Edelkrone Steady Module Review

The Steady Module from Edelkrone is a tool supposed to help the SliderPlus get some smoother movements thanks to a fluid drag system not too dissimilar to the system present in a fluid head.

We’ll see in this review if this module is something you should consider adding to your arsenal as a SliderPlus owner.

Edelkrone and the SliderPlus

Edelkrone is basically one of the first companies to introduce Sliders to the market after the 5D Mark II democratization of cinematic video.

Their Slider, the SliderPlus, was an innovative product that, thanks to its design, travels twice its size, making it very compact and practical.

The system was great, but the smoothness of the slide wasn’t as great as the slider using a flywheel. The iFootage Shark S1, for example, yielded better results and was lighter overall.

What the Edelkrone SliderPlus had was a smaller footprint, which is incredibly advantageous on a tripod. With the release of this Steady Module, the brand definitely had a chance to come back to the top.

What’s in the box?

The Steady Module is a relatively simple solution; add a fluid drag to the slider. The box comes with a unit made of aluminum that has a knob to adjust the resistance of the drag. This box is fixed to the slider using two special screws that can be mounted by hand without tools.

The other thing in the package is a belt replacement, which instead of being made out of fabric is made out of rubber with dents to stick into the wheel gear.

How does it perform?

On paper, this tool should be quite effective, but in reality, it’s a mixed bag. On one hand, the resistance added to the slider is definitely smoothing out the movements.

On the other hand, the consistency of the drag resistance seems to be off within the whole slider movement. This means that the speed is quite different if you are near the center of the slider or at the extremity.

I don’t know if my unit is the one having issues, but at the time when I ordered it, quality control should have been passed, and it was a nightmare to send it back to Edelkrone.

One other issue is that the drag resistance is quite hard to set up with the knob. The friction appears quite soon, and it doesn’t take a lot of tightening to get the belt to jump out of the gears.

Verdict

7.8 out of 10.

If this is a revolutionary product and a great idea on paper, in reality, it’s much more of a mixed bag because of the execution of the product.

I don’t know if my unit is defective since it was one of the very first batches, but for me, it doesn’t matter since the product should have passed quality control, and sending it back to Edelkrone was not an economically sound decision.

The product doesn’t fully perform as advertised and has some irregularities in the resistance within a slide motion.

This defect makes the product only usable on a small portion of the slider. It’s really up to you to decide if this is a good solution for you or not.

Perhaps you’ll have better luck than me with a fully working version. If not, you can still make it work in some situations, but not as reliably as it should.