At this point, I feel I’ve had my fill of selfie stick reviews. With that said, I’m still hopelessly fascinated by any type of new technology, which is why I was so eager to review this particular selfie stick. While the vast majority of selfie sticks use Bluetooth to communicate with your smartphone, this particular selfie stick, Cable take pole Model: Z07-5S, uses a simple wired connection to your smartphone’s headphone jack. As a result, there’s no need to pair it, meaning it’s hassle free to share with friends and family, and it’s completely battery free, meaning no need to worry about keeping it charged so it can be stored and still be ready to go indefinitely.

The Cable take pole (only $7.99 on Amazon at the moment) uses the same physical Monopod foundation as other selfie sticks I’ve reviewed in the past, which means it has the same sometimes difficult to press shutter button, rubberized grip, fully extendable (telescoping) pole, and a removable smartphone holder that expands to accommodate even large phones like my Apple iPhone 6 Plus. The only difference is that aforementioned 3.5mm headphone jack cable.

The instructions, such as they are, are badly translated English, which shouldn’t be surprising given the product name, Cable take pole, and are found on the back of the box. Fortunately, the instructions really aren’t necessary, especially if you’re an Apple iPhone or iPad user (of course tablets don’t fit in the holder). The built-in photo taking app supports this device, which more or less mimics pressing the device’s volume button (which is Apple’s mobile hardware shutter button), right out of the box. If you’re an Android user or owner of another platform, you’ll need a photo app that can be configured to detect volume button presses as shutter presses. Given the vagaries of Android and other platforms, specific instructions really can’t be given, but rest assured it should be relatively trivial enabling the feature if it’s not already present.

While I still think the oft-used Monopod platform shutter button is too difficult to press at times, making for the occasionally shaky selfie, the bottom line is this product does work. For those frustrated by the pairing and charging with Bluetooth-based selfie sticks, this makes a wonderful alternative. One potential issue to keep in mind, however, is that if you like to take video, rather than photo, selfies, plugging something into your headphone jack may also disable the internal microphone, meaning your videos will not have sound.

Thanks to szmittech for the review unit.