You don't have a hardware zoom on your phone, maybe you need to double the magnification, here's the solution!

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Introductory

Sometime a year and a half ago, a similar set was in action. Then I also wrote a recommended one, pretty much it ran out, I thought about buying one too, but then somehow I forgot about it. Not too long ago, I was confronted with a jaw set and decided to have a life, a death, to try this binoculars. The thought followed, I quickly put it in the basket, and it arrived about a week ago.

Packaging, accessories

The Apexel pack came in a white, rather thin box. It’s a real shelf pack, it has everything we need to see on it. There’s the binoculars on a phone, on a stand, we also get some role models, so we know for sure what we’re taking off the shelf in the store.

When we open the box, we can think again about how long it took to put everything in, it is questionable if we can take it back and put it back. In a good case, this is not a problem, since we take it to use, the box can go in the trash.

Out of the package is a small tripod, a frame to which the phone can be attached, a tweezers that will hold the binoculars to the mobile, a small rubber ring, and of course the device itself in a thick waterproof case. There is also a very small description, but we will not need much for this, because as you will see, everything will give itself.

External

What interests us first and foremost is the binoculars themselves. I don't think anyone will have a problem with that. Properly put together, a piece that looks really high quality. It’s got a hard rubber cover everywhere, it doesn’t want to slip out of our hands. The focus can be adjusted by rotating the ribbed part between the two red stripes on the front. You can also unwind the lens on your eyes, but you don’t have to poke it if you take it off just to get richer with the fact that the stuff looks good inside as well.

The tripod is made of a thin material, but at least of metal, its legs are telescopic, the inner part can be stretched to almost double its length. I tried it, not the real way, because the binoculars are a relatively serious individual, easily overturned from the whole phone, binoculars.

The mounting bracket for the phone is the usual cheap solution, we also get this for penny selfie sticks as well. There is nothing wrong with it anyway, it does its job perfectly, the phone is stable in it, so what it is given for is perfect.

The tweezers are made of strong, thick plastic. The spring is also strong in it, I don’t know if I would dare to put this on the phone without foil or protective glass. True, we find a thin rubber cover in the area toward the display, but the devil isn’t sleeping, so just be careful.

Use, assembly

Assembling the stuff is not complicated. It can also be used for dual camera phones, here of course it has to be placed on the main camera. I also tried the Xiaomi MIX 3 with a full back photo solution, which can double the hardware zoom by default, you can see the result in the test photos.

When commissioning, we must first attach the tweezers to the phone, the used camera must fall in the middle of the threaded hole that receives the binoculars. Tighten the captive screw on the top of the tweezers, and turn on the phone and the camera application on it. We can then screw the binoculars into place. If necessary, gently adjust it by moving the tweezers, then we can tighten the fixing screw a little harder, but still make sense!

If all goes well, you can go shooting! I didn’t use the tripod and frame, there was nowhere to stop, but from the pictures attached, it looks like it wouldn’t have hurt. It is no longer possible to shoot really good images by hand with this magnification.

Experiences

You can see the pictures below, but there is no harm in some oral explanation. I also tried the Apexel structure on my older Xiaomi MIX 2 and newer Xiaomi MIX 3 phones. The former has one, the latter two rear-facing cameras. As you can see in the photos, I couldn’t really set it up so that there wasn’t a little masking in the corners. This was also true for the MIX 3 for telephoto and traditional optics. This pretty much means that we either have to experiment to find a phone that will be perfect, or we have to accept that we won’t take a photo with our phone and the Apexel binoculars to clear up the field of Discovery’s photo contest.

However, it's a lot of fun, if only because this binoculars can be used as a traditional monocular, that is, as a telescope for one-eyed viewing. This is aided by the rubber ring included in the package. That is, if we take it with us in our pocket, in its case, we can use it as a traditional monocular or we can also mount it on our phone if we feel like taking photos.

At the end of the article, you can see three types of magnifications on the test images. The first is the traditional single magnification photo. The second is the 18x magnification taken with the Apexel X18, and the third is the combined magnification of the Xiaomi MIX 3 telephoto lens and the Apexel widget. Unfortunately, the air was a bit humid, so the fog could be a bit bigger in clear weather, especially with a tripod.

There is another big obstacle to taking pictures with your phone, more precisely to taking really good pictures, is that you see the picture on the display. Sounds weird, but it's very difficult to adjust the focus properly. This will also be seen in the test images at the end of the article, there would be plenty to improve on the quality.

Should we buy it or not?

As I wrote above with my own phones, it wasn’t perfect, but I think it’s well worth the price. Small, easy to carry and practical piece. It has a slight distortion, but it’s not dangerous, the lenses look good in it.