I was curious about how many of us Movi early adopters would still have bought the Movi knowing it would lose 2/3's it's value after only 12 months? How many had already recovered their investment cost before the wave of cheaper options arrived? I don't want to reopen old wounds but I was just wondering.
I don´t think that it is important if we got our investment back or not. The only thing that matters is making us beleive they have proprietary technology and that is not true. The cheaper options are in fact amazing and as good as. I know because I have most of them. I usually set Movi and Ronin apart from the rest but there is nothing Freefly could say to justify the price difference between Movi and Ronin. If people want to buy Movi go ahead and do it. To me the only pro (and a big one) is weight nothing else. In terms of reliability both are reliable but I always tend to use Ronin as I keep the Movi for the multirotors. It is built like a tank. If we analize realistically the Movi 10 should cost 3k. But strategies are strategies and that´s it. I worked very hard to get my money back but there is no use as ALL the money I charged for the Movi work was to pay the investment. Anyway now there are people that charge half my price to work with the Movi (they paid cheaper because they waited for us to prove how useful the Movi is and for the price drop). I doubt anyway that anyone can guess which is which on the final results from Movi with any other rig as they are identical. I am not talking about ease of use but just final results at 1/10th of the Movi original price. I paid almost 1k just for the carrying case!!!
I purchased the Movi last December with the confidence that I'd get a return on my investment within 2 years. The return occurred just 8 months later. It's definetly not a purchase for everyone. I was recommended by colleagues to purchase other similar gear for $10,000 less, but I took the plunge and purchased it anyway. I'm glad that I did!
If you did your research at the time of purchasing a Movi when they first came out it was very clear that a lot of others were also trying to produce a similar product. I agonised for months having placed my deposit on whether I should go with the Movi or go for one of the cheaper products due about the same time as the Movi. Based on this knowledge I still purchased a Movi but fully expecting a competitive product to come out before too long and probably at a much cheaper price but I went ahead knowing that being first would help build my companies reputation. I also feel that when a company produces a brand new concept they are often the market leaders for some time as others struggle to catch up thus there was a good chance that it would be some time before the Movi was equaled or bettered. All of this thought process seems to have been validated. Yes it smarts when you see such a price drop but that should not have been totally unexpected and I have yet to see a handheld gimbal that can also be used in the air that comes even close to the Movi.