Review of the compact & lightweight Vanguard Veo 2 265CB Tripod

I already have a good tripod, but it's heavy & bulky, so I tend not to take it with me when I'm out walking. I decided to look for a compact & lightweight tripod, the Vanguard VEO 2 265CB tripod fitted the bill and at a reasonable price.

Easy to put up & take down, just a quarter of a turn on the twist grips allows the legs to extend & then turn the twist grip back to tighten, do the reverse  to put back down, the centre column swivels to make it compact for packing away. The push buttons that allow the legs to splay are also very easy to use, these have 3 different settings, the lowest takes the camera very close to the ground, in this mode the centre column has to be taken out & replaced with the short column, press the spring-loaded button & remove the plastic stopper & the column slides out, the short column just pushes in. The camera can be fixed directly to this but has no adjustment, otherwise the ball head has to be taken off the long column & re-fixed to the short one by means of slackening a couple of grub screws & twisting it off, a bit fussy at first but I got used to it. I find the tripod in all positions has a very good grip on its rubber feet & is stable enough to take a long exposure with no loss of picture quality using a Nikon D850 with a 24-120 Nikon lens, a fairly heavy camera. 

The Vanguard VEO 2 265CB ball head has its own spirit level which is very handy. The camera fixes very firmly to the ball head with a slotted clamping system. Adjustments to the ball head are done with three twist knobs, one to pan, one friction to allow fine adjustments for levelling & one to tighten up firmly. This can be done in landscape or portrait, a really good system. Also, there is a hole near the top of the tripod that can be used to hang a weight to give extra stability. The tripod comes with a bag, but I find it fits well to my rucksack without the bag.  It's a very nice looking carbon fibre tripod at a good price that does the job & is easy to carry & use. I would be happy to give it 5 out of 5 stars.

Review by Neil B