Manfrotto BeFree Carbon Fiber Tripod Review

May 9, 2016 review photography manfrotto tripod befree carbon fiber

I bought the Manfrotto BeFree Carbon Fiber Tripod to use with my Nikon D5100 for outdoor and indoor video and photography. It is a nice tripod and a decent deal if you can get it on sale for less than its list price.

I highly recommend that you consider the aluminum version. You’ll easily save $100 to $150 for a about 0.5lb increase in weight and no change in any other specification. The head, body, and base plate are already made of aluminum on both - the only difference is in the legs.

Quick Specs

Pros/Cons

The BeFree Carbon Fiber Tripod is very popular and highly recommended but I’ve found that it is not a no-compromises tripod. Typical with things built to a price point it has its pros and cons.

Pros

• It is light and compact - The BeFree only weights 2.4lbs. It folds up really small, is incredibly light, and I can take it on long hikes without it weighing me down.

• It’s build solid. It does have some wobble at full extension is stable at minimum extension. The heads locks down tight and the center column doesn’t wobble. The fact that the legs are carbon fiber leads me to my next point …

• The legs are made of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is light, it won’t rust or corrode, and it naturally dampens vibrations. They even make racecars out of it!

• Unlike cheaper tripods, spare parts are easily available. This tripod is considered to be premium and, including the aluminum version, 100s of thousands have been sold. This means that parts are easily available. You can easily buy them directly from Manfrotto or salvage them from older tripods.
  

Cons

• The bag it comes with is flimsy. The zipper feels cheap and I can see the bag deforming where the handle connects to it just after a few trips. They really should have spent a few more dollars to make a nice denier nylon carrying case.

• The BeFree is wobbly when fully extended even though it is made from carbon fiber. It doesn’t have spiked feet or a hook to hang a bag off for stability. It will wobble even in light wind and shooting a timelapse with a reasonable zoom lens will make you motion sick.

• The tripod is compact but not that compact - It is not usable as a tabletop tripod because even at minimum extension the legs splay too far wide. It does have the capability to flip the center column and mount the camera between the legs. However this results in a flipped picture and the legs still take up a considerable amount of space. This makes taking table top un-boxing and review videos difficult.

• Although it is branded the ‘Carbon Fiber", only the legs are carbon fiber. The rest of the tripod - the center column, the head, the base plate, and the leg connectors - are all aluminum. It really should be called the BeFree with carbon fiber legs.

• The base plate doesn’t have a coin slot to unscrew it. It just has a somewhat flimsy handle that I feel will break off after some use.

• The baseplate isn’t perfectly flat, it has a slight edge to it on the corners which makes the camera tilt over on a flat surface - it really could be made more stable. I hesitate to remove the baseplate every time I take my camera off the tripod because like I mentioned above, it looks like the screw handle will break off after some use.

• Along similar lines, the baseplate has hard edges and pointy corners. I hesitate to put it table surfaces to avoid scratches. Rubberizing the base of the baseplate would have made sense but again it seems like there was a price point they wanted to hit.

Final Thoughts

The Manfrotto BeFree is an excellent travel tripod. It is compact, sturdy, well-built but sacrifices stability and has been built to a price point resulting in some compromises. If you can handle a 1/2lb increase in weight then I’d recommend the aluminum version. Except for the legs, there is no difference in specification between the aluminum and carbon-fiber versions and the price difference is substantial at around $150.

Unboxing Video