The SwitchEasy EasySelfie is a fantastically clever combination of three products — a selfie stick, a portable tripod and a camera remote — and it pulls off all three pretty well.
It’s cleverly designed and really well-made, and makes for a great mount for using Continuity Camera, among other things. If you’re looking for a portable and versatile way to mount your camera for all kinds of different things, the EasySelfie has you covered. Currently on sale with 20% off, making this $35.99 for a limited time.
Hands-on review of the SwitchEasy EasySelfie selfie stick
Entirely folded up, the EasySelfie selfie stick is similar to a long, skinny flashlight. It’s very portable, and while you can’t carry it around in a jeans pocket (without getting some questions), an inside jacket pocket or a large purse will do.
SwitchEasy EasySelfie
- Handy selfie stick with far reach
- Built-in tripod
- Bluetooth camera remote
- Standard accessory mount
- Excellent build quality
Using it as a selfie stick
First and foremost, the EasySelfie is a selfie stick. It extends to about 4× its original length, giving you quite a bit of reach.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
The holder is spring-loaded, so you can squeeze your phone in, no matter the size or case. Pull on the cap and the phone grip slides out. It grips your phone very firmly. It also clicks into place at 90°, so you can easily turn your phone to portrait or landscape.
Fully extended, the arm telescopes out to roughly the same as your arm length, effectively doubling your reach. You can get much more background or landscape in your shots.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Some annoying people on the internet look down on selfie sticks as products for incredibly vain and self-centered people. I think it’s the opposite: the purpose of a selfie stick is to diminish your presence in the picture, putting more emphasis on the landscape.
Using the rear Ultra Wide lens instead of the front-facing camera, you can capture an incredible range in one shot. You can’t see the screen while you’re doing this, of course, but you don’t need to. You’re not going to cut anyone out unless you’re really bad at taking pictures.
It’s a tripod, too
Photo: SwitchEasy
The handle is very substantial for a reason. Pull the handle apart and three legs unfold. It’s a clever design that reminds me of some kind of space telescope.
Sitting on the ground, it reaches about table height. It’s far from the eye-level height of a full-size tripod, but you can’t carry one of those around in your pocket. This is meant to be put on a table or a bench.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
In fact, it’s easily tall enough to use with Continuity Camera on the Mac. The small legs allow it to get really close behind my display, whereas the pyramid shape of a traditional tripod would push it farther back.
A handy pocketable camera remote
Fun fact: you can press the volume-up button on the iPhone to take a picture. This comes from Steve Jobs: he was so proud of the iPhone 4 design evoking that of “a beautiful old Leica camera” that he wanted to be able to push a physical button to take a picture.
Because of that weird feature, a lot of cheap selfie sticks from ten years ago plug into the headphone jack (remember those?) so the “camera button” is secretly just a volume-up-button. It’s a workaround that lets you take a picture without touching your phone by plugging in a cable.
But the EasySelfie stick doesn’t work like that. You need to pair with it over Bluetooth to use the button. That also means you need to charge it every once in a while — and it charges over micro-USB, not the modern reversible USB-C.
Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
But that lends it a nifty trick up its sleeve: you can take the camera button off the selfie stick and hold it in your hand. It’s tiny enough to hold without showing in a picture. It’s smaller than my thumb.
In fact, you don’t even need to use the selfie stick. This thing is a pretty nifty remote if you just need to take a group photo. Put your iPhone on a full-size tripod, get everyone together and click the tiny button in your hand. It’s very convenient.
Final Thoughts
The build quality of this product is excellent. It’s solid metal parts everywhere that matters, like the body and the phone arm. The bottom of the tripod legs and the phone grip have nice soft-touch rubber to avoid scratches.
It even has one last cool design feature: the cap on the end can be pushed down to reveal a standard tripod screw, so you can attach a camera mount, microphone or accessory to the top.
★★★★★
SwitchEasy EasySelfie
- Handy selfie stick with far reach
- Built-in tripod
- Bluetooth camera remote
- Standard accessory mount
- Excellent build quality
