Godox X3 Trigger: The Price of Progress

There's a lot of things it got right, but I think someone forgot to test the ergonomics of this thing while mounted on a camera.

A Real Refresh

Third time's a charm?

Godox is rolling out its new wave of flashes and triggers this 2024. Fancy stuff. Now the X3 Trigger is out. It's got photographers really riled up with its new simplified design, being modeled after smartphones and ditching the design of old triggers.

Do I like it? Unfortunately, it's more of a begrudging "yes".

The User Interface is not the weakest link

I think Godox hired someone really good at making intuitive user interfaces. All of the gestures and swipes feel really natural (unless you are of a certain age-group that never gets the hang of these newfangled doohickeys). Having some experience with creating UIs professionally, they really did their homework with most of what makes intuitive UIs work well. To be fair, it responds pretty well to touch input.

Granted the small screen, you'll need fine motor control of your fingers to effectively use this thing to the fullest. But to Godox's credit, they also took consideration of our fat-fingered friends with virtual buttons if you don't want to meddle with those sliding gestures to control the flash duration.

You don't need to use the touchscreen to use this trigger

I think I get the rationale to give the option to those group of photographers that absolutely hate using the touchscreen another way to control the trigger. There's a dial and a "back" button to navigate the whole interface.

Hardware Redesign, some good and some really bad Choices

Small form factor - I love that it doesn't catch and bump into things when I move around. I hate that it's too small.

Battery – Many photographers dislike the new internal battery, but in my experience, it lasts a long time. Godox has taken steps to address concerns, but change is always hard to accept. Personally, I see it differently: with a Type-C port, charging is as simple as plugging in your phone. Sure, it's one more thing to manage once in awhile, but that's just part of the photography thing to charge your stuff. Oh, and the trigger's quite a lot lighter too compared to other triggers because of ditching the AA batteries.

Redesigned Metal Hotshoe - Godox is notorious for having plastic hotshoes which break easily. I'm just thankful they used a metal hotshoe this time around. The locking mechanism is a lot better this time around too.

Better screen - OLED and a glass screen, a big upgrade over plastic and LCD.

Buttons reduced to 3 - I guess we're lucky they didn't outright remove all the buttons. There's a clickable dial, back/power button and a test flash button, that's it. No group-specific buttons. I hate it. I hate that we'd have to wait for an xpro 3 or something to get back something we lost. Can I also mention I hate the placement on the buttons? Why did they choose to put the buttons ON THE RIGHT SIDE of the trigger?! I thought they learned their mistakes from the X1T which also had the controls on the right side. I wish the X3 had more buttons. The dial's hard to turn with one finger.

According to the Godox video, you're supposed to hold your camera with your left hand and navigate the trigger with your right hand. I don't think it's a very comfortable way of holding the camera.

Screen Angle - The screen points up instead of to the back. This leads to incredibly uncomfortable positions of the camera to look at the screen and change things, specially if your camera and lens is large and heavy. Good thing the screen on the X3 has really good viewing angles that I can change the settings even if the trigger is so offset from my view.

• From the X2T, you can now set the 1/512s flash duration
• There is now an easier way to control modeling lights and control the brightness. Quite a useful feature if you have the AD200 Pro ii or AD600 Pro ii
• New channels from 0 - 9 and channel F

Unavoidable drawbacks

For me, the ultimate drawback is the reduction of physical buttons. It's just not as easy to access stuff.

I just can't turn off and on to take test shots. To turn it off, I'd have to hold the power button for a few seconds for it to turn off (it takes a bit to turn on too).

Due to the size of the screen, you can only look at 3 groups at a time. This I don't mind too much since you can swipe and down to look at the other groups.

Conclusion

Despite all my annoyances, you can actually get used to the blasted thing eventually. Rather than an "upgrade" to the previous triggers, you have to consider it as a "new" line of product because it's just so different. You'd have to throw out a lot of muscle memory out the window. I guess it's alright. It brings a lot of new stuff that's actually intuitive but at the same time stumbling on past issues. I'll still keep my old X2T trigger just in case I get fed up with this thing. I still think it's quite un-ergonomic but let's see if my opinions change in the coming shoots.

This trigger works best on smaller cameras, where it's easier to tilt the camera so you can see the settings. I won't recommend this for people that are not willing to learn new stuff to basically do the same thing. For now, I think I need to train my forearms for this new setup.

I just hope the X Pro 3 or whatever "Pro" version of this trigger comes out fixes a lot of the issues with the X3 Trigger. I'd bet it would look like a small phone.