Veho Muvi X-Lapse review

As Ferris Bueller once famously said: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Amazingly, he lived in the eighties, before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and new video sharing sensation Vine, all came along to distract us from the actual world around us.

He also probably hadn’t foreseen the Muvi X-Lapse, a rotating camera mount that lets you make cool-looking time-lapse videos – packing a frenzied hour of life into just a handful of seconds.

The X-Lapse comes with a rubberised clip on top into which you clip your smartphone. Underneath this though is a standard tripod mount screw, so you can use any camera up to 750g in weight. An identical screw on the bottom lets you pop it on top of a tripod or Gorillapod. It also has its own three fold out stabilisers. The clip worked fine for our Galaxy S3 but could have been a little tighter.

Once you’re ready, just twist the X-Lapse around to set the amount of time and the angle you want; 90 degrees takes 15 minutes, up to an hour for a full 360 degrees, but you can set it fairly precisely for any angle/time period you want. One downside is the fixed relationship between the time taken and the angle of rotation (6 degrees a minute), so you’ll have to pretty patient to capture a full 360 panorama, but then Ferris Bueller would probably appreciate that.

The phone mount comes off so you fit any camera with a tripod screw

It doesn’t come with any smartphone software, but you can pick up the excellent Lapse It Pro on iTunes or Google Play for under £2. This lets you set the frame rate you want for both capture and playback, lets you trim your captures at the ends, plus will render them to video files and post them online to the usual services. Some cameras have automatic shutter modes, but for most you’ll just have to shoot video and then speed it up later on your PC.

Here’s me writing this very review at home, I wish it had only taken me 11 seconds!

It moves in a slightly jerky manner, though this isn’t really noticeable on most time lapses you’ll make – a smooth moving object like the setting sun is affected, but you won’t see it when capturing a busy room of people or an intersection of traffic – and even then it depends on what settings you use on the app. It also clicks like an egg timer, which is pretty annoying if you’re somewhere really quiet, or you want to capture audio as well simultaneously. On the plus side it’s very light and so you won’t notice carrying it in your bag – handy if you’re out walking or cycling – and it’ll fit fine in a jacket pocket too.

The spin out feet make it very stable on flat surfaces

If such drawbacks bother you, then consider forking out $195 for the far more serious Astro, recently heavily-backed on Kickstarter and due to be on general sale soon. For everyone else, who just wants something simple that works well enough to give you plenty of creative options, then the Muvi X-Lapse is a great little piece of kit for just £20.