Monitor Reviews

Tried this out with my Sony a7rIV. Followed the instructions and was able to connect. The program worked well for approximately 12 seconds, then list the connection. Tried repeatedly to use this , but it would either fail to connect or lose the connection in a few seconds. Way too much work and frustration to use while you’re trying to focus on photography or shooting a movie. Just removed from my phone.

I love the functionality of Monitor. It really allows you to shoot yourself solo. However, it’s completely useless most of the time as it disconnects from the camera within 1-2 seconds of start up. It happens in remote outdoor environments with no other Wi-Fi signals, so it’s not a noisy environment- it’s Monitor . Please fix this! It’s an amazing app otherwise, but it’s so buggy I can’t use it.

*FX3 user*
Monitor is so close to being a crucial tool for all filmmakers, and giving this app companies a run for their money since we ALL have monitors (smartphones) in our pockets. Unfortunately, it is unreliable when trying to connect wirelessly. Especially when powering camera down, phone screen turning off, etc. if you need to quick re-connect for a fleeting moment, forget about it. You’re going to get frustrated and end up using the tiny flip on screen on camera. It’s also kind of laggy.

When plugged in wirelessly, great functionality.
Love all the monitoring tools it comes with. An extra star for the UI design.

Also, I wish it remembered your camera. I was shooting in public and it kept trying to auto connect to some other random person’s A74 nearby. Monitor should let you favorite your camera, or give priority. Auto connect didn’t help one bit.

Point is, these guys are missing a massive opportunity and sooner or later someone is going to come out with the end all external smartphone camera this app app. Gonna try Sony’s that they just dropped. Hope it plays nicer and has a smoother end to end user experience than this.

I hesitated to buy Monitor since, in my experience, most apps that connect to video and audio equipment tend to be flaky. Monitor is no different. When it can connect to my a7sIII it’s great. Then for no apparent reason the connection drops and Monitor cannot reconnect to the camera. Definitely not something I would use on a professional shoot.

Love Monitor , however it is very unstable. After buying and trying multiple USB to iPhone adapters and multiple Micro cables, I finally was able to get a stable connection and it seemed to work well. Happily paid for the full version after seeing the free finally worked, but unfortunately after updating to the full version, the freezes and “unable to connect” issues have returned. Now I can’t revert to the free version which did work. Another $20 in the trash.

This would be an instant buy for me if this worked when wired with a usb cable. Wireless connectivity is far too unreliable (it’s probably not Monitor ’s fault).

FYI, Apple and third party sell usb to lightning adaptors. I use these to transfer photos directly to my iPhone. It’s unclear though if a video feed can travel through that.

I have the paid version…. You can’t view camera audio levels. (We should be able to see this) camera connections don’t work with VPN active. VPN has to be disabled first. S-cinetone profile isn’t added in when trying to select different picture profiles. Touch focus functions are abysmal and just plain terrible and needs work it’s very u responsive or just doesn’t work.

I really do love Monitor and the concept of being an amazing, feature rich this app is solid. I loved using it. Until… random lost signal reboots, and… terrible stuttering while recording. It was almost unbearable. IDK what it is. A7SIII with an iPhone 12 Pro MAX. So the hardware isn’t outdated or anything. Monitor just needs more stability.

Monitor is awesome and is well worth the money you spend on it. Like, totally worth the buy. The only issue I have is with the slight delay between Monitor and the phone when recording, and I am shooting with a7iv and have Monitor set to low quality playback, to minimize lag. I even have camera set to 5gHz Wi-Fi. Even then there is about 20ms of lag between the two devices, and the frames sometimes tend to drop on Monitor , which makes me refer to the camera screen again.

Other than this, Monitor is awesome. The fact we can load LUTs is amazing. I would love for there to be a future update where I could connect my phone via cable direct to the camera for instant lag-free playback and viewing. I’m sure it can be done!

Up front Monitor provides great functionality. The ease of changing frame rates and having 180 shutter angle is chefs kiss. The only reason it’s not 5 stars, and maybe it should be, is that I still see room for improvement in some ui elements. Idk if it’s possible but if Monitor can also display audio levels it would be near perfect.

this app+ has brought tons of functionality to my smartphone at times when i dont want to carry around a full blown this app on top of the hdmi cable, battery, etc, and it still offers just as much amount of value. maybe i just need a quick look at the scene on a slightly bigger screen, maybe i want to desqueeze my anamorphic lenses on a solo personal project, maybe im traveling and packing a this app just isnt an option. Monitor does everything i need it to for my purposes EXCEPT one thing. i use the sony A7C II and like other newer models i can switch between photo, video, and slow motion video. when my camera is set to photo mode and i use the focus magnifier to check focus on my manual lenses the this app also zooms in which is perfect; HOWEVER, in video mode the this app+ app does NOT zoom with the focus mangifier, its a small gripe i have but a big one, it just slows down the process of me checking my focus while shooting video, if theres a workaround to this or this becomes fixed, i'd recommend the pro version of Monitor to every videographer i know. TL;DR: focus magnifier action does not work on this app+ app when newer camera model is toggled to video mode

Works great for the most part, but the latest update has a bug where the tap function doesn’t save. I now have to go into the menu and select touch tracking every time I restart my camera. If this can be fixed it would be 5 stars again.

Hi,

I just purchased Monitor and I gotta say WOW! A lot of time and effort went into Monitor, especially with reverse engineering the communication protocols! Nice job!

I have a question though for the developer: it has a setting in preferences to save to the camera roll in your phone. I have it set but it does not work (I have no photo saved to my iPhone). I am testing with an A7Siii. I haven’t tried with my A7RM4 or A9M2. Is there something I’m missing, any prerequisites or tricks? I’d give it a five star if I could get everything working.

Really is a fine piece of software! Coming from IT and dev, this certainly isn’t an easy task. I wish you much success! Monitor is really needed, please continue! Thanks for your time!

Hi this app+ team,

Please can you assist with a technical issue I'm having with your app.

I managed to get Monitor running(which is excellent btw) however if I also want to use it with my Ronin S. The settings seems that one can’t use both at the same time unless I'm missing something? So in order to use the Ronin S, the camera settings needs to be on “pc remote on”, where as for this app+ it needs to be off in order to activate “smartphone connection on”. Unfortunately both can’t be on at the same time.
Please can you let me know what the solution is as I really want to buy the full version to work with my Sony a1 on my DJI Ronin S gimbal.

Thank you kindly :)

I was using this app+ with my iPhone 14 Pro & Apple’s camera adapter & it worked great. While you can connect wirelessly, that adds a latency that is just too long for me. Now I have an iPhone 15 Pro & so have been connecting with USB-C to USB-C cables. Oddly, the ones Apple gives you don’t work, but I’ve tried 2 different USB 3.2 cables & they work fine. Now that it’s tested, I’m looking forward to using this in the field w/my Sony FX30 & DJI 3 gimbal. Recommended.

Works as advertised for the most part. For some reason, however, I've found that it works much better with the A7s Ill than the A7c. With the A7c there are no problems until you press record; then the lag you've seen others mention becomes notable. The A7s III works with near perfection.

Recommended uses: I’d recommend Monitor in “run and gun” documentary situations where you want to be free of wires and playback is less of a priority. Really incredible for gimbal work. I’d use a traditional this app in almost all other circumstances.

What happened?! Monitor was working just fine earlier today and now that I updated it just now it no longer what’s to connect! It was working on my iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone 12 mini with my Sony a7IV, but now it’s not with this update! Please fix this I just paid for the full version of Monitor a few days ago and now I can’t use it? I gave it a 4 star because it’s a really good app, I assume this is a simple mistake and can be fixed with another update. Please do I really enjoy Monitor and I use it a lot!

We needed the ability to start and stop movie recording. Monitor does it well. Easy connection. And we still want the hdmi to go out while recording, something image edge doesn’t support, but Monitor does. Not sure why we would need to update to pro. If Monitor would let us connect to an Elgato stream deck in some way then pro would make sense. Also leaving and app and returning works just fine. Just need to wait a few seconds for Monitor to restore connection. Doesn’t affect record stop or start. Well done.

Monitor is incredible. I’m already using the full paid version regularly. Great work to the developer. Got one big/issue. Another reviewer of Monitor also mentioned a feature not mirroring in video mode that does mirror in photo mode: Focus Magnifier. If the developer can get focus magnifier working in video mode, that would be so appreciated. Right now while filming on my Sony a6700, I need to look down at the tiny camera screen for checking focus with Focus Magnifier. I’d much prefer to be seeing that magnified focus mirrored in Monitor on my larger phone screen. Again, everything else feels so great. Monitor runs smooth everywhere else and I’m grateful for its existence.

I’ve known about this program for a while, but waited a long time before I finally bought it. This program is amazing.

The feed is fluid, some of the features while not 100% accurate, are good enough to trust, specially once you’ve done testing with your camera and understand how this program translates them. The false color feature alone is worth more than the asking price for me. Again, not 100% accurate, but comparing against a real this app you see how this this app interprets the feed, and then you’re good.

For gimbal use, this is freaking sweet. No wires, and just the weight of your phone.

It works, set ur camera to 5ghz and no issues, however I have a suggestion. Have Monitor , auto change shutter option to 180 angle. So whenever I change the frame rate it auto changes the shutter to appropriate 180 shutter angle speed, if it’s turned on.

It literally replace my field this app for my Sony system, it can even do “Pull Focus” with Monitor on my Sony A7Siii, usually such function need another couple hundred dollar for image transmitter and receiver. Cannot believe Monitor can do it all. But I wish they can have update for some of the bugs which causing the crash. It’s more then “good enough” for non professional user like me.

I have no idea what others are possibly doing wrong to leave such reviews. This is amazing and I’ve rigged out many iPads in our studio and our friends studios with Monitor for Sony a7SIII and a7IV’s. It’s incredible, just get it already.

-PanhandleStudios

I just bought a $300 this app and I absolutely love it, but I saw Monitor because I wanted an additional screen for a film. I’m shooting and I am super jealous that all these features can’t be integrated into my normal this app. The downside is that you can only use this with Wi-Fi. But the amount of options it has with the pro version and the ability to control the camera from the phone is unmatched.

I don’t come to Monitor Store to leave reviews but if I leave one, it’s a big big deal. Monitor is actually great. I don’t think I’ve ever even written a review before lol. At the time of writing this, I only tried to wired connection, but I wouldn’t even go for Wi-Fi since my Wi-Fi isn’t as strong and even if it was strong, I probably will still stick with wired to avoid any issues, Monitor is more than its price. I’m amazed not higher to be honest.

I no longer use a this app for my A7SIII on my gimbal rig. Monitor gives me all the this app controls I need, plus touch to track autofocus! I can use my custom LUTS and can control almost all of my camera functions. The only camera control notably absent is image stabilization. I hate having to use my phone as a this app, but now that I have done it I can see what the next generation of monitors needs to do. My only wish is that I could connect multiple devices running this app+ to the same camera at the same time. Hopefully the FX6 can also become supported too?