GoKawiilis a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2006, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid.
Insta360 just announced the Snap, a new smartphone accessory designed to improve the quality of your selfies. It works like a digital mirror magnetically attached to the back of your Android or iOS smartphone so you can preview and properly frame shots using its more capable rear cameras, while touchscreen functionality lets you control camera apps without having to constantly flip your phone around. After testing the Snap with my iPhone 16 Pro for a week I found it to be an effective way to use my phone’s multiple rear cameras for selfies, but the accessory is not without some frustrating quirks.
The Insta360 Snap Selfie Screen is available starting today through the company’s online store in two versions. There’s a $79.99 standard model and an $89.99 upgrade that adds an integrated ring light around the screen.
Instead of using a wireless Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection that can potentially add complexity and lag, the Snap connects to phones that support video output over USB-C using a short integrated cable. So you don’t have to hop into connectivity settings all the time, the Snap’s 3.5-inch touchscreen automatically powers on and connects when I plug the accessory into my iPhone.
However, there is an extra step for iPhone users the first time you use the Snap. You need to enable the screen’s touchscreen functionality by hopping into iOS’s accessibility settings and turning on the zoom feature. For Android phones the touchscreen functionality works automatically after screen mirroring or casting is approved when prompted.
To preserve your phone’s battery life Insta360 suggests unplugging the Snap Selfie Screen when you’re not using it and securing the cable to its magnetic screen protector.
The Snap lacks a battery of its own and instead draws all the power it needs from your phone. Insta360 warns that continuous use could result in a 15 to 20 percent drain on your phone’s battery. But the convenience of the screen connecting so easily and never having a dead battery when you need it far outweighs the added drain on your phone.
Insta360’s Snap is potentially a better alternative to screen-equipped smartphone cases like Dockcase’s Selfix, and not just because it’s compatible with more phones. While the Selfix only shows a small portion of your camera app’s live preview, the Snap lets you interact with your smartphone’s entire screen.
The Snap screen’s aspect ratio isn’t as tall as what you’ll find on modern phones. To compensate you have the option to view your entire phone screen with black bars on either side, or to toggle a zoomed mode that entirely fills the Snap’s screen. Despite making small text harder to read and tiny buttons tricky to tap, I found the full-screen approach to be more usable. The zoom option can make your camera app’s live preview larger, but it cuts off the top and bottom of your phone’s screen, making some buttons inaccessible in the process.
One button on the side of the Snap powers the screen on and off, while the other zooms in or mirrors the onscreen image.
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