Over the holidays I participated in a white elephant gift exchange with some friends, and part of the gift I picked was this 3-in-1 clip lens. Now, let me just preface this post by saying that this is probably the cheapest phone lens set you can buy. These are not high quality lenses by any means,  but I figured I’d test them out and let you know my findings anyways. If you’re interested in high quality phone lenses, check out Moment.

So here goes. The set comes with three lenses: macro, wide, and fish eye. Also included are lens caps and a carrying pouch.

The lenses are easy to attach and using the clip on is super straightforward. You simply screw on whichever lens you want to use, and clip the lens over the camera on your phone.

Now for the fun part! Here’s a normal photo with no lens (left) versus one with the wide lens (right):

I was actually pretty pleasantly surprised at how this came out, and how little quality loss/distortion there was with the wide lens.

Here’s a normal photo with no lens (left) versus one with the fish eye lens (right):

As you can see the fish eye lens is true to its name, and like all fish eye lenses there’s lots of distortion, but again minimal quality loss.

Here’s a normal photo with no lens (top) versus one with the macro lens (bottom):

I was actually most surprised by the quality of this lens. It allowed me to get in very close and get a good image with lots of detail.

Overall, for less than $6, this product is actually better than you would expect. For the occasional picture taker who wants a few fun lenses, it’s not a bad buy. It could even be a great gift for a tween or teen who’s just getting into photography and wants to play around before investing in more expensive equipment.

As for me though, I’ll be sticking with my big-girl camera 😉