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If you’re on set, you have the choice of A) bringing a whole bunch of batteries or B) bring less bulk and –if possible– charge your batteries as you go. Weight vs. time, so to say. Time is a precious good on a packed shooting day and you can’t afford waiting for those batteries to charge up. That’s where the new Core SWX Fleet FF charger comes in. Four fully charged batteries for your MōVI Pro gimbal in just 45 minutes!
This compact 4-bay charger takes the pain out of charging up batteries for the MōVI Pro. Usually you’d use the provided single-bay chargers from Freefly to juice up the 25.2V Lithium Polymer (LiPo) batteries. Since the gimbal is powered by two batteries simultaneously, most of the MōVI Pro bundles come with two batteries and two single-bay chargers.
This newly developed charger takes four of the MōVI Pro batteries and charge all of them in about 45 minutes, which is pretty impressive since the original charger by Freefly takes around one hour to charge one single battery. The Core SWX Fleet device charges the batteries independently, so it makes sure to provide each and every battery with the correct amount of charge current. This is actually important since LiPo batteries tend to be pretty delicate devices demanding for careful treatment.
Having just one compact device for charging 4 batteries simultaneously seems to be much preferable than setting up a heap of cable clutter and multiple chargers. The Core SWX Fleet FF (as in Freefly) charger provides up to 2.5A charge current while accepting 90-240V AC 50/60Hz as an input voltage. The unit is 10.9″ x 4.9″ x 3.26″ (27,7 x 12,5 x 8,3 cm) in size and it weights 2.1 lbs (0,95 kg).
Freefly MōVI Pro battery and charger.
The Core SWX Fleet FF charger is obviously more expensive than the original Freefly charger. It’s even (way) more expensive than 4 of the Freefly chargers. But, and that might be important here: As we’ve discussed earlier, time is a precious good on the set, so being able to quickly recharge four batteries could potentially top the premium price. Especially if you’ve already paid serious money for the gimbal itself.
Of course all of this only applies if you’re using the MōVI Pro gimbal system on a regular basis. But if you do, you don’t want to wait for some extra batteries to charge up, do you?
Links: Core SWX Website
What do you think? Would you consider deploying such a device on set? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Olaf von Voss is a freelance cameraman who is in business for well over a decade. He is living in Berlin, Germany but has traveled the world as well while shooting mostly documentaries.