Heipi W28S 3-in-1 Travel Tripod review - don't buy a travel tripod until you've read this!

Home / Reviews / Reviews / Heipi W28S 3-in-1 Travel Tripod review – don’t buy a travel tripod until you’ve read this!

Amateur Photographer verdict

The Heipi W28S takes the concept of the space-saving travel tripod and adds a unique spin. It’s cleverly designed with lots of neat features, well made, and unusually strong. Highly recommended.

Pros

Relatively lightweight
Space-saving packing
Useful 3-in-1 design concept
Super-sturdy ball head
Unusually stable centre column

Cons

Leg locks are pretty stiff
Leg angle adjusters are small

Ever since Peak Design unveiled its ground-breaking Travel Tripod in 2019, other makers have come out with a similar slim, space-saving designs. The Heipi W28S is one such offering, but it’s anything but a simple imitation. Instead, it’s built around a unique ‘three pillar’ centre column, which aims to provide increased stability while doing double duty as a mini ‘sub tripod’. Hence, the ‘3-in-1’ moniker; you can use either the main or sub tripods on their own, or combined together.

Heipi W28S at a glance:

$429 / £328 (from Heipi website)
5-section carbon fibre legs
152cm max height
22.5cm min height
45cm folded length
1380g weight
20kg rated load
heipivision.com

Looking first at the main tripod, this employs 5-section carbon-fibre legs with clip-type locks. Each leg can be set to three different angles, although the locking levers for this are a little small and fiddly. A large, easy-to-adjust collar is used to adjust the height of the centre column/sub tripod.

The sub tripod itself employs aluminium alloy legs, which can be set to two different angles. It’s strikingly quick and easy to remove the sub-tripod from the main assembly and set it up, when you want to switch to low-angle shooting. That’s a real contrast to some other similar models like the Peak Design Travel Tripod or Benro Cyanbird, which employ more fiddly split-column designs.

Heipi W28S key features:

Hanging rope: Instead of a hook, a cord loop allows you to hang your bag from the tripod for extra stability, via a supplied clip
Spikes: Slender ground spikes are hidden inside the rubber feet
Levels: There’s a particularly large bubble level on the main tripod, and another on the camera platform
Case: Heipi includes a snugly fitting, weather-resistant carry case with a removable shoulder strap

KF-50Q ball head

Arguably the one feature that really makes the W28S stand out is the KF-50Q ball head. This is strikingly large, with a 50mm diameter ball, yet it weighs just 300g. It has independent locks for the main ball and the panning base, and a slot for dropping the camera down 90° for portrait-format shooting.

Heipi W28S 3-in-1 tripod ball head — The included tripod is strikingly large and sturdy. Image credit: Andy Westlake

A small square camera plate is included, and the camera clamp also accepts standard Arca-Swiss quick-release plates. But rather than using a conventional screw-clamp, they simply snap down on top, with a sprung rotary collar that locks them in place. It’s best to tighten this down manually just to be sure, but a couple of small retracting pins should stop your camera sliding off inadvertently if it isn’t fully locked.

Heipi W28S 3-in-1 quick release clamp — The clever sprung quick release works with almost any Arca-Swiss type plate. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Heipi claims this quick release system works with 90% of Arca-Swiss plates. I tested it with a huge range of plates and L-brackets from many different sources (including 3 Legged Thing, Benro, Haoge, Neewer, NiSi, Sunwayfoto, Sirui, SmallRig, and others) and they all fitted just fine. However, you’ll probably need to remove any protruding safety screws from underneath, and as always, be careful with L-brackets that have cutouts for an articulated screen.

Heipi W28S 3-in-1 travel tripod integrated phone holder. — The integrated phone holder is stronger than you might think, and holds my iPhone 15 Pro Max securely. Image credit: Andy Westlake

The ball head has a couple more unique features, too. Remove the camera plate and you’ll find an integrated sprung phone holder, which is strong enough to hold your device securely in portrait format. The panning base rotates very smoothly, but if you prefer, it can be set to click at 10° intervals, facilitating panoramic shooting.

Heipi W28S in use

Build quality is superb, and everything packs together extremely neatly when the tripod is folded down. That large ball head and three-pillar centre column really do make a difference to stability, with the tripod much better at holding relatively heavy loads and dampening vibrations than other similar-sized travel tripods I’ve used. I was perfectly happy entrusting it with my Sony A7RV and 100-400mm telezoom, even on a windy day.

Heipi W28S fully extended with Sony A7R V and 100-400mm lens. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Inevitably, there are a couple of drawbacks. The leg-locking levers are really stiff, and I found it almost impossible to undo all four on a leg in one go. That means the tripod isn’t quite as quick and easy to set up as it could be. Also, the sub-tripod can flex a little when set to its minimum height, which means it’s better to use the main tripod for low-level shooting.

Heipi W28S – Our Verdict

I’ve been really impressed by the Heipi W28S travel tripod. It’s cleverly designed, really well-made, and packed full of neat little features. It’s also very attractively priced. It may well be the best tripod in its class.