JOBY GripTight ONE GorillaPod Phone Stand

The legs on the JOBY GripTight ONE GorillaPod bend and wrap, so this tripod doesn’t need a table. Twist them around a fence rail, a bike handlebar or a tree branch, set the phone in the clamp, and you have a camera angle nobody else at the party has.

The clamp is a stainless steel spring that grips most smartphones with or without a case and lets go quickly when you’re done. A rotating ball head sits between the clamp and the legs, so the phone can tilt to portrait or landscape and point almost anywhere. The whole thing folds up small, weighs about 23 grams and stands around 30 centimeters tall at full height.

It suits the guy who takes every family photo and is never in any of them, and the one who props his phone against a coffee mug to watch the game at lunch. Wrap it on something sturdy, set the timer, and he finally makes it into the group shot.

The catch: it’s sized for phones, with a 16-ounce weight limit, so it won’t carry a real camera. Getting a perfectly level shot on a lumpy branch also takes a little fiddling with the legs.