I'm going to compare my all-time favorite travel tripod, the
Peak Design Travel Tripod, which I purchased
back when it was on Kickstarter several years ago and
has been my go-to faithful take everywhere
tripod, to a new contender for the throne, the
Freewill Real Travel Tripod. We're going to look at every feature side by side, compare
the size, weights, heights, and everything you care to know about between these two
tripods so you can decide which one is right for you. We're going to start off with the case. As you can see
here, first of all, this one is a little
bigger, but we'll come back to that. Just case design, both quite simple, little cloth case
design here, but this one, the Peak Design one, has a non-adjustable handle, which I've got
to say while it's convenient to just carry, you can't
really throw it over your shoulder. Unlike the Freewill Travel Tripod that does have a, I'd
call it more traditional kind of a strap, so you can actually
get this over your shoulder if you want to. Little things like that
sometimes make a difference. Beyond that, there is a
neat little feature on this case. There are two little tabs on the side here, which you
could use to clip onto a bag or underneath a backpack, a
hiking pack, that sort of thing. This design overall is quite
nice, if maybe not quite as versatile. I don't particularly care
for the branding on the Freewell one. I really don't like to
have big brands on my bags. This has it. The Peak Design just has its
classic little tiny tab here, and that's it. Now, you'll notice that there
is a size difference between them. The tripod itself is a bit
bigger, but also the case is just looser. It's squishier. It doesn't really fit as well,
while this thing, it fits like a glove. I mean, this is just snug. So case aside, let's
get into the actual tripod. Right away, we see that the Freewell is a little bit bigger,
and so this is, of course, a real concern. The size of the PD tripod will fit
in just about any suitcase you throw at it. The Freewell, it might not. Maybe it will, though. Check your suitcase. Let's actually
check the measurements here. Instead of looking at
specs, let's just see what it shows. We're going to
call that 40, maybe 40 and a half centimeters,
while the Freewell is rolling in at about 44 and a half centimeters. So a little bit bigger, not a huge
difference, but it does make a difference. Overall design aesthetic. This… this is a work of art. I'm not going to lie. When I first opened this thing, I
was like, "Wow, this is a beautiful tripod." You think, "It's a tripod. How pretty can it be?" It's pretty. It has a really nice, smooth design. It is nearly round in shape. It is designed to
be basically the size of a water bottle; the
diameter of a water bottle, and it feels like it. It is just super smooth. The legs all kind of wrap around in
this hexagonal, one, two, three, four, five. Yeah, hexagonal
shape to the legs, whereas, of course, the
Freewell is your traditional round tripod. Not that there's
anything wrong with that, but just the way
that this folds up all nice and compact and smooth,
it really is a thing of beauty. And you'll even
notice the way the head is retracted in, the
head makes it all nice and smooth, whereas the head of this
sticks out like a traditional tripod. Now, there are some advantages to this head, so don't just
disregard this, but this is real nice and smooth. Okay, let's go
into a basic tabletop setup. I'm just going to
open up the three legs in their lowest
standard position here and see how the heights compare. Now, in this
position, we have a height for the Peak Design of
36 and a half centimeters, we'll call that. And for this tripod, we're
looking at about 41 centimeters. So that is your minimum
height at its standard setup. Now that said, the legs can spread out farther on both of
these and the center columns can be removed, so it can go even lower. We'll take a look
at that in a little bit. But just to see
how the legs do go out, the peak design has a
single stop out, so I can release it, go out
one stage, so that's it. That's two
positions here or here, whereas the freewheel actually has an extra stage in there. So there's its first
stop, second stop, and third stop. So with that in
mind, it might actually go a little bit
lower, but we're going to find out about that. Let's talk about accessories. The Peak Design has its tool mounted in a slick little
plastic case in here, this snaps in beautifully, and that of course is for tightening on the
tripod plate or anything else on the tripod that might get loose. Now I don't know about you, but I have basically lost this kind
of a tool on every tripod I've ever owned, except this one. The way this snaps
in here is really slick. It's really firm. It doesn't fall out. It's been beautiful. Now the actual enclosure for this
is the first part that usually falls off. It's not that you lose the
tool, it's that you lose this part. But on this
tripod, maybe just because it's wrapped up on the
inside… I’ve never lost it, it's been there solid, nice and good. Now with that said over here in the Freewell we've got a pretty
interesting mechanism here. First of all, this is not
falling off because it is bolted on. It actually comes removed,
so you have to put it on yourself. It comes with the tools for that. But it is something
you can add on if you want. It holds in your basic little
Allen key with a little magnet in here. So it's probably not going to fall out. I haven't used this
much, so I can't say for sure. But one very interesting feature on
here is that it includes an AirTag holder. That means that you can attach an AirTag
as I have here to your tripod so that if you do lose it, odds
are you'll find it again. So that's pretty cool. Next, let's compare the head, which is a really, really
important part of the tripod here. We'll start with the Peak Design. Now you'll notice that this
does not have any kind of handles on it. This is not a video head. This is a traditional ball
head, but it's not really traditional. First of all, you'll see that if you loosen this and you
want to move it, you can't. You actually have to raise it up
to be able to get any tilt out of it. So I'll loosen that knob
and raise it up just a little bit. And now you have the ability to
rotate that head however you like in here. So there's your ball head. Now if you want to
go vertical, you actually have to get it up
quite a bit higher so that the head can clear the legs. And that's how you
would go vertical on this tripod. There is no video panning head. There is no smooth pans. If you're doing
video production primarily, this may not be a
good choice for that reason. But as a still
photography tripod, it's fantastic. Or of course, if you’re not
worried about doing video pans. So there's your basic head design. It is pretty much it. It's a ball head, but a little bit in reverse from the way
you might have seen it before. This looks like a
traditional video head, but it's not. It's actually a combination
of a video head and a ball head. Check this out. So first of all, you have what
appears to be a standard video head. I can pan, I can tilt. However, if I loosen this
knob here, it also is a ball head. You'll notice here, if you look at that joint, that is a ball
joint underneath the video head, which is
honestly really, really clever. It's a great
design because it means that I can lock this and
now I have a really good smooth panning head. The handle here I wish extended. I have another tripod head from SmallRig where you can unlock,
just untwist and pull this out. I kind of wish this had it. I was convinced that
it did, but I kept twisting. It doesn't go. But I think that
would be a really nice addition. But other than that, you do have a
nice smooth head on here and it's smooth. I mean, that feels really good. I think you could get a
great video pan out of that. If you want to go
vertical with this head, you can, even
though typically with a video head you can't. This has a little trick
because of the ball head maneuver. We can tilt it down like this and then rotate the plate so
the camera goes vertical. Since we're talking about
the plate, let's get into that. Let's go back to
the peak design to start. The peak design has
a double locking mechanism. You first unlock that, then push
this to release and the plate pops out. This plate will look familiar
to anybody who uses peak design gear. This is the same plate that
works with their shoulder clips. You can clip your camera into here, go from the clip that's
attached to your backpack straight into the
tripod, which if you are a Peak Design user,
then that's a pretty nice feature to be able to go back and forth. Once you put that
back in place, lock it in and then apply the
secondary lock and that thing is tight as it can be. By the way, there is also a
spirit level at the top of the head there. This tripod head is a little bit more traditional in the sense
that it has a loosening mechanism here to remove the
plate, put that on your camera, off you go,
put that back on and there you are. So pretty simple,
pretty traditional there. However, this plate has a
really neat little trick inside of it. If you ever want to
mount your phone on your tripod, this plate
has a hidden phone holder. Check this out. If I pull this
little lever up and then pull this out and this
lever up, you now have something to hold your phone. Now, curiously, FreeWell
doesn't call this a regular phone holder. They call it like
an emergency phone holder, which kind of
implies that they don't expect to use it all the time,
but I don't know why you wouldn't. It seems pretty good. So I can attach this on here. So the same plate just goes
sideways and locks right into place. And then to put your phone on there,
just stretch that up and in place you go. Now, I would say this feels… hard? It might possibly, even though there's pads, it could
possibly scratch a phone without a case. I don't know that I'd be too keen
on putting a phone without a case in here. But you know, your mileage may vary. Maybe you just be a
little extra careful in there. But that's awesome. That holds it in place. Now, the peak design
is not being outdone here. It also has the
ability to mount a phone into it. Its phone holder is kind of
over-designed in a really beautiful way. It lives in the column here. So if I kind of
twist and pull, this pops out. And then with magnets, look how smooth. It just holds into
place and pops back out. This is the phone holder. So you kind of open these two pieces up, you take out the
plate that's in here, drop this in its place,
lock that the same way. And now I can put my phone in there. So either one is fine. They both hold your phone perfectly well. This one's maybe a little bit looser. This is a bit snugger. But again, like I
said, it feels almost like it might possibly
scratch your phone if you're not careful. Anyway… Since we're looking at the
bottom of the post here, let me point this out. You saw the hook that was on here. That hook is so that you can hang
your camera bag from the bottom of the tripod. And I've seen that feature referred to
as just a convenient place to put your bag. Sure, but it's so much more than that. Hanging a heavy
camera bag off of the hook on the bottom of
your tripod adds a ton of stability to your tripod. So don't just regard it as just a
place to conveniently hang your things. It actually will add a
lot of stability to your tripod. Now that said, if you're hanging a really heavy bag and this
has a cheap plastic clip, it could break off. I've broken a few of them. But this clip here
appears to be aluminum. I think all the mechanisms
holding it together are aluminum. I've been using it for years. Always hung my bags on it. Never broken it. This as well is an aluminum hook
on here and this is an aluminum pole. So I think either one of
them are just as strong as the other. Now if I unscrew this
one… there's a tool in here. Now what, pray tell, is that tool for? Well this tool is for
disassembling the center column. We can disassemble the
center column on both of these. So let's start with the peak
design and see how that one works. If I loosen the column all the way
and try to remove it, it doesn't come out. A little safety thing in there. Same thing happens on the freewheel. This acts as a safety mechanism. Let's go ahead and take this off. Take this out. Now to remove the lower part of
this column, it's a little bit tricky. You have to loosen
the head, rotate it, find the hole at the top
there, then take the tool that it comes with,
pop that in and unscrew it. Then there we have it. So now this goes back in and you
no longer have that center column here. Why does that matter? Well now I can go
even lower with the tripod. Now I have my new lowest position. So let's compare that to the Freewell. To take its center column out, same thing; just pull that up. This one has a couple of screws here,
which again, the hook has the tool for that. So we'll just
loosen those up and off we go. and off we go. So now with that in place,
dropped in, let's see how low she goes. And there we now have our
lowest position for both tripods. So let's see which one goes lower. The peak design is coming in at
14 and a half centimeters, while the Freewell
is at 16 centimeters. So the Peak design
does get a little bit lower. It's a little smaller when it's folded up and it goes a
little bit lower when it's at its lowest position. Even though this one
appears that it should, it doesn't. And that's really
because of the taller head on there. Now both of these
tripods can invert the head so you can mount
your camera upside down and get it absolutely on the ground. So in that regard, they
both have the lowest position. Let's see how that works. Let me just do that real quick here. Like so. Now let's get into a couple of
really important things about these tripods… setup speed, and weight. I don't know why I left
these to the end, but I did. So let's first
talk about the Peak Design. This is the aluminum
version, not the carbon fiber one. The aluminum version comes in at… 1.56 kilos or 3.44 pounds. And the carbon fiber
version is 1.29 kilos or 2.81 pounds. Now the Freewell on the other hand
comes in at just 0.9 kilos or 1.984 pounds. So it is significantly lighter. It is a third
lighter than the aluminum version and still lighter
than the carbon fiber version. Okay, so just get the carbon fiber one of these and that'll
solve that problem, right? Well, there's the cost. We'll save that to the end. Let's talk about the legs and
then see how it sets up and breaks down. The Peak Design tripod has four
individual latches to release the legs. So to undo the legs, you have to undo all four of those and
then tighten all four of them up. So that does add some time. Now let's be honest here. It's pretty quick and if I have it collapsed, I can close
all four of them at once, open all four at once and off we go. But once it's open, you do
have to close each one individually. It takes… y’know, it takes a moment…
it takes a moment or two. The Freewell on the other
hand has a single release mechanism. Just twist and off you go. That's pretty cool. It does make setup a lot faster on this. In a moment here,
we're going to set up both of them from
scratch and you'll see just how much faster it is. There is another
really, really neat feature on the Freewell
that I really like and that's this. Monopod! (You can't set
this up now, with just two legs). Monopod! So I can
take the head off of here. And now, I got a monopod. That's pretty cool. If you like
monopods, that's a neat feature. All right. Future Joseph here, I was editing and realized I forgot
about a really important feature on the Freewell that
I don't want to leave out. Check this out. There are ¼-20
mounting points on the tripod. There's two on the base
itself; on the legs themselves. And then there's another one on the head. So what are these for? Well, they show them as
being for mounting magic arms. So if you wanted to, for example, have another phone or a
light or a microphone or anything attached here hanging off of it, you can. But there is a caveat and I
think this is really important to show you. You can see in here
that the hole is between the legs and
there's not a whole lot of space on either side of these. This is easiest to
illustrate if I take the column out and I'm
going to take a nice big professional magic
arm here from Kondor Blue. Love these things. And watch what
happens as I screw this in. You'll see the problem very quickly. The spacing between the legs is not
sufficient for this to screw in all the way. So you can see there's quite a bit
of space in here that hasn't threaded in. It really is not in very far at all. And in fact, I would not feel comfortable using this particular
magic arm in this position. Now other magic arms may
have smaller mounting points. This one has a
slightly smaller one, but it really is going to
give you the same thing. If I put this one in, you'll see as I screw it in that
very quickly it goes in as far as it can go and that's it. And it just really
isn't quite far enough. Now that said,
there may be some that have a smaller mounting point and that's fine. But the one that is on the
head does not have this problem. So if I take one of these out and you can see there it was
about a turn and a half before that thing was released. So really not very far. And let's put the head back in. This can mount onto the side
here and go all the way in no problem. So now if you wanted to have your camera mounted with some kind
of a magic arm holding again, light microphone, phone, BTS
camera, whatever, that will totally work. It's a really neat feature. Just the two ones near the
legs are a little bit limited in use. Okay, back to past me. Now let's see what
it takes to set them up and see which one
goes higher than the other. Now that we've got a little space,
let's see how quickly these can be set up. We'll start with the Peak Design tripod. Now again, remember, I have to unlock all four of these
simultaneously for speed, extend it out and close them up again. We're going to do
this speed test just going to the base height
not extending the center column, but then
we'll extend their center columns and measure
the total maximum height to them. So, are you ready?
Let's do it. Done. Now let's go for the Freewell. Again, with the Freewell, it's a
single release and pull, so it should go quicker. Let's do it. Done. So it is definitely
quicker to set up, but you know, speed
isn't everything, but it's worth noting. Now let's compare heights. The Peak Design is smaller… but taller. One, two, three, four, five segments. One, two, three, four, five segements. Okay, well that is, that's just
science that I don't understand, but there we go. So the Peak Design does get a little bit taller than the
Freewell, even though it compacts a little bit shorter. Now let's see about
actual maximum height here. Bring that all the way up
and bring this all the way up. And once again, we
are a little bit taller, less so, but a
little bit taller on the Peak Design. The Peak Design is
coming in at, we'll call that 153.5
centimeters, 150, so 3 centimeters difference, not much. Well there you go. What do you think? Which one is it worth for you? Oh right, you
probably want to know the price. Well, that is a bit of a rub! The Peak Design
tripod is better in many ways. If you are doing
video, then you really got to look at the
Freewell because the pan head on there is absolutely a must-have if you are going to do
any kind of video panning, you just can't do that on here. Weight of the
Freewell, quite a bit lighter. If weight means something to
you, then it does make a difference. But the cost. The aluminum version of the Peak Design tripod is 380 US dollars;
nearly 400 dollars. The carbon fiber version of
the Peak Design tripod is 600 dollars. The Freewell real
travel tripod is 300 dollars. And because it is a
brand new, just-launched product for the first two weeks,
it is only going to be 250 dollars. So ooh, that’s tough. You could get two
of these for the price of one of these,
especially if you are looking at the carbon fiber
for the weight and all that. So hmm, you know, that is a tough call. Well that is what I am here for. Not to tell you
which one to buy, but to give you the information
so you can make your own decision. Let me know in the comments down
below which one you think is the better value. And if you are going to order
one, please do use my link, that helps. But also, just let
me know which one you got. See you in the next video.
