Griptight ONE Micro Stand Review

As the maker of the Gorillapod, Joby certainly knows a thing about making a quality tripod. The Joby Griptight One Micro stand has been designed with smartphones in mind. With its packable design, this stand can slip into your pocket comfortably. From my first impressions, the tripod feels like it’s made of premium materials. Made of mostly metal and strong plastics, which is what I would expect for the premium price. It is significantly more expensive than other tripods geared towards smartphones. But Joby do entice you by including a handy extra feature. The smartphone mount can be unscrewed so that the tripod legs can be attached to a standard camera making it a versatile product for photographers.

Three points of contact on the Griptight ONE Micro Stand create a very stable stand. The legs aren’t very adjustable though so it works best when all three are spaced equally. If the camera on the top is particularly heavy you may want to angle one leg to be parallel with the body otherwise it can still topple over.

Made of stainless steel, or in the white colour options aluminium too. The material feels thick and I cannot find any flimsy parts that could get bent and broken whilst it was bouncing around in my bag or if I was to accidentally sit on it. I would be willing to be the Griptight ONE Micro Stand is the most durable of my phone stands, and I’m relieved to see they didn’t use the Joby name to charge a high price for a piece of plastic.

I love how tiny the Griptight ONE Micro Stand is. Packing down to a size just larger than a key, this stand can fit into my tech kit or even my jeans pocket and I instantly forget it’s there. If I am going anywhere I think I may need to take a few photos then I wouldn’t hesitate to chuck something of this size into my bag. When travelling around a city then the extra grams in your pack weight aren’t going to cause you any bother. Just make sure you pack it into a small pocket so that when you need it it’s easy to grab, rather than being lost amongst the other contents.  

The phone or camera can easily be repositioned just by hand, without requiring the use of screws or a handle. Due to the design of the smartphone clip if you want to position the phone screen facing up the angle is limited. And for a man of my height comes just a little short of where I would need it to be. Its for that reason it’s not ideal for using to prop the screen up on a plane. Nor would it be ideal for taking photos of subjects that are beneath the tripod.

If however, you are photographing subjects that are higher up then it can face up around 30°. It isn’t ideal but it’s still an improvement. The Griptight ONE Micro Stand is much better for face on photos. The downside of this is that this angle can make the stand unstable so it’s worth taking that into account.

I think from a photographer’s perspective this is great. Joby’ Griptight One Micro Stand is a nice size, easy to keep stable and very easy to pack. If you had it already then there’s no reason not to bring it along. What puts me off is the price even though it’s a great piece of kit. It’s really well made, but I think it depends on your usage if the price is worth it for you.

A lot of the options I saw out there would work as a stand for a phone or a camera, but not both. And they were made with a lot cheaper materials which affected the quality. I think if I just wanted something to prop my phone whilst I watch movies, I would consider something cheaper like the Nite Ize Quickstand. But as it has many uses I would definitely consider picking a Griptight ONE Micro Stand up again. However I just would hold out for it to be on sale first.