The Manfrotto ONE Hybrid Replaces Two of My Favourite Tripods

Like most photographers who’ve been doing this for a few years, I have quite the selection of tripods, and I’m quite partial to certain tripods being my favourites for specific tasks. The Manfrotto ONE Hybrid might have just replaced two of them for me.

The Manfrotto ONE Hybrid is the first in a new line of tripods from Manfrotto designed for quick and easy use in the field without compromising on features or stability. And after using one for a couple of months, I think it might be mission accomplished.

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Manfrotto ONE Hybrid – What’s so special?

The Manfrotto ONE Hybrid name might suggest things to some people that aren’t necessarily what this tripod is about. Is it a video tripod? Is it a photo tripod? Is it both? What does “hybrid” really mean here?

I mean, when we think of a hybrid camera, we think of one that’s good for shooting both stills and video. But a hybrid tripod in this instance feels a little different. It seems to mean that it works for both horizontal and vertical shooters, thanks to its new Manfrotto 500X fluid head.

While you can obviously shoot photos with this tripod as well – as you can with just about any tripod – it is still, at heart, a video tripod. For certain photography use cases, though, being a video tripod can hold big advantages.

I often use video tripods to shoot landscape photography, which I discussed on DIYP in my Manfrotto 190X Video tripod review. That’s actually one of the tripods that this one has replaced as my main go-to for video.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves…

First Impressions

Now, I did have the opportunity of seeing the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid in person at IBC last year before I received this one, so I already had some idea of what to expect and how it worked. The biggest advantage to me at the time of the show was the speed of setup.

My previous setup speed leader is another set of Manfrotto legs, the 635 Fast Single with the Nitrotech 608 head. One twist of a leg section and they all unlock. Twist it back, they all lock back. It’s pretty quick. Of course, despite being mostly carbon fibre, they’re still quite heavy (especially with a Nitrotech 608 on top).

With the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid having just a single lever to unlock all of the leg sections – much like their significantly more expensive Sachtler cousins – you just lower and raise the whole thing with one hand, and then lock the levers back down with the other.

It might not feel that much different from the more traditional twist of the 635 Fast Single, but it does feel more intuitive. You don’t need to remember which way to twist to lock or unlock the leg. It’s just a straight opening and closing of a single lever.

This was my first test of the tripod before I even started looking at the rest of it, and I immediately felt impressed. The build quality felt great, and the tripod seemed fairly solid, whether it was packed up small or fully extended.

On the topic of the 500X fluid video head… Like most video heads, the 500X included with the ONE Hybrid tripod is a bit of a lump. It’s perhaps gained a little weight over the long-serving Manfrotto 500 fluid video head, but it also features a built-in plate for Manfrotto’s new XCHANGE quick-release system.

And everything comes in a nice, big tripod bag with a shoulder strap, making it pretty easy to carry from location to location or store when not in use.

But let’s take a look at the features in a little more detail.

Manfrotto ONE Hybrid Features

What makes the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid so good? Well, that’s obviously subjective. I can tell you why it’s so good for me, but everyone has their own unique needs. What’s important and makes this tripod stand out to me as a benefit might be irrelevant for you.

But let’s go through them.

Single-Lever Locking Legs

For a start, it inherits one feature we’ve traditionally only seen from higher-end brands like Sachtler and Vinten, but the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid legs feature a single lever to lock and unlock the entire leg. No more individual segment twist-locks, thumbscrews or levers!

As I’ve already mentioned above, these are great. They allow you to set up and pack down quickly and easily in just a few seconds. No tiny thumbscrews or twist locks, with multiple levers on each leg. Just one lever per leg that locks and unlocks all of the sections at once.

It’s nice to see this idea starting to trickle down to this level of tripod. They’ve typically been reserved for significantly more expensive tripods, like the Sachtler Flowtechs. But today’s photographers and video shooters need to be able to move and adjust very quickly. This lets them do that.

Removable Centre Column (toolless!)

You might have noticed that the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid has a centre column. This helps to add some extra height to the tripod, but it can also be pulled up and used horizontally. Very handy when you need over-the-top shots, or you’re doing macro work.

But this centre column is also completely removable. You don’t even need tools to remove it. It’s just a simple little lever you can easily open and close with your thumb. So, no tools required. This lets you get extremely close to the ground.

The centre column’s ability to be quickly and easily removed is invaluable. It means you can have the centre column extended horizontally for some top-down footage and switch to a super low setup with your camera just inches from the ground in a few seconds.

Rapid Base Levelling Lever

“No centre column? How do you level the base?”, I hear you ask… Well, while many video tripods use the centre column as a sort of screw to lock and unlock the tripod head base, this one doesn’t. It has a single quick-release lever to loosen it, and when you’ve levelled it, lock it down, and you’re good to go.

It does take some getting used to to figure out exactly where the lever bites. And you’ll definitely want to make sure that your camera rig is well-balanced on the head. If you’re not supporting it and it’s lopsided, you could have a very bad day when you lift that lever up.

But assuming you apply some common sense to camera balance, this is one of my favourite features of this tripod. More so than the legs. I don’t actually mind tripods that take longer to set up sometimes, depending on what I’m shooting, because I don’t need to think about it. I can be unlocking, extending and locking the legs while looking at the scene before me and figuring out how I’m going to shoot it.

But levelling a fluid video tripod head? Doing that every 30 seconds as you move around a location gets real old with a twist-lock centre column. This lever makes it a breeze, especially combined with the next feature…

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Two Levels (and one moves!)

There are two bubble levels on the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid legs. There’s one fixed in the 500X head that you can see when you’re standing behind the camera, and there’s also a second one on a ring just below where the head attaches to the tripod.

And this second one actually rotates. You can spin it around to get whatever you need to get the best view.

This, combined with the unlocking lever mentioned above, means that you’re not contorting yourself underneath the tripod to get the right angle to unlock a centre column while straining to see the level. You can comfortably stand above, look down at the level and lock it off by just pushing the lever back into place.

You see, speed and efficiency aren’t just about how quickly you can set something up or tear it down – although that is a big selling point of many tripods. It’s also about how easy they are to use, how seamlessly they fit into your workflow, and whether they help or get in your way.

On those points, the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid wins out against just about any other tripod I’ve owned or used – including that Sachtler I mentioned. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a lovely tripod. Sachtler are a movie and TV set staple for a reason. But for most of my needs, this fits better.

Manfrotto XCHANGE Quick-Release

And we’ve not even gotten onto the coolest feature yet. The Manfrotto ONE Hybrid utilises Manfrotto’s new XCHANGE system, offering you a locking quick release for easily swapping heads.

Separate bases are available, so that you can mount that 500X head on things like sliders, motion control rigs and even other sets of tripod legs. The mounting plate built into the underside of the 500X head is also available as a separate quick-release plate. So, you can use just about any tripod head with the ONE Hybrid legs, too.

Swapping the heads is easy. The base rotates to unlock the plate and remove the head, and a switch to hold it so it can’t be rotated and unlocked. You’ll want to make sure this lock is engaged any time you move the tripod with the camera on it, just to be safe. It’s easy to accidentally rotate it while moving it around if you’re not careful.

Manfrotto 500X Fluid Video Head

And while we’re talking about the head, the Manfrotto 500X is a nice upgrade over the Manfrotto 500 head that came with the Manfrotto 190X Video tripod kit. You’d need to get the quick-release base to use the 500X on the 190X Video legs, but it is doable.

And while you might think it’s not worth it to put the 500X head on the 190X legs… Even if there were no other improvements in manufacturing quality or the smoothness of operation, this next feature might be worth the head upgrade on older tripods, too, for some of you.

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Vertical video and photos at the push of a button

The base plate can be rotated – and locked! – at 90 degrees. Simply press a button, rotate your camera, wait for the click, and it’s locked at 90 degrees. Press the button, rotate it the other way, wait for the click, and now it’s horizontal again.

Now, for video shooters, the implications are obvious. It lets you quickly and easily shoot vertical video without having to deal with cages or L brackets or weird adapters to mount your camera sideways. But for stills, this makes this tripod very viable for photographers.

While I typically favour video tripods for horizontally-oriented landscapes due to the levelling base, they can also be great for more general photography, too, especially for things like stitched panoramics.

I typically orient my camera vertically when shooting stitched panoramics. This lets me capture as much of the sky as possible – where it can often be featureless, making it difficult to stitch. Vertical lets me stitch from the land at the bottom while maximising the sky.

While the 500X is obviously not a true panoramic head, for stitched panoramic landscapes that don’t need to be surveyor-level accurate, that quick flip combined with the levelling base makes this a great option for pano stitchers.

Real World Use

So far, I’ve used the Manfrotto ONE during two real-world jobs during my testing. First, there was DIYP’s coverage of The Photography Show, where we randomly bumped into Spud Man. A very nice guy if any of you have been thinking about paying Tamworth a visit.

In a fast-paced environment like a trade show or similar events where you need to set up and pack down very quickly to move from one spot to another, the Manfrotto ONE absolutely shines.

Moving from booth to booth was a breeze. Setting up and getting the shot ready to go was very quick upon arriving at a booth. Packing down and getting ready to move on to the next interview was just as speedy. Do make sure that the quick-release plate is fully locked down before you throw it over your shoulder, though.

I also used it recently while shooting a project at Barclay’s Hampden, Scotland’s National Stadium, during the Scotland v Japan match. I can’t say much about what we shot, but I think we covered just about every part of the stadium that day, and the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid made shifting the camera between locations and setting up quickly at each one a doddle.

And once we were done with our tasks for the day, I left it sitting with the Insta360 X4 Air attached to shoot some 360-degree timelapse of the stadium filling up before the game started.

What was that other tripod?

I mentioned earlier that the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid would basically become a drop-in replacement for my Manfrotto 190X Video tripod. But I initially thought it might become a replacement for my Gitzo Legende tripod, too. At least to a degree.

I hoped that the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid would replace more of the Legende’s duties, but it hasn’t. I just expected too much of it for photography. It will still take over stitched pano and landscape photography duties, but the Legende will still see plenty of use.

What I didn’t expect, though, was that the Manfrotto ONE might actually take the place of the 635 Fast Single legs in many instances. There are times in the past when I’ve taken the bigger, heavier 635 instead of the 190X video, purely for those single twist-lock legs.

The single locking lever of the ONE Hybrid means that the problem doesn’t need solving anymore. I just take the ONE Hybrid and don’t even think about the 635. There will be times that the 635 will still be handy, but for the most part, I think it can handle 99% of what I use my 635 for.

It’s effectively replaced both the 190X Video and the 635 Fast Single for most things.

Final Thoughts

The Manfrotto ONE Hybrid is a significant step up from the Manfrotto 190X. And while technically not an upgrade to that tripod, it does very much feel like a sort of unofficial spiritual successor.

I genuinely can’t think of a single way the 190X Video & 500 fluid head combo beats the ONE Hybrid, except perhaps for the price. That being said, if you can’t quite stretch to the cost of the ONE Hybrid, the 190X Video is still an extremely capable tripod and head, and I don’t think you’d be disappointed with it.

But I think you’d be over the moon with the ONE Hybrid, if you can justify the extra cost.

If I had a couple of complaints… Which I don’t, really, but if I did… I’d like to see a handle come for this tripod. Something that attaches to the threaded socket on the side of the top that lets us carry it easily by our side in one hand.

The other is the bag it comes with. It’s great, I like it, I really do. But the problem is, if I’ve already got a big backpack full of gear on, I can’t easily carry this tripod, too. I wish it had a pair of regular carry handles, as well as the shoulder strap, so that I can just carry it in one free hand.

But that might just be me being nitpicky.

Overall, the Manfrotto ONE Hybrid is probably the best all-rounder video tripod I’ve used for under $1,000. It’s not going to satisfy all of everyone’s video tripod needs, especially if you’re doing something a little unique or niche, but it satisfies about 95% of mine.

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Price and Availability

The Manfrotto ONE Hybrid is available to buy now with the 500X fluid head at $599 for the aluminium version or $799 for the carbon fibre version. You can also buy the aluminium and carbon legs without the head for $449 and $649, respectively. But remember, you’ll need to get an XCHANGE quick-release plate for your existing tripod head to use it with this.

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