It’s a rather niche product, and it’s not without some drawbacks, but if you do need better framing for your selfies or videos, the Insta360 Snap will get the job done.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Essentially plug and play | Taking up the USB-C port means you can’t use it with other accessories |
| Nice crisp display with inbuilt light | Light can be tricky to switch on |
| Not just a display screen, but also a touchscreen | Some obvious lag in touchscreen controls |
Score: 4/5
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In this review
Insta360 Snap Specifications
Insta360 Snap Design
Insta360 Snap Performance
Insta360 Snap Verdict
Ethical disclaimer:
The Insta360 Snap screen was sent to for review, and I’m honestly not sure if they will ask for it back or not. Either way makes NO difference to this review, but if you’re a regular reader here you probably already knew that. I just happen to think that actual upfront disclosure should be standard, not buried at the bottom of a review or omitted completely.
For more on ART’s Ethics position, see here.
Design
The concept of a standalone display screen to give you a monitor for your selfies or personal vlogging activities is nothing new. I’ve had a very cheap (and honestly pretty poor) wireless model that I picked up from (if memory serves) AliExpress for a while now.
While it’s been somewhat useful for simple framing purposes, it’s also been hampered by being a pretty poor screen in its own right as well as a noticeable pain in the posterior to get set up and working, especially if it needs charging.
Insta360’s Snap display takes on this challenge in a slightly different way, eschewing wireless connectivity and batteries in favour of a wired USB-C connection to a compatible smartphone.
The Insta360 Snap is primarily a screen, specifically a 3.5 inch screen with a resolution of 800×480, which isn’t super-crisp, but it’s certainly sharp enough for essential selfie or vlogging purposes.
One notable highlight here is that it’s quite bright at 550 nits, which means it does work a lot better than prior external displays of this type that I’ve used in more direct sunlight. Being that I’m based in Australia, there’s always some brighter sunlight out there to find, but this does better than most in my testing.
Speaking of being brighter, Insta360 actually sells two variants of the Insta360 Snap. The model sent my way is the more premium Insta360 Snap with Light that runs $154.99 AUD in Australia and incorporates a rectangular ring type light around the display screen.
If you can live without that illumination “helper” (more on that later) then the standard model sans light costs $139.99 and is also slightly smaller, because it doesn’t have to incorporate the lighting controls placed underneath the display.
Both models have simple on/off switches and an orientation switch built into the side of the display, and both connect magnetically to the rear of a compatible smartphone.
That puts the Insta360 Snap into the iPhone space right away, as well phones like the Pixel 10 family and the HMD Skyline. If you’re rocking a different flavour of Android phone, Insta360 does include a magnetic ring with adhesive on it to stick to your phone; I didn’t really test that with other phones because I’d favour the approach of getting a magnetic case for a phone – but then I am a stickler for putting cases on phones anyway. It’s there and it should work if you need it.
On the subject of other phones, if you’re keen on the Insta360 Snap you do need to consider if you meet the base requirements. Insta360 has a list of compatible devices up on its web site to check, but it’s a touch out of date. What you should be looking for is (at bare minimum) a phone with a USB-C connection that has support for reverse charging and the DisplayPort (DP) protocol. For many premium and mid-range phones that’s quite likely, though once you get into the budget space or with older handsets your odds may go down markedly.
The Insta360 Snap rather looks like a tiny smartphone in a folio case by itself, though the “front” cover isn’t so much a protector for its screen as it is something you’re meant to fold around to cover over your own phone’s screen. This is (in theory) to reduce the instance of accidental touches while you’re using it.
I have my suspicions about how long that cover might last if it were banging around in a bag for any length of time, but for now it’s holding up OK.
Performance
Mini King Ghidorah is ready for his closeup.
The Insta360 Snap is relatively simple to set up on most devices. It’s just a matter of lining up its magnets with the magnets on the rear of your phone and then snaking the short USB-C cable on the base through to your phone’s USB-C port.
I tested the Insta360 Snap with an iPhone 17 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL without issue, though I did hit a tiny snag testing with a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.
That’s a phone that lacks Qi2 magnetic attachment, but I’ve been using it for a while with a third-party magnetic case. The issue here is that the location of the optimal space for a charging loop doesn’t leave a lot of space for the Insta360 Snap to sit, leaving it quite close to the telephoto lens.
It will fit on (and work with) the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but the spacing could NOT be tighter.
It doesn’t intrude over it notably, but I could see how this might be an issue for other phones where you don’t want to mess up inductive charging with the supplied magnetic loop but equally don’t want to mess up the cameras on the phone by blocking them with the external screen.
The Insta360 Snap’s other big claim to fame here is that it’s also touchscreen capable, though if you’re using an iPhone you will have to enable Zoom in assistive features to get that up and running. This means you can also alter camera settings while you’re using it, or indeed run any other app.
While this isn’t super practical for most apps, a few quick games of pinball (I’m nothing if not predictable) did give me an appreciation of the level of lag between touches, as long as they were single touches. While USB-C connectivity does ensure that the actual onscreen display stayed nicely current, it didn’t always register every press I put on the screen in a particularly fast fashion. Then again, it’s not built for or intended for gaming anyway.
There is a slight issue here for most camera apps, because when you shrink them down to just a 3.5 inch 800×480 display, some inputs are very small indeed and difficult to tweak that way. For some shots, it was easier to simply specify those settings from the primary display before flipping the phone around and only using touch for matters like focusing and simple shot taking.
Insta360 sent the higher level model with the integrated fill light on board. I’m hardly the world’s prettiest supermodel, possibly not even in the final 16 some years, but I can appreciate the benefits that decent lighting can bring to photography and videography.
The light within the Insta 360 Snap is functional and can cycle through different light intensities and two colour profiles, though it can be noticeably hard to switch on sometimes.
For those of us with glasses, it also creates the all-too-predictable issue of reflection in glasses, and it’s an unavoidable one given that you’re not likely to use any of the standard tricks to skip that like placing the light at an angle to your face when it’s on the back of your phone already.
You can see this in action with the video I shot recently of the Brick; those rectangular reflections in my glasses are 100% from the Insta360 Snap.
Shooting that video did make me aware of the other downside of using a USB-C connected display, because it naturally takes up the one USB-C port on your smartphone entirely, which is why I ended up using the DJI Mic 3 connected to another device for quick audio capture in this case.
You could (in theory) use a small USB-C hub to get past this, but then you’re veering into a frankencable nightmare of an array hanging off your smartphone, which isn’t likely to be optimal.
Update: Because a nice reader asked, I tested, and the Insta360 Snap will also work (at least, for the devices tested) with a MacBook Air M2 and a Windows 11 Laptop. It’s not designed for this, and while even the touchscreen worked on Windows, it’s at a scale where functionality might be… questionable. But I can confirm that it does work!
Insta360 Snap: Alex’s Verdict
The Insta360 Snap certainly isn’t for everyone, but if you take a lot of selfies or shoot a lot of video of yourself in a solo capacity and often find that the results are lacking because you can’t quite get the framing right or see your own reflection, then it’s a decent enough tool for that particular job.
It’s not quite a perfect 1:1 replication of your smartphone’s screen, but if you want that you’re more looking in the space of foldable phones that can use their external displays alongside their rear cameras, and that’s an entirely different kind of price space again.
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Insta360 Snap: Pricing and availability
The Insta360 Snap retails in Australia for $139.99, or $154.99 with an integrated fill light; the model with light was the one tested for this review.
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If you buy a product using the link above, ART may earn a small commission.
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