For about the entirety of the pandemic, I’ve been eyeing a product that has been aggressively marketed to me on Instagram: Pivo.
The Pivo Pod is touted to be “like a cameraman, just way better,” thanks to its motion-tracking abilities. Just pop your smartphone in, pair the two, and get moving. Theoretically.
The Pivo Pod comes in two versions: red and silver. The latter is capable of tracking you at double the speed of the former, so that’s the one I bought.
During use, you can set Pivo to track you using either its AI or parameters you manually set (i.e., you draw a box around the object you want it to focus on).
I figured I’d give them both a try and see which worked better for some light skateboarding in my driveway.
The situation didn’t improve when I tried toggling the feature that allows Pivo to predict where you’ll land next. When it was on, it often just spun in a circle, and when it was off, it would lose me and make no effort to pick back up.
So, I gave up on that and tested out some of its other features.
As it stands, Pivo just isn’t quite able to handle motion-based activities. Imagine you’re skateboarding and the friend who is supposed to be filming you stops to check their phone right as you finally land the trick you’ve been working on all day. That’s the feeling it left me with.
Pivo could, however, be great for things that involve some but not too much movement out of the frame, like TikTok dances, makeup tutorials, yoga lessons, and making porn in your bedroom.
Pivo has been pushing an upcoming app called Pivo+ that appears to have a sport mode, so who knows, things could improve. The company didn’t respond to my email about it.
Nevertheless, for $140 (Pivo Silver, with the currently running discount), I definitely expected better.