If you're a professional photographer, or aspire to be, this is not the tripod you'd choose. But for the price, this is at the top of the class. It's sturdy, particularly the way I'll be using it with the lowest set of legs retracted. The moving parts all move freely and lock solidly into place as they should. The pan and tilt isn't exactly fluid, but it's much smoother than the rest in this price range. The pan tension is adjustable with a knob. The tilt tension seems fixed, but at a reasonable value. I did notice some spring back when panning and less so when tilting. If I pan as fluidly as I can with some tension so it pans smoothly, if I release the handle the image slips backward slightly. If I instead stop panning but hold force on the handle, it'll settle in place and there is little to no jump back on the image when the handle is released a second later. The clips that lock the sliding legs are counterintuitive. I want to pull on the long tabs on the hinge side, but the actual tabs on the other side of the clip are much shorter and are beveled so they don't look like pull tabs. The false pull tabs are rotation limit stops to prevent the hinge from being opened too far. The instruction card is a joke. I enjoy poor translations, and this is one of the funnier ones. If you need a tripod, you can easily figure this out without any instructions. There is a small bubble level, which is a nice feature if you plan on panning to make panorama shots to stitch together, or you don't want people watching your panned seascape videos to get a sinking feeling as the water seems to be rising. I bought this tripod to hold a $200 Casio digital camera steady while taking high speed video or while capturing repeated high zoom images of a target that's 100 yards away. This tripod works very well for that purpose, because it's solid, inexpensive and relatively lightweight and compact.