Insta360’s Snap is a tiny magnetic phone screen for taking rear-camera selfies

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.

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.

You can quickly switch between the two zoom modes using one of two buttons on the side of the Snap. The other is a mirror button that reverses the screen. That may seem like an odd feature to have a dedicated button for, until you turn your phone sideways to shoot a horizontal selfie and find the-onscreen preview upside-down. The mirror button solves that, and while having your preview flipped can occasionally be confusing while adjusting the framing of a shot, it never affects the photos you’re taking.

The optional built-in ring light on the version of the Snap I tested is definitely worth the extra $10, even if it makes the accessory about 6mm thicker than the cheaper version. There are five levels of brightness and three color temperature settings — neutral, cool, and warm — that are adjusted using a pair of buttons below the screen that cycle through the various settings or turn the light off completely. It can improve your selfies in less-than-ideal lighting conditions but can also be used when taking pictures normally, offering more illumination than the LED light on the back of most phones.

The biggest challenge with the Snap is learning to hold your phone backward without accidentally touching its screen. The flexible hinge on the Snap’s protective cover allows it to be folded back around so it covers your phone’s screen to prevent accidental interactions, but it’s nowhere near large enough to cover the entire thing. Even with the Snap’s cover flipped around I still frequently triggered unwanted screen swipes or pressed onscreen buttons I didn’t mean to while trying to hold both devices in one hand. Being able to turn off my iPhone’s screen while using the Snap would solve that, but that’s not an option.

The Insta360 Snap Selfie Screen isn’t the perfect solution for snapping rear camera selfies, but it’s one of the best and most versatile options now available given the limitations of screen mirroring with iOS and Android. You can use it with any phone that supports video out over USB-C, and with full touchscreen access to your OS you’re able to snap selfies and video with any camera app you want, even Instagram. It’s not as slim as a smartphone case with a screen, but being able to adjust camera settings, edit photos, and jump between apps without having to turn your phone around makes it an upgrade worth considering.

Photography by Andrew Liszewski / The Verge