Apexel 36X lens kit review: give your smartphone a monster telephoto reach

Founded in 2011, Apexel are an award-winning company who cater for the needs of the ever-growing smartphone market by offering a wide range of lenses. I’d already been impressed with Apexel's PhoneMicro5 Smartphone Microscope Kit with its ability to capture detail at a macro and microscopic level.

As a keen smartphone photographer I enjoy using the iPhone 16 Pro’s 5x (120 mm) optical zoom, as this enables me to capture candid street portraits of distant subjects without distracting them. In theory, I can dial past the 5x optical range to get a closer view of my subject with a digital zoom. However I never zoom digitally, as this can lead to a fuzzy-looking picture (though on the iPhone 16 Pro the digitally zoomed results are surprisingly good). I was therefore excited to get hold of an Apexel lens kit that promised to capture distant subjects more clearly with an impressive 36x telephoto range. 

Moment is another company who produce add-on lenses for smartphones, but to attach these lenses your phone needs to reside in a dedicated Moment case with a built-in lens adaptor. If you upgrade your phone you’ll need to buy a new Moment case to continue using your lenses. 

Apexel, on the other hand, favors a universal spring and clip mount that should fit most smartphones. Each Apexel lens can be screwed onto a thread on the clip mount. This means you can easily use an Apexel lens with any smartphone and the  Apexel 36X Telephoto Lens screwed securely to my chunky iPhone 16 Plus via its mount. I decided to use the iPhone 16 Plus to test the Apexel 36X Telephoto Lens because at 2x (52mm) it lacked the  5x (120mm) optical zoom range of my iPhone 16 Pro, so the 16 Plus needed more assistance to capture distant subjects.

Specifications

Pricing

The recommended retail price for the Apexel 36X Telephoto Lens Kit is £64.00, though I found it on the Amazon Store for less at £58.99/$69.99. It wasn’t available in the Australian Amazon Store at the time of writing my review - but can be bought direct from Apexel for $AU106.

I think that the price is very reasonable considering the extra range of subjects that become available thanks to the 36x optical zoom. Given its relatively cheap price the lens has a solid metal build with glass rather than plastic lenses, plus you get all the accessories you need to shoot sharp shots and stable clips. There are some noticeable blue fringes of chromatic aberration in high contrasting areas which cheaper lenses can suffer from. But this is a cheap (but reasonably priced) lens that will expand your abilities to shoot new subjects with your smartphone.

Design and handling

The star of the Apexel 36X Telephoto Lens Kit is of course the telephoto lens itself. The main body is constructed of a reassuringly solid black aluminum, with an ABS plastic focus ring at the tip. There’s also a lens hood at the tip to prevent the sun’s glare from spoiling your shots and a lens cap to protect the glass component when the kit is in transit. 

I wondered if the lens hood could be removed, but it turns out that it when you unscrew it, the lens and focus slider become exposed. I discovered that the exposed telescopic focus mechanism was greased to help you pull focus smoothly. However after screwing the detached hood unit back onto the lens I found that the focus operation was stiffer to perform. So I highly recommend that you don’t unscrew the front of the unit. Fortunately I’d done all my testing before I started taking things apart for this design and handling section! 

At the rear of the lens is a small screw thread designed to attach the lens to the supplied universal phone clamp. When the lens is not attached to a smartphone there’s a small plastic cap to protect the glass element at the rear of the lens. It’s such a small cap that I’d be scared of losing it when it’s detached, but it could be stored safely in the supplied fabric lens carry case that ships with the Apexel 36X Telephoto Lens Kit.

The universal phone clamp’s springs enable you to mount any smartphone into it. A slider on the mount needs to be positioned so that the clamp’s screw-threaded hole overlaps your smartphone’s main camera. You can then screw the telephoto lens into the mount and enjoy a 36x optical zoom in your phone’s Camera app.

When you look through the zoom lens the slightest movements are greatly  exaggerated, so you’re in danger of capturing blurred stills if shooting handheld. For this reason the Apexel 36X Telephoto Lens Kit ships with a mini tripod. The tripod is made of a sturdy black aluminium alloy but it has a limited range of height adjustment. 

Oh, one last thing. The kit also ships with a rubber eye-piece that you can pop onto the rear of the lens. This enables you to use it as a monocular to get a closer look at distant subjects with the naked eye. However, I found that the field of view was very narrow when using the telephoto lens as a monocular.

Performance

Above: sample video showing the Apexel 36x in action on a model shoot, and filming birds and squirrel  in my backyard

I’ve enjoyed watching wildlife in my back garden for years but thanks to the telephoto capabilities of the 36x Apexel lens I was able to capture good quality stills and clips of them for the first time, though I did have to climb a slight of a learning curve before I could get good results. The supplied mini tripod is essential to keep the lens steady and the slightest wobble can add shake-induced blur. For example when shooting video with the iPhone 16 Pro you can also tap an icon to capture an additional photo. Each time I did this I could see the camera ‘bump’ slightly in the video clip, which spoiled the footage.

Before capturing shots of birds at a feeder suspended in a tree I needed to set up the tripod. At only 27.5 cm at maximum height the mini tripod had to be placed on a kitchen table to get a good view of the bird feeder. The next challenge was to get the birds in focus. Due to the extreme 36x zoom there’s a very narrow band of focus, but I was able to turn the focus ring until the image looked sharp on my iPhone 16 Plus’s display. This narrow band of focus added an impressively soft and abstract bokeh to the background trees.  

I started off filming the birds using the iPhone’s 1x (26mm) optical zoom (magnified 36 times by the Apexel lens). This gave me a sharp shot of the feeding birds. I then tapped on the iPhone’s  2x (52mm) option for an even closer look at my feathered friends. This captured slightly softer looking footage (even when tweaking the focus) and blue chromatic aberration fringes in high contrast areas were more noticeable.)

When shooting video with the Apexel 36x telephoto lens I enjoyed using the iPhone 16 Plus’s Slo-Mo mode, especially when birds flew in and out of shot. See my supporting video. I then turned my lens on the distant tree line in an attempt to capture a squirrel. I could see the squirrels with my naked eye jumping from branch to branch but the 36x zoom gave me such a narrow field of view that it was impossible to target them, especially when trying to adjust the iPhone’s angle of tilt using the tripod’s limited ball-joint head movements. I then decided to frame a particular section of branches, shoot in Slo-Mo and was (eventually) lucky enough to capture a squirrel entering and leaving the frame.  

I then headed to the city to test the Apexel 36x telephoto lens with a human subject in an urban environment. After aligning the spring clip mount with the iPhone’s main camera I found it a bit of a fiddle to screw the long telephoto lens into the mount’s small threaded hole. To attach the telephoto lens (and attached iPhone) to the tripod you need to slide the supplied plastic O ring along the barrel of the lens. The O ring has a tiny thread that you can screw the tripod into. You can rotate the telephoto’s barrel in the O ring so that your smartphone is at a portrait or landscape orientation but initially I found that the ring would slip (especially when the phone was rotated to a horizontal/landscape position.)  However I found that by rotating the tripod’s thread it added pressure to the O ring (making it grip the telephoto lens barrel more strongly). My iPhone would then stay nice and level on the tripod and no longer slip.

London’s Barbican centre has impressively long stone walk ways so I placed Maddy my model at one end of a concrete corridor and popped the tripod mounted Apexel telephoto lens on a waist height barrier.  Maddy was a dot on the horizon to my naked eye but she filled the iPhone’s frame when using the 1x camera and the Apexel 36x telephoto lens (see video). 

As the lens produces such a shallow depth of field it was a challenge to get her staying sharp, especially when she started walking towards camera. When using the 2x (52mm) iPhone camera alongside the 36x telephoto I got a more cinematic look, with close and far objects appearing compressed together. I was also able to capture a mid-shot of Maddy at the far end of the corridor and the background bokeh was even stronger. However the high contrasting edges of her black leather coat and the lighter blurred bokeh created noticeable blue fringes of chromatic aberration, where the elements in the lens failed to focus various wavelengths of light effectively on the camera sensor. This is a sign of cheaper lens but at £58.99/$69.99 this is a cheap lens, so I can’t really complain about a little fringing! 

Verdict

The Apexel 36X Telephoto Lens Kit opens up a wide range of new subjects to the smartphone user, making it a useful purchase for nature photographers and videographers. Budding paparazzi ‘togs might find it useful though it should be a challenge to get your subject in shot using such a tight zoom. 

Personally I preferred using the Apexel 36X Telephoto Lens to shoot video as I could tap the shutter button and leave the camera untouched during a recording. When tapping to snap a still there’s a danger of capturing shake-induced motion blur as any movement is greatly exaggerated in a 36x telephoto image and the mini tripod isn’t heavy enough to negate this. For a small price increase you can buy a version of the kit that includes a camera remote trigger and this would be a sensible purchase if you plan to shoot more stills than clips. 

As well as capturing clips and stills of wildlife I enjoyed shooting my model with the Apexel telephoto lens in an urban environment, especially when the lens compressed foreground, mid-ground and background elements to create a more cinematic look. However I did struggle to get a sharp focus on my distant model and she began to blur when walking towards the camera due to the extremely shallow depth of field. The lens is also prone to capturing chromatic aberration around contrasting areas (such as dark branches against a bright sky), but this is not surprising given its affordable price and as they say, you get what you pay for - and this kit is still worth paying for despite its limitations.

Alternatives

Apexel 20-40X Zoom Telephoto Lens Kit
The Apexel telephoto lens featured in our main review offers a fixed optical magnification of 36x. For greater control over magnification and composition, the Apexel 20-40X Zoom Telephoto Lens Kit is a versatile alternative to the fixed 36x telephoto. The 20-40X Zoom Telephoto lens includes both a focus ring and a zoom ring, providing more flexibility. It ships with a mini tripod, enhancing the stability of your photography.

Moment Tele 58mm M-Series lens
If you own a Moment smartphone case then it makes sense to stick with a Moment telephoto such as the Moment Tele 58mm. It’s equivalent to a 2x zoom so probably more useful to owners of older smartphones with lower optical zoom capabilities.  It is great for both photos and videos comes with a secure rubber lens cap and a material carry case.