Insta360’s Snap is a small magnetic phone screen for taking selfies with the rear camera

Insta360 has just announced Snap, a new smartphone accessory designed to improve the quality of your selfies. It works like a digital mirror that magnetically attaches to the back of your Android or iOS smartphone so you can preview and properly frame shots with its more capable rear cameras, while the touchscreen function lets you control camera apps without having to constantly flip your phone over. After testing 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 to take selfies, but the accessory isn’t without some frustrating quirks.

The Insta360 Snap Selfie display is available starting today through Company online store In two copies. There’s a $79.99 standard model and an $89.99 upgrade that adds a built-in ring light around the screen.

Instead of using a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi wireless connection that can add complexity and delay, the Snap connects to phones that support video output via USB-C using a short, built-in cable. So I don’t have to go through connection settings all the time, as the Snap’s 3.5-inch touchscreen automatically turns on and connects when I connect the accessory to my iPhone.

However, there’s an extra step for iPhone users the first time you use Snap. You need to enable the touch screen functionality by going to the Accessibility settings in iOS and turning on the zoom feature. For Android phones, the touch screen function works automatically after you agree to screen mirroring or cast when prompted.

The Snap lacks a battery of its own, instead drawing all the power it needs from your phone. Insta360 warns that continued use may drain your phone’s battery by 15 to 20 percent. But the convenience of easily connecting a display and never running out of battery when you need it far outweighs the extra drain on your phone.

Insta360’s Snap is probably a better alternative to screen-ready smartphone cases like the Dockcase’s SelfixAnd not just because it’s compatible with more phones. While Selfix only shows a small portion of the camera app’s live preview, Snap lets you interact with your entire smartphone screen.

The Snap’s screen aspect ratio isn’t as tall as what you’ll find on modern phones. To compensate, you have the option to display your phone’s entire screen with black bars on either side, or toggle the zoom mode that fills the entire Snap screen. Although small text is difficult to read and small buttons are difficult to click, I found the full-screen approach more usable. The zoom option can make the live preview of the camera app 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 zoom modes using one of the two buttons on the side of the Snap. The other is the mirror button that mirrors the screen. This may seem like an odd feature to have a dedicated button for, until you turn your phone sideways to take a horizontal selfie and find the on-screen preview upside down. The Mirror button solves this problem, and although flipping the preview can sometimes be awkward while framing your shot, it never affects the photos you take.

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

The biggest challenge with Snap is learning how to hold your phone backwards without accidentally touching its screen. The flexible hinge on the Snap’s protective cover allows it to fold back so it covers your phone’s screen to prevent accidental interactions, but it’s not large enough to cover everything. Even with the Snap Cover flipped over, I still frequently made unwanted swipes on the screen or pressed on-screen buttons that I didn’t mean to do while trying to hold both devices with one hand. Being able to turn off my iPhone’s screen while using Snap would solve this problem, but that’s not an option.

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

Photography by Andrew Leszewski/The Verge