GEEKOTO X25 Defender 75' Tripod

These are very prone to breaking, rendering the legs unable to move. The leg retention is accomplished with a VERY flimsy plastic ring. My tripod made it exactly ONE extension before one of those plastic bits broke, rending one of my legs unable to be retracted. I absolutely baby my stuff, so if it broke for me it surely won't withstand the use of someone who really tests their equipment. It's a shame, because if it didn't self destruct it would be a really nice tripod.

I purchased this Tripod because I am 6 Foot 2 Inches tall and most tripods are just too short and meant I was always bent over when taking product and landscape photos. This Geekoto 75 is very stable and I don't even have to use the bottom leg extensions. The build quality is excellent and everything operates exactly as it should. I simple can't believe the quality for this price. The service from was impeccable as always. Best Regards Nigel Spiers New Zealand.

This is a substantial tripod! It's not the lightest, but that's actually good for me, as it makes it harder to knock over while I film woodworking projects. I love that the center column can be inverted and set up like a boom arm to get weird angles. The head seems solid, too; the all-metal construction and shoe clamp spare me the worry of my rig falling off of it. Onto what I don't like. The knob to clamp the ball isn't the easiest to grip. I have a heavy rig: Blue Yeti mic, shock mount, phone mount, phone, light panel, and an oak board to hold all of it together. This tripod handles it just fine (I think it says it can handle six pounds, but I bet it could take more). The trouble is in gripping the little, round knob well enough to hunker the ball clamp down. It should have a proper, positive-contact knob on it to ensure the heavy loads it advertises being able to handle don't slouch. The legs aren't the greatest either. The toggles at the top allow for a great deal of wiggle, which can be useful for making leveling adjustments, but makes it hard to pick the tripod up, place it down, and have a reproducible angle. The twist locks also have a catch in them, so a couple of my legs will feel like they've reached their extension limit, then I have to pull on them hard to get the last inch out of them. Between this and the head knob, I knocked a star off. As you can see in the photos, mine also arrived clearly used. The padded bag (which is otherwise nice, by the way) had sand and a hole in it! I thought I was buying a new product, not a customer return. I certainly paid full price for it. For this reason, I knocked another star off. Not a reflection of the product so much as the practices of in this instance. All in all, I think this is a decent product for the price, it's just a little quirky.

I wasn't sure if I needed to spend this much on my first tripod (as opposed to looking for a used one, for example), but having the option to position the central column parallel to the ground, aka create a boom arm, on this tripod has already proven invaluable. It would be nice if the portion of the center column that pivots were longer so the camera could reach out further when taking aerial shots, but fortunately the crazy height of the tripod legs mean you can set them up high and straddle whatever you're shooting, to get the camera closer to being directly above.

Everything looked fine at first blush but there was a nasty catch I had to push through to loosen the center column locking knob at the top of the legs. Seems there's a plastic bushing in there that's been failing on people, making the column immovable. Will regretfully return an otherwise interesting tripod.

This is my second purchase and only because I needed another angle. I love how tall and easily adjustable it is. Able to get angles my other tripods cannot. Quick to adjust Tall Easily use as monopod lightweight Would buy again. Oh, wait I did. Great value.