Atomos Shinobi goes head to head with SmallHD FOCUS 5″ at $75 less

For me, the separation between SmallHD and Atomos was pretty clear. Atomos made recording monitors (mostly) and SmallHD made monitors that do not record. This is changing with Atomos latest Announcement, the Atomos Shinobi. The Atomos Shinobi is a 5.2″ on camera monitor that has (give or take) all the fancy features that the Atomos Ninja V has, sans internal recording and $300.

Before we jump into that comparison, here is Kai’s endorsement of the monitor:

The Shinobi 5.2″ 4K HDMI Monitor is a 5.2″ on-camera monitor that monitors DCI 4K, UHD 4K, and HD video input. It features a 10-bit FRC IPS screen with a brightness of 1000 cd/m². If this sounds familiar, you may be thinking about the Atomos Ninja V. They feature the same HDR monitor, only the Shinobi is slightly bigger (5.2″ vs. 5″ on the Ninja).

Monitoring Features

Much like the Ninja 5, the Shinobi has a 1920 x 1080 Touchscreen display with 10-Bit depth. A 4K HDMI Input and 1000 nits brightness. As an HDR monitor, it supports viewing non-washed out RAW streams from Sony, Canon, Panasonic, ARRI, RED, and JVC cameras.

The Shinobi also supports Anamorphic de-squeezing for the following form factors: 2x, 1.5x, 1.33, and Panasonic’s 8:3

Lastly, the Shinobi supports all the usual monitoring features like False Color, Focus Peaking, Histogram, Pixel-to-Pixel Zoom, RGB Parade, Screen Markers, Waveform, Zebra and Vectorscope.

For audio, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack which will give you audio over HDMI even if your camera does not have a headphone jack.

Utilities

The Shinobi has a small 1/4-20 thread on its top and bottom and it’s incredibly light (6.91 oz / 196 g), so it will mount on a camera hot shoe, ball head or practically anything.

It supports a single NP-F battery and will run for the following times depending on battery capacity:

• 2600mAh – 2hrs 30m
• 5200mAh – 5hr +
• 7800mAh – 8hr +

This makes the Shinobi a direct competitor to the SmallHD FOCUS 5″ monitor. Let’s see how the two compare (I’m including the Ninja V as a bonus)

The Shinobi wins on size, brightness, and PPI density, the FOCUS wins on weight and (maybe) on slightly lower power consumption. If you are planning on a monitor, which one will you get?