Benro Polaris – Electric Tripod Head With Camera Control

February 2^nd, 20213

Benro Polaris – Electric Tripod Head With Camera Control

by Olaf von VossFebruary 2^nd, 2021

This little Benro Polaris tripod head is a special one of its kind. It’s an all-electric, smartphone-controllable tripod head for smaller cameras (no big cine rigs, please) that can also control the camera itself. Let’s take a look!

A tripod head that can take control of your camera? Nice! But how do you control the head itself, you wonder? Oh, via one”s smartphone? Even better! And that’s what the Benro Polaris essentially is.

A motorized two-axis tripod head that can be controlled manually or – via wifi or cellular – remotely with a smartphone. A camera mounted on the Benro Polaris can be controlled by the head itself, which is very useful for capturing images or even time-lapses remotely, for example.

Benro Polaris tripod head

The head itself is rated IPX6 (“splashproof”) and is made with aluminum alloy that should endure severe working environments. From the press release:

driven by a high-efficiency power supply system with low consumption, Polaris ensures you an outdoor shooting experience that is both concise and reliable; The unique power-saving design further prolongs Polaris’s battery life for ultra-long outdoor shooting.

Polaris sports GPS and a compass, so it’s easy to determine celestial paths and automatically adjust the camera angles to them. The same goes for sunsets and the like.

One nice thing about this Benro Polaris, at least for me, is that you can use it as a regular manual tripod head as well as a fancy remote head. The brushless motors won’t hinder you from using the head manually, just like you would use any other tripod head.

Using the app in conjunction with the head opens up all the possibilities you would expect from such a two-axis system. Pan and tilt the camera based on GPS and compass data, program a predefined path or control the movement live with virtual joysticks.

Once the camera is connected to the head via USB the head can talk to the camera, release the shutter, adjust camera settings based on either your inputs or the apps algorithms.

Pricing and availability

At this point, there isn’t too much information about the Benro Polaris, but since Benro has a lot of experience building quality tripod heads, I’m sure they know what they’re doing here in terms of mechanics (they even know how to make gimbals as well). If the accompanying app is decent and the head performs as advertised, this could be a very interesting product.