Joby GorillaPod 5K Tripod review

The Joby GorillaPod 5K tripod is Joby's professional-grade flexible tripod model. Joby has made a name for itself over the last few decades as a purveyor of an innovative style of tripods that use articulated ball joints that twist around anything and everything in order to give you the flexibility to stabilize your camera wherever you may find yourself.

Although it rather looks more like a child’s toy than something you might associate with a precision bit of professional photography kit the choice of materials and careful engineering has led to a product that is simultaneously both rigid and flexible in all the right places. Previous iterations have reportedly fallen short after wear and tear has led the ball joints to come loose but this latest offering promises much stiffer joints and a ball-head kit that can carry the weight of a DSLR plus lens.

The Joby GorillaPod 5K Tripod has primarily been designed with Instagrammers and YouTubers in mind so it’s ideal for on-the-go photos and videos in travel scenarios – particularly selfies and straight-to-camera clips. But the question is, does it offer anything useful for the stargazers, long-exposure fanatics and night sky photographers among us? The truth is both yes, and no, depending on what you want to shoot and where you’re going to be doing it.

Joby GorillaPod 5K tripod review

Joby GorrillaPod 5K Tripod review: Design

• Lightweight and compact 
• Practical for on-the-go scenarios 
• Easy to use 

The GorillaPod 5K is primarily designed to affix itself to railings, trees and just about anything in the urban landscape as well as rocks and craggy natural landscape features. The articulated ball joints are made of a combination of stainless steel and aluminum with rubber around the widest part of each ball which gives it a softer and more tactile feel than if it was all metal. It has a practical dimension, too, as it’s this that allows the GorillaPod to stick on to whatever you choose to attach it to without slipping.

The joints are the perfect combination of bendy and stiff; they’re flexible enough to manipulate into position yet rigid enough to ensure that they stay there once you’ve decided where you want them. 

The ball head has only two knobs; a smaller one for securing the entire head into position on the horizontal plane and a larger one for rotating the ball head. Like most ball heads, it also has a divot to enable vertical-shaped compositions. The ball head comes in a rather delightfully zingy red aluminum and (in our tests at least) it swivels with ease without colder conditions affecting the metal and impeding its movement.

We’re testing the full GorillaPod 5K kit which comprises the tripod itself plus the ball head. You can buy the tripod without the ball head and affix your own, if you already have one, as it uses a standard screw. You can also remove part of that screw to reveal the standard screw that goes straight into the bottom of the camera so it can even be used without the ball head attached.

The connector plate uses the Arca-Swiss design and is placed directly into position rather than sliding in and out. The Arca-Swiss design, if you’ve not come across it yet, is a great piece of standardization in tripod design because it means you can use this plate on tripods by other manufacturers that also employ it (eg. Benro, 3 Legged Thing) and it will fit in just as easily. The plate uses a D-ring and is easy to screw in and unscrew.

Joby GorrillaPod 5K Tripod review: Functionality

The great thing about the GorillaPod 5K is that, at 1.6 lbs, it’s the lightest tripod we’ve tested so far. It’s something you can quite happily attach to the outside of a camera bag and hike all day without it getting in the way or adding too much weight to your load. It’s great for those days when you think you might need it but haven’t necessarily planned to. But that, of course, doesn’t sound very much like a night sky shoot!  

When we put the GorillaPod through its paces after dark, we discovered that, contrary to initial expectation of something so small, it’s not too bad an option for night sky photography.

The main drawback of the GorillaPod is that it pretty much has to be affixed to something to ensure it stays still long enough for the lengths of exposures you need to take to capture the milky way or star trails. This means the composition you choose is limited by the street furniture, railings, trees etc. available. You can, of course, set it freestanding on the ground but that isn’t advisable when the ground is too flat, wet or muddy as, despite the rubbery feet, it can slip. It’s also not great in the wind and you’d need a gust-free night if you were to use it freestanding.

Once it was attached to some railings, however, its diminutive size immediately proved to be quite useful in keeping still against a strong sea breeze because there was much less of the tripod to wobble in the wind. It was easy to manipulate the legs into position and using a combination of swiveling the ball head on its horizontal axis and moving the ball head made it easy to compose a shot directly up into the sky. 

Although the Joby GorillaPod 5K can carry the weight of a DSLR with a medium-range zoom lens in landscape orientation, composing in portrait format proved difficult. When the tripod was wrapped around a railing the camera was too big to fit in the space available between the tripod and the support. The Mirrorless, however, was small enough for it not to be a problem. 

Should you buy the Joby GorrillaPod 5K Tripod?

It’s unlikely that this tripod will cover all your stabilization needs but if you’re wanting an addition to your kit — for example, perhaps you want to take something away with you on a trip on which you might want to do some long exposures but it’s not the purpose of the trip, it’s a handy back-up that won’t add a huge bulk or weight to your luggage. But it is by no means as versatile for night sky photography as other models on the market that come in at a similar price point. If you’re looking for a dedicated tripod for night sky photography, this isn’t the one for you.

If this product isn’t for you

If you’re after a lightweight travel tripod at a similar price point, the Benro Slim is only slightly heavier at 2.2 lbs and a fraction more expensive. It’s a fully extendable tripod to around 64 inches yet compact enough folded down at 20 inches to not be too cumbersome when out and about or packing for a long trip. 

If you’re a phone camera user, curiously, there doesn’t appear to be a phone mount for the Joby GorillaPod 5K. This seems like an oversight but it might be because they have a dedicated system for would-be YouTubers with their GorillaPod Mobile Vlogging Kit which is designed to hold a mobile phone plus they also offer a number of other table-top phone-mount solutions like the Handypod Mobile Lock.