The Manfrotto Compact Action is a travel tripod with a fluid pan-and-tilt head, 5kg payload, and 146cm max height — rare features at under $100 that make it the best entry-level tripod for video shooters.
6 mentions · 1 threadslast mention May 2026
Real comments from Reddit, linked to the original thread. Nothing paraphrased.
$150 is firmly on the budget end for a video tripod. Manfrotto are... ok for light use, but they aren't particuarly rugged. They do at the very least make spare parts relatively easy to obtain - which is something that cannot usually be said for the off-brands.
Neither of those tripod heads are for video. They are for stills. Ball heads are not meant to be panned or tilted when the camera is rolling. They are meant to be positioned and locked down.
I have three tripods all valued around 100-150$. I use them because they are very light and cheap. Sometimes I get to use actually good tripods and there is a huge difference in feel and usability but not really in the end product which is the video.
Well then the premise of this post doesn't matter because you're going to be rebuying a tripod anyway once you find out how limiting a ball head tripod is for video work.
I used tripods like that to support an Iphone, it worked fine as long as you didn't touch the the tripod.
If a Manfrotto is all you can afford, then absolutely go for it. If you're not using it every day heavily, it'll probably last you decades.
This page's score used to be built entirely from one Reddit thread — 6 mentions, all from a single r/videography conversation, presented as if they were independent owner reports. That's now been corrected to a diversity-capped sample of the 3 highest-upvoted, most representative comments from that same thread. What survives: one commenter flagged that its ball heads aren't really designed for smooth video panning/tilting (they're a stills-camera feature), another called it fine for light use but not particularly rugged for the price, and a third said it'll last for years if you're not using it hard daily. That's a mixed but plausible picture for a budget tripod, not a confirmed defect or a confirmed win — with only 3 surviving quotes from one conversation, treat this as directional, not a settled verdict.
