right back. Now, there is a plastic portion here. You want to make sure it lines up with this notch right here, and then simply detach your phone, slide this into your pocket, and you’re good to go.
Insta360 App Settings
Let’s take a look at the Insta 360 app settings. So, I’ll press and hold the bottom button to turn it on. You can see it says gimbal detected. Tap to start shooting. And we’re all ready. And it’s that simple with the system. On the left corner, we have the home icon. And notice that right now it’s showing 4K at 30 frames per second. So, I could tap into that and do up to 4K at 60. If you need higher than that, you need to use Apple’s native camera app. It’ll give you up to 120. Now, note that if I tap on photo right here, it’s going to switch the resolution to now an aspect ratio. So, you do have different options when you’re in photo mode versus video mode. For example, there’s now face effects and things like that. But I’ll put it back to video mode.
And you can also tap into auto to dial in manual settings if you need to. If we tap on the gimbal icon, there’s a button guide. You could tap into that and just, you know, kind of get acquainted with what all of the buttons do. And if we jump back into that, there’s a power on orientation. It can be auto. You could set it to horizontal or portrait. You could do an autoc calibration, horizontal adjust. The flow mode can be on auto or you could do follow, pan, follow, FPV. The zoom wheel can be set to do a focus or manual focus. And you could set the speed of that to slow, medium, linear, fast. Joystick speed can be set to fast, medium, slow. And you can also reverse the joystick controls. There’s front cam autotracking, always on tracking, horse tracking.
You could also change the pan shot speed. You have medium, slow, fast, and then the pan shot direction can be clockwise, counterclockwise. Same with the barrel roll speed. You could switch that from slow, medium, fast, and you could say uh change a direction for that as well. You can also change the motor strength um low, medium, high, and then have a sound and vibration. The tracking light is also really handy to have. So, you could see if I turn that on, it’s on the lowest setting, medium, and high right there. and enabling Apple Docket if you’re using your iPhone is a must with this system. On the bottom left corner, we could turn on a grid histogram, selfie flip, GPS. There’s the button guide, a tutorial, file management options.
You could turn on Dolby Vision or Apple ProRes if you need that. And then you could also turn on this intelligent scene recognition. There’s voice controls for the Shot Genie. And then having the automatic uh pop-up connection, this is what allows me to just tap on that really quickly and effortlessly. Highly recommend having that on. You can also have the screen turn off during recording after um from 30 seconds to 180 seconds. Now, if you tap on this icon here, you can go ahead and turn on the video light if you need to. You can also go ahead and turn on the filters. And then this icon here is for gesture control. You can do a P sign to take a photo or start a recording or to stop it. You could do single person tracking and shooting or multi-person tracking and shooting.
And you could tap into that to enable or disable additional options. There is also a teleprompter. So, you can see you can actually tap to increase or decrease the text size. And you can actually, you know, kind of position this around wherever you need to. And you can actually use the um swipe gestures right down here to actually cycle through the text on here while you’re reading. And really cool is this option here. So, if you tap this icon, it’s going to actually generate a QR code. You scan that with your phone or another device. And you can actually remotely control the Flow 2 Pro. On the right side, we have the various shooting modes. So there’s pano, photo, photo, video, dual view mode, timelapse, time shift, slow motion.
We also have a dolly zoom, widescreen mode, live view mode, and a hoop mode. You could actually use the swipe controls through the various options effortlessly as well. Now on the very top right, this is where you could see the battery life. There’s a little icon here that’s maybe a bit hard to see, but if you tap into that, that’s going to take you to the media
Button Controls
libraries. Controlling the Flow 2 Pro is extremely simple. So, there’s an M button at the bottom, a switch button on the right side, C button on the top, and a record button on the left. Now, a single press of the M button is going to switch it from the auto mode, which is in right there to follow mode. You can see the LED switches to show follow. Then there’s pan follow with the LED switching there. And then we have FPV mode going to give you, you know, kind of the most creative control. And if you tap it again, it’s going to put it back into auto mode. Now, if we double tap on the M button, it’s going to go back to the previous mode, which was FPV mode. And then, if you do a triple press, that’s going to put it into sleep mode.
And to take it out of sleep mode, you’re just going to single press on the record button, just like so. Now, to turn everything off, you’re going to long press on the M button. That’s going to turn the gimbal off. And then, if you go ahead and long press, that’s going to turn it right back on. Single pressing the switch button is going to switch from the front selfie camera back to the rear lenses. A double press is going to switch it from either horizontal or portrait or vertical mode. And then a triple press is going to switch it from video mode to photo mode or back from photo mode into video mode. And a long press is going to take you into video playback. So you could review video.
And when you’re in here, you can actually use the smart wheel to actually zoom in and you can actually go ahead and cycle through the videos that you’re taking. If you’re in the photo mode, pressing once on the record button will take one photo and pressing and holding is going to do burst photos. like you can see right there. Now, let’s jump back into video mode right now. And then single pressing is just going to start video recording or stop it. Single pressing the C button will do a 360° pan capture. And of course, you could set the phone either horizontally or vertically before you start that. Double pressing the C button is going to put it into the 360 panoramic photo mode. Now, you can set this for just an ultra capture, or you can set it for an ultra HD capture.
Once the 360° pan is completed, you can go ahead and navigate around, download that file, animate the file, and upload it wherever you like. Long pressing on the C button is going to start the barrel roll feature. And you can set this in the app to go clockwise, counterclockwise. You could also change the speed as well. Single pressing the rear trigger at the back is going to start and stop tracking. You could see that with the green LED. Now, if I, for example, draw a selection around an object, you can see the gimbal’s automatically going to position itself to track that subject. Now, you can also cancel tracking. And if you want to reenter everything, you can just double press very quickly, and it’s going to reenter your phone on the gimbal.
Now, a triple press is actually going to flip the phone. So, you’ll have access to the high resolution lens if you want to take your vlog style videos, and you could use the selfie mirror to frame yourself. Long pressing on the rear trigger is going to activate lock mode. And if you want to enter the active plus mode, you could just press, let go, press and hold again, and that’s going to activate active plus like you can see right there. We can also use the smart wheel to zoom in. So you can see I can do a gradual zoom, and you’re going to see it’s going to jump up to the next focal length. Or I could just do a quick flick just like so to cycle through the various zoom ranges.
Note that when you’re in FPV mode, the smart wheel actually switches from zooming in to actually rotating, like if you’re going to do a barrel roll shot. Note that when you’re using the joystick, you have fine control. So, if I just gently push on it, it’s going to slowly pin. But if I just crank on it, it’s just going to go
Shooting Modes
way quicker. Now, let’s talk about the shooting modes. So, for the most part, I just use the Insta3 app because once I turn the gimbal on, I just get the app alert from Insta 360. Tap on that and I’m in the app. The default auto mode is going to let the gimbal focus on stabilizing footage and just kind of following wherever you’re pointing the gimbal to. There’s also a general follow mode and there is a pan follow mode where it’s just going to be locked to a pan type of follow. And of course, you have the FPV mode that’s going to unlock all three of the axis. So, it’s just going to be a bit more fluid, better for, you know, more creative shots if you want, you know, full control. One of my favorite modes is the dolly zoom mode.
So, in the app, it’s going to ask you to select a subject and then tell you to back away very slowly. Just do that, stop the recording, and it’s automatically going to finalize that video file for a really cool effect. There’s also a widescreen mode for a more cinematic type of look, and that’s going to give you a video dimension of 3840×634. So, it’s just vertically cropping the video. There’s also a unique free tilt mode. Now, to enable this, you’re going to have to extend the selfie stick partially or fully. Then, you just rotate the handle to the on position, tilt the phone or flip the phone upwards, and then you have access to the free tilt mode. I also love the barrel roll feature, and you could start that by just long pressing C or tapping it in the Insta3 app.
And you could push in or pull out while it’s doing that. You could also change the speed of it, and whether it’s doing it clockwise or counterclockwise. The pro framing grid is also really neat. So, you can just tap on any of the grid icons and the gimbal is automatically going to position so the subject is there. You can also extend the selfie stick and hold it close to the ground for some really low perspective shots, which are pretty neat. You can also take very smooth 360° panoramic video, whether it’s vertical or horizontal. And you can actually extend the selfie stick as well to get a higher perspective if you didn’t want just the lower to the ground type of pen. And what’s really unique is that this has a 360° infinite pan.
So you can just walk circles around this and it will continually track you without hitting a hard stop. The 360° panel photo is a really cool feature. You could do a full 360° look. You can animate it. You can download it or upload it to your favorite site. The time shift feature is really cool. You could think of that kind of as a moving time-lapse. And there is also a normal time-lapse which is really easy to do thanks to the built-in tripod. There’s a handy dual view mode and you can actually pick which video source is largest on the screen and which is pictureand picture.
Deep Track 4.0 Tracking
One of my favorite features is using their deep track 4.0 technology through the Insta3 app. So you can just press the rear trigger on the gimbal and it’s automatically going to select a subject or you can draw a subject around a box. There’s also an option for active zoom tracking. So as a subject gets closer or further away, it’s going to automatically adjust the zoom level. And the stickiness on here is really good. So, if a subject goes behind a tree, a wall, or a bush like I am in this video here, as soon as you reemerge, it’s automatically going to regain tracking or stickiness and keep falling. It’s very impressive. And all of that tracking is native within the Insta3 app.
However, if you’re using an iPhone with dockit support, there is added functionality because you will get that tracking in other third-party apps outside of the Insta3 app. If you’re using an Android phone like my S25 Ultra, you can still get tracking in third party apps by using the optional
Insta360 Mic Air
AI tracker add-on. This is using the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s microphone, but next I’m going to install the Insta3 mic. Here’s an example of what microphone audio pickup sounds like. So, I’m using the Insta3 mic air with the wind muff since it’s a kind of windy day, about 11 to 14 km winds. And here’s what the microphone audio pickup sounds like. And
Selfie Mirror
I really love and appreciate that they’ve added the convex mirror to the back here. So if I’m using the rear camera lens for just higher quality video. I can frame and compose myself here just looking at that mirror without running like a second, you know, external monitor or using another phone to just kind of monitor what’s on the screen. Such a neat design choice. The
Selfie Stick
built-in extendable selfie stick is also a really great feature. So you’re getting about an additional 8.3 in of reach. It’s also very well tensioned or friction. So, if I hold this vertically like this and I shake it, it’s not shifting, budging at all. It’s nice and secure, and it does take a little bit of effort or doing to actually press it down. So, once you extend it, it’s not
Built-in Tripod
going anywhere. I also love the built-in tripod. And this is something I found myself using way more than I thought I would. The other thing is you can just place this on a table, do like a talking style video. If you’re a food reviewer, you could put this on a table as well. You know, film what you’re eating. It follows you, of course, and you can also extend the selfie stick to just get a different perspective. You can extend the selfie stick angle this down. It’s just a wonderful system having the
Battery
tripod built in on here. In terms of battery life, the Flow 2 Pro is rated for up to 10 hours of battery life and that’s thanks to the 1,100 mAh battery in here. Now, one of the days I use this very heavily, you know, for a little over 4 hours and I still had 50% battery life remaining. So, I’d easily get, you know, 8 hours of battery life and that’s with very heavy use. Whenever you need to charge it up, going from 0 to 80% is going to take about 55 minutes. And if you want to fully charge it, it’s going to be about 2 hours. You can also use the Flow 2 Pro as a power bank in a pinch. So you can actually charge up
Remote Control
your phone if the battery is going down. Using a second phone to control the Flow 2 Pro is such a hassle-free experience. You simply scan the QR code. Then you could use the joystick controls to properly frame and compose yourself. You could see exactly what you look like on camera, and you can also start and stop
Recommended?
recordings. So hands down, I think the Insta 360 Flow 2 Pro is one of the best mobile gimbals out there right now. You have that ultra strong magnetic hold for your phone and effortless connection to the Insta 360 app every single time and the deep track 4.0 feature in the Insta3 app along with the active zoom tracking means you’ll always be in frame. It’s also great having an extendable selfie stick. The built-in tripod for super stable shots. The controls are also super responsive and the ability to use a second phone or device to control it means you can truly be a oneperson filming group. So, if you want to get your very own Insta3 Flow 2 Pro, I’ll leave a link down below.
And if you use that link, you’ll actually be able to get a free magnetic phone mount like I showed earlier, which doubles as a kickstand. If you like this video, maybe consider checking out this video next. And maybe also consider liking and subscribing. Outside of mobile accessories, I also review monitors, keyboards, mice, headphones, earbuds. Really something for everyone. And I really hope you’ll join me in my next video
Please note that some of the links in my video descriptions are affiliate links where I earn from qualifying purchases. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
