Here at TechNuovo, we’ve not had much hands on experience with Benro’s products in the past. We’ve seen a mobile gimbal, and that’s about it. But, in any case they reached out to us, and asked if we wanted to check out their new range of Benro Rhino tripods, and of course, we agreed. A tripod is something we use daily, and we’ve very much stuck to Manfrotto for our website work. Has Benro got what it takes to impress us over our current in-house favourites? Spoiler alert… they definitely have.
Now, throughout this review I’m going to be reviewing these tripods as one. The reason being is because both Rhino tripods that were sent to us, are exactly the same, but at different sizes. For your own info though, the larger of the two tripods has a model number of FRHN24CVX25 and the smaller of the two is FRHN05CVX20. Not a mouthfull at there right? To break it down quickly, the FRHN05C/FRHN24C is the tripod model, and VX25 is the tripod ball head which we’ll get to further on in the review.
What makes these two Benro Rhino tripods special, is the fact that they’re made from carbon fibre, and that in turn makes the tripods super light weight, especially the smaller one which could easily work as a travel tripod. The larger one though, you’re probably looking at studio work still. The Rhino tripods form part of Benro’s flagship travel lineup, which consists of four different models, each at different sizes.
As I said before, from this point on, both tripods feature exactly the same technology, but of course folded sizes and load weight are going to be different.
Benro Rhino FRHN24C
- Load Capacity: 18kg
- Maximum Height: 66.3″
- Folded Length: 19.3″
- Weight: 1.74kg
Benro Rhino FRHN05C
- Load Capacity: 10kg
- Maximum Height: 54.9″
- Folded Length: 13.8″
- Weight: 1.24kg
What I absolutely love about the Benro Rhino tripods is the fact that they’re incredibly sturdy while taking both landscape and portrait images. The legs feel super strong, and although I’m not using the heaviest camera on the market for my work, I still think if you got one of the bigger SLRs on here, it’ll hold out just fine.
Whatmore, the legs are very easily adjustable too with screw in rubberised twist locks as they’re aptly named, and it just makes moving the tripod up and down super smooth. One thing that did happen on me a couple of times though, is that the plastic stopper inside a couple of the feet kept popping out. This plastic stopper is designed to catch on the inside of the twist lock, and stops the legs from falling out of the hole. Some superglue would instantly fix it, but as these were review models, I didn’t want to start messing around with home repairs.
You can also reverse the pole the camera sits on too, so if you wanted to go for a lower shot, just flip the centre pole over, and the ball head will be at the bottom between each of the legs.
When I opened up the boxes for the first time, the tripods were neatly folded away in their own shoulder carry bag which is a great touch, and a nice way to keep it protected on the move too. The three tripod legs can clip into three different positions individually, and the clips themselves feel nice and rigid too, so no worries of snapping them. The legs can be dropped so they’re fully flat against the floor which for me, flexibility is key, and the Benro Rhino delivers. The feet themselves come with a rubber ball, but you can remove this to reveal spikes for outdoor use.
Other features include a removable counter weight hook too, so you can easily install some sandbags or similar if you needed a bit more weight to keep the tripod standing. And the fact that there are three separate three 3/8” threads mounting positions too for things like lights, monitors and microphones for video work. Benro also supplied us with one of their mobile phone quick release plates, which again, was extremely polished and of a very high quality.
The VX25 is Benro’s photography ball head, and it has a number of adjustments that you can make to get the perfect framing. The first is the head itself, which can tilt up to 90-degrees vertically and there’s also a fluid panning motion of up to 360-degrees. It features a small removable Arca-Swiss compatible QR plate, in which you can purchase more of if you’re the type of photographer who carries around multiple cameras on a shoot. There’s a quick release guard for extra protection when swapping cameras. There’s also a spirit level on top so you can level out your camera easily. All screws are standard photography sizes too, so there’s no special extras you’d need to get going.
Everything about these new Benro Rhino tripods just feels extremely premium, and I was very impressed with how well everything just worked. I’ve used a variety of tripods in the past in my work, from professional grade studio tripods to the cheaper kind you can find on Amazon on a budget, and I must say, the Benro Rhino tripods, especially for travel work have quickly become a go to, purely for their simplicity and most importantly, weight.
