Moment Lens Review

Being a professional photographer, I became interested in phone lenses as soon as they started hitting the market. I have tried everything from cheap to expensive, so I have a pretty good sample to compare from. I started using mobile phone lenses back when I had an iPhone 4. I now own an iPhone XR and just as cell phone cameras have come along way, so have mobile cell phone lenses and the quality of a Moment Lens rivals that of DSLR lenses.

I don’t recall how I came across Moment Lenses, honestly, it was probably from a fellow photographer or hiker. Moment lenses are definitely higher end with a price point of about $100 depending on the lens you want, but they offer several accessories (such as filters).

For the sake of this review, I will be reviewing the Macro Lens v2.

Examples of the Macro Lens

With Macro Lens
No Lens
With Macro Lens
With Macro Lens

What I Love

Great Quality. The quality of these lenses are unmatched. Now granted I only have cheaper lenses to compare it to, however, they produce nice crisp images.

Durable. These lenses are really durable. Not made from cheap plastic like others and are very well built.

Nice Size. The lenses are a nice size. Much bigger than your typical cheap ones out there. I love this as it allows me to have a better grip on them when handling them.

Filters. You can buy filters for your Moment lenses! They have ND, UV, and CPL filters available for purchase to step up your mobile phone photography. I haven’t had the chance to use them, but would love to try out the ND filters for my waterfall pics! Filters though will cost you anywhere from $38-$330

My Dislikes

You have to buy an additional phone case to use them. Moment lenses do not clip on (like many you see) and require you to buy an additional phone case ($30) in addition to the lens in order to use it.

The phone cases offered are blah. Granted this is just my opinion, but they only offer 3 different “styles” to choose from and let’s just say the style is lacking. Unless you love minimalist styles.

Phone cases feel cheap and don’t fit right. I ordered a Moment phone case for my XR. Imagine my disappointment when it felt cheap. Add into the fact that I felt like it did not protect my phone as well as the OTTERBOX Symmetry case I had on it, nor did it fit correctly. It felt like the case would come off easily, as the phone was not snug inside.

Only comes with the front lens cap. If you want rear lens cap that will be an additional $5. Come on now! We are paying anywhere from $90-$150 per lens, the least the company could do is throw in the rear lens cap!

They changed the mounts. So the moment lenses they sell now are v2 lenses. The older lenses do not fit in the new mount (cases) they have, rendering all these older lenses useless. In fact, I have the 60mm telephoto lens that I NEVER got to even use! By the time I realized that they made an adapter to mount the old lenses to the new mounting system they had already stopped selling the adapter, so now I have a $90 paperweight. Awesome huh?! Wonder when they will change the mount again rendering all these v2 lenses useless?

Overall Thoughts on Moment Lenses

After creating a hack that would allow me to use my Moment Lens on any case I want (video and blog post to come soon) I love these lenses. The quality and crispness of the pictures are amazing!

The one thing that does concern me is that they will change the mount yet again, therefore forcing me to buy a whole new set of lenses. For this reason, I am hesitant to purchase any other lenses from them, but have no issue putting them on my wishlist =)

There is another strong competitor in the market that I just found out about. The lenses appear to be of the same quality, however, are slightly less expensive. They also don’t have a history of changing mounts. I will be checking them out soon and comparing the two, so be on the lookout for that!