Tom's Guide Verdict
This great lens kit costs more than most budget kits but worth the price thanks to its convenient clip-on LED and other accessories.
Pros
- +
Good image quality
- +
Solid build
- +
Useful bundled accessories
- +
Clip-on LED light
- +
Free lifetime warranty with registration
- +
Helpful videos on website
Cons
- -
Only two lenses
- -
Minor smudging at edges of wide-angle images
- -
Pricey
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Xenvo put together an excellent package, with wide-angle and macro lenses, a clamp for the lenses, a small rechargeable clip-on light, a USB cable, a quick-release lanyard, front and back caps, a microfiber cleaning cloth, and a well-designed carrying case with a karabiner.
The company also offers phone and email contacts, a lifetime warranty when you register the product, and a handful of helpful videos to get you started.
Design
Xenvo put a lot of thought into this kit. While there are only two lenses, the addition of the clip-on light, as well as the well-designed accessories for storing and carrying its components, make it convenient to use.
Though they work with a variety of smartphones, we tested the lenses on an iPhone 8 without a case and were impressed with the build quality of all elements of the kit, including the lens clamp, which fit snugly but was easy to position.
Like with other kits, the wide-angle and macro lenses are both mounted on the lens clamp; just unscrew the wide-angle to shoot with the macro lens.
Wide-Angle Lens Performance
The Trueview 0.45x wide-angle lens works well for landscapes and group photos, with minimal distortion. However, extreme corners showed a little smudging, more so than seen with Aukey's wide-angle lens.
Otherwise, the lens produced sharp, crisp images throughout the photo, with excellent detail capture and no vignetting. As expected from a wide-angle lens, there's a little curvature of straight lines evident around the edges.
Macro Lens Performance
Ready for a close-up? Just unscrew the wide-angle lens to access the kit's Clarus 15x macro lens and place it about half an inch from the subject. Mounted on a mini tripod, the Xenvo macro lens captured sharp, fine details.
Keep in mind, though, that like all macro lenses, this one has a very shallow depth of field (the area that's in focus from foreground to background). For example, when photographing an apple, the only part in focus was the stem.
Clip-On Light
If you need a little more light, the kit's GlowClip clip-on light delivers a soft, albeit relatively small, swatch of illumination. Low, medium and high settings are available with a touch of a button. The power lasts for about an hour, and the light is conveniently recharged via the bundled USB cable.
MORE: Best iPhone Camera Lenses - Wide Angle, Macro & Zoom Kits
A big plus is that the light can be clipped on wherever you'd like — to the phone or some other support. Or you can handhold it to aim the light where it's needed. The GlowClip won't light up a room, but if the light is set to its highest power, it will help illuminate subjects within 8-10 inches of your phone.
Bottom Line
At $33, Xenvo's kit is a little pricey compared to some others we've reviewed, but in addition to the useful accessories, the lenses, lens caps and lens attachment clamp are extremely well-constructed. If you don't need the clip-on light, Aukey's wide-angle and macro lenses produce even better images for less money. But for those looking for a little more illumination, Xenvo's kit is worth a look.
Credit: Tom's Guide
