KraftGeek JustTap Magnetic Phone Tripod Review

Kraft­Geek reached out ear­li­er this sum­mer to see if I would be inter­est­ed in review­ing their Just­Tap Mag­net­ic Phone Tri­pod. They offered to send a unit at no cost and offered an affil­i­ate-link arrange­ment. For those out of the loop, affil­i­ate links are sim­ple: if a read­er fol­lows the link to buy the prod­uct, the review­er (me) receives a per­cent­age of the sale. It’s a com­mon mod­el and usu­al­ly how review sites keep the servers hum­ming.

What Is It?

The Just­Tap Mag­net­ic is a self­ie-stick tri­pod with a MagSafe-com­pat­i­ble mount and a tap-to-deploy leg mech­a­nism. It extends from 33 cm to 167 cm and includes a small Blue­tooth remote that docks mag­net­i­cal­ly into one of the legs. KraftGeek’s mar­ket­ing posi­tions it as a fast-to-set­up, do-every­thing phone sup­port for casu­al shoot­ing, vlog­ging, and trav­el.

Design and Build Quality

When ful­ly col­lapsed, the Just­Tap feels sol­id and clean­ly assem­bled. It has a con­sis­tent shape that’s rough­ly 3.8 cm thick, inter­rupt­ed only by the flared MagSafe mount and the Blue­tooth remote’s slot. Noth­ing rat­tles or shifts when han­dled, and the remote stays put until you inten­tion­al­ly pull it free.

The remote is straight­for­ward: one con­cave but­ton on the soft-touch rub­ber sur­face, a small LED, and (thank­ful­ly) USB‑C charg­ing. Once paired, it sim­ply trig­gers the phone’s vol­ume but­ton, which acti­vates the shut­ter. No issues there, but the remote must first be turned on with a sin­gle long press.

The legs are plas­tic with a smooth satin fin­ish. The sil­i­cone pads at the ends grip ade­quate­ly on flat sur­faces, but I wish they were thick­er. The tap-to-open but­ton is rub­berised with an icon that looks like an arrow con­duct­ing an act of war against the floor.

The tele­scop­ing pole con­sists of ten alu­mini­um seg­ments with a fine satin tex­ture that resists fin­ger­prints. The includ­ed instruc­tions warn you not to touch the seg­ments, though after months of use, I’ve yet to find a rea­son for the warn­ing. The seg­ments have remained smooth, and I haven’t expe­ri­enced pinch­ing or debris issues. The two joints at the top of the pole offer 180 degrees of rota­tion along the same axis. They feel on the stiff side, which makes pre­cise adjust­ments dif­fi­cult.

The MagSafe-style mount is reas­sur­ing­ly strong. The phone nev­er slipped, even when rotat­ed, invert­ed, or extend­ed ful­ly on the pole and giv­en a shake. This strength is also a curse thanks to fric­tion. Because rota­tion isn’t han­dled by a joint, you have to twist the phone against the mount sur­face. With a grip­py case, this leads to notice­able stic­tion, and if even a tiny abra­sive par­ti­cle gets trapped between the mount and your phone, it will etch a vis­i­ble arc into both sur­faces. Ask me how I know.

Usability and Handling

The tap-to-open legs deploy quick­ly. Too quick­ly, if I were being hon­est. In prac­tice, it’s alarm­ing­ly abrupt, and always loud­er than expect­ed. On a desk—KraftGeek’s says it’s a table­top tri­pod, too—those legs can send items fly­ing. The mech­a­nism works as adver­tised; it’s just not sub­tle.

The tele­scop­ing pole extends in one smooth pull, which is gen­uine­ly con­ve­nient. If you need fast deploy­ment, it deliv­ers.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, sta­bil­i­ty is its weak­est point. Ful­ly extend­ed, the tri­pod is extreme­ly wob­bly. On flat floors, the phone can take ten sec­onds or more to set­tle after even minor move­ment. On uneven ground, the nar­row leg spread becomes an obvi­ous lim­i­ta­tion. Grass, soft soil, or angled sur­faces make the set­up even less reli­able. This is struc­tur­al rather than a defect—long mul­ti-seg­ment poles sim­ply aren’t sta­ble, espe­cial­ly with­out wide-set legs.

Short­er heights are more usable, and mod­ern phone sta­bil­i­sa­tion hides a lot of motion; how­ev­er, this is not a tri­pod I’d trust for low-light expo­sures or tele­pho­to shoot­ing. Using the Blue­tooth remote or a timer helps avoid adding shake when trig­ger­ing the shut­ter.

Thus far, the dura­bil­i­ty of the Just­Tap has been fine. The pole seg­ments haven’t loos­ened, and the legs them­selves feel stur­dy enough, though the inter­nal struts sound a bit loose when the legs snap open.

The Chinese Twin

One of my first reac­tions after test­ing the Just­Tap was that it might actu­al­ly be use­ful for my mom. She often livestreams her par­tic­i­pa­tion at dog shows and used to strug­gle using all kinds of crap­py dis­count phone hold­ers. Dur­ing one vis­it, I brought the Kraft­Geek Just­Tap to show her, only to dis­cov­er she already owned a near-iden­ti­cal mod­el from a Chi­nese brand called TONEOF. Her ver­sion fea­tures the same tap-to-open mech­a­nism, same Blue­tooth remote, same leg design, same icon on the but­ton, and same over­all lay­out. The only real dif­fer­ence is that hers uses a spring clamp instead of a MagSafe-style mount.

She bought her TONEOF 66” Auto­mat­ic Tri­pod on Ama­zon for $30. The Kraft­Geek ver­sion is $72 (before dis­counts). To be clear, I can’t say whether Kraft­Geek sources its design from the same fac­to­ry, but it’s hard to ignore that every­thing below the mount is iden­ti­cal. My mom is per­fect­ly hap­py with her ver­sion, which says a lot about the expec­ta­tions of casu­al users.

Conclusion

The Kraft­Geek Just­Tap Mag­net­ic Phone Tri­pod gets a few things right: the remote is reli­able and con­ve­nient­ly stored, the col­lapsed build feels sol­id, and the quick-deploy mech­a­nism works as adver­tised; the mag­net­ic mount golds phones secure­ly and makes set­up rel­a­tive­ly faster than using a clamp-style alter­na­tive, though the absolute time dif­fer­ence is small, although it might be enough for some users to jus­ti­fy the pre­mi­um.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the draw­backs are sig­nif­i­cant. Sta­bil­i­ty at full exten­sion is very poor, the joints are stiff, the mount can scratch your phone if debris gets between sur­faces (again: ask me how I know!), and the pric­ing becomes hard­er to defend once you notice that iden­ti­cal non-mag­net­ic mount vari­ants sell for less than half the price.

It’s not the right fit for how I shoot, but there’s clear­ly an audi­ence for this style of tri­pod, espe­cial­ly at the low­er price tier. If you want the con­ve­nience of a MagSafe-com­pat­i­ble mount and don’t mind the high­er price, you can find the offi­cial prod­uct page here (For 15% off, use dis­count code XPSRTHRPY).