@Lao Mai: Huawei Mate X7 Professional Photography Kit

• Reference price: ¥1,699

Pairing a foldable phone with a professional photography kit is definitely not something most people would do. But Huawei teamed up with Tietou to specifically develop this product, and as SSPAI, we had to try it for ourselves to see what it’s really about.

First off, there’s no need to question the materials or build quality of Tietou’s products. Everything feels solid and well made, fully matching the premium feel of the Mate X7. The packaging even carries a “Designed by Huawei” label, so it’s likely that Huawei was deeply involved and set specific requirements for the final product.

The overall design is well thought out and balances everyday practicality. When used just as a phone case, it comes with a built-in metal stand that works in both landscape and portrait orientations. The combination of matte metal and finely textured vegan leather, along with a grid-patterned suede lining inside, protects the phone body well and doesn’t feel inferior to other phone cases priced at three or four hundred yuan.

The Bluetooth grip attaches at the stand position and feels very secure, with a dedicated anti-drop locking mechanism. You can basically hold it with one hand and shoot comfortably. The grip has separate buttons for photo and video, along with zoom and exposure controls, and even a front/rear camera toggle for quick selfies. It’s quite thoughtfully designed. It also supports a standard screw mount, so you can attach it to a tripod.

As for the lens, there’s a central adapter that slides onto the camera ring of the case, and the lens is then mounted onto that adapter. The advantage is that you can remove the lens at any time and go back to the native camera. One thing to note is that the lens only mounts over the telephoto camera and covers the other lenses, so if you want to use the main camera, you’ll need to remove the external lens. This is probably part of the design logic. Still, it would be even better if there were a dedicated inner dust cover.

Finally, let’s talk about image quality. This isn’t a teleconverter in the traditional sense, since Huawei’s built-in 10× telephoto is already very capable. The value of this lens lies in allowing you to capture up-close details and depth-of-field effects at around 13.5×, essentially a lossless extension rather than a pure “super-telephoto for birding.” At 27×, you can still get usable results to capture some unique scenes, whereas the native 27× zoom relies heavily on AI reconstruction. You can see more sample photos here.

Overall, the kit leaves a pretty good impression. The Mate X7 itself leans toward being a true all-around flagship this time, with a complete camera setup, a stronger hinge, and improved water resistance. It works well for everyday business use, and if you actually want to head out, travel, or get a bit adventurous, there’s no need to switch phones. This photography kit complements that by meeting travel photography needs, delivering better image quality and detail at telephoto ranges beyond 10×. It’s slightly more expensive than similar products, but in my opinion, it’s worth it.

Oh, and I also paired it with a magnetic wrist strap from Xiao Sun, along with a matching shoulder strap. It really makes the whole setup look the part.

@Lotta:

Shanghai Translation Publishing House Brass Clips

• Reference prices: Cold Crow Café brass clip ¥39; “Sea Book Fair” painted brass clip ¥48

I’d had the cultural merchandise from Qihai Manufacturing Bureau, an imprint under Shanghai Translation Publishing House, sitting in my favorites for ages. They fall squarely into that category of beautifully made, slightly pricey, and of somewhat questionable practicality. So it wasn’t until a recent sitewide discount that I finally made up my mind and bought two clips: the “Cold Crow Café” brass clip and the “Sea Book Fair” painted brass book clip.

The design of “Cold Crow Café” is inspired by the writer Franz Kafka. In Czech, the word for “crow” shares the same pronunciation as Kafka’s surname, which is where the name comes from. The front resembles a café sign, engraved with words like “DRINKS, SNACKS, SALAD,” while the back features quotes from Kafka’s letters: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us” and “AUTHOR OF THE NIGHT,” suggesting that the café hosts a reading night once a month. The vintage aesthetic, the tactile depth of the engraving, and the strong literary backstory make it genuinely hard not to fall in love with.

Compared with the brass clip itself, which gleams with a metallic sheen under the light, the packaging feels rather plain. It’s just a thin paper box printed with related graphics, and the clip isn’t very well secured inside. When it arrived, it was already rattling around in the box, though fortunately there were no obvious signs of damage from shipping.

The “Sea Book Fair” isn’t a real event either, but another fictional setting created by Qihai Manufacturing Bureau. The front shows a sailing ship, while the back depicts a palace known as the “Crystal Pavilion,” the venue where the book fair is supposedly held. There’s a hole on the back of the clip so it can be hung up to hold manuscripts, tickets, postcards, and the like. The blue painted finish is very beautiful, though quite a bit of color rubbed off onto the inside of the box during shipping. In actual use, you might occasionally rub off a tiny bit of blue paint as well, but it’s almost negligible.

If you’re just clipping loose papers or notebooks, I’ve bought acrylic clips for a few yuan that do the job just as well, aside from being lighter. But when it comes to holding thicker, heavier book pages, that’s where a brass clip really earns its keep. It may sound like I’m forcing myself to invent use cases for them, but when something this good-looking comes into my home, as long as it can stay in sight and please the eye, it doesn’t really matter what it’s used for.

Cream Puppy Spring Couplets

• Reference price: ¥43

Big data really nailed my taste this time. The moment I saw this set of Spring Festival couplets, I ordered it almost without hesitation—it’s just too cute. Compared with the Pingu couplets I bought last year, the cuteness level has gone up another notch, though the price has doubled as well. The Pingu gift box had 19 pieces for a bit over 50 yuan, while this set comes with just seven pieces priced at 49 yuan. That said, these couplets are made of felt, which seems more durable, and as an original design from an independent shop, the price feels acceptable (especially considering how adorable they are).

The theme of this set is cream puppies. On a dark gray pedestal tray sits a pile of bright red strawberries and a canelé, with a cute cream puppy standing on top of each one. The text reads, “Meow-meow and woof-woof by your side / life as sweet as cream.” As traditional couplets go, they’re neither properly parallel nor particularly strict in tonal patterns, so those who care about such details may want to think twice.

The packaging is very simple: all seven pieces are rolled together and placed in a transparent bag, with adhesive strips and 3M magnetic stickers included. The print quality is quite good, with almost no color difference. The seller does note that machine cutting may leave slight white edges, but unless you look very closely, it’s hard to spot any flaws.

They’re so cute that I couldn’t bear to put them on the front door, so I stuck them on the interior room doors instead. Although the seller’s example shows all seven pieces displayed together, mixing and matching them in groups works just as well. I felt that putting everything on one door looked a bit crowded, so I split them into two groups and put them on two different doors—sharing the love (not really).

At first, I worried that the strawberry-and-cream elements might not match the festive New Year vibe, but once they were up, the bright red color did feel celebratory. The room instantly became more lively and cheerful.

@waychane: New AirTag

• Reference price: ¥249

Apple recently released a new generation of AirTag, and I just got my hands on the new model today. Here are some quick impressions.

Starting with the design: there are no changes at all in terms of appearance, size, or thickness between the new and old AirTag. This means that accessories purchased for the previous AirTag—such as key rings and protective cases—remain fully compatible with the new version.

The only visible difference in appearance lies in the printed text around the device. On the older AirTag, the text uses an initial capital letter followed by lowercase letters, while the new AirTag switches to all-uppercase text and adds an extra “NFC” label.

The main upgrades in the new AirTag compared to the old one are in tracking range and speaker volume. As for volume, you can clearly hear that the new AirTag is louder, with a noticeably higher pitch. The sound feels sharper and more piercing to the ear.

In terms of tracking range, based on my real-world testing at home, the new AirTag does indeed start picking up signals from a slightly greater distance than the old one. With a load-bearing wall in between, the new AirTag was able to detect a weak signal when I was just two or three steps away from the wall. With the old AirTag, however, I had to move almost right up to the wall before it could begin detecting the AirTag in the other room.

As for accessories, Apple’s official key ring has, unsurprisingly, moved away from leather and continues to use the FineWoven material introduced earlier. In terms of feel, it’s relatively smooth, and visually I think it still looks refined enough. Whether this key ring will be as prone to staining or marks as the previous FineWoven phone cases, though, will have to be seen after some longer-term use.

@Clyde: Belkin Stage PowerGrip

• Reference price: ¥239

Is it a 9,000mAh power bank that doubles as a “camera grip,” or a Bluetooth shutter grip that just happens to work as a power bank? No matter how you look at it, Belkin’s Stage PowerGrip is the kind of product that sparks an immediate urge to buy. As soon as it finished its overseas trial run and appeared on domestic e-commerce platforms, I predictably failed to resist a colleague’s recommendation and placed an order right away.

As a power bank, the Stage PowerGrip supports 7.5W wireless charging. There’s no brute force or magic here, but considering that, on one hand, the iPhone 17 and Pixel 9 Pro I have on hand are both rather stingy when it comes to wireless charging specs, and on the other hand, this product is clearly positioned for photography use, which inevitably comes with noticeable heat buildup, this charging power actually feels acceptable. The 9,300mAh capacity is enough to charge the above devices nearly twice over. Add to that 3C certification and a 10N strong magnet that I’ve tested and confirmed won’t shake loose, and there’s really not much to nitpick about the overall wireless charging experience.

On the wired side, single-port wired charging tops out at a not-at-all “speeding” 15W. Since it comes with a built-in USB-C cable and also includes an extra USB-C port, you can technically charge three devices at the same time when combined with magnetic wireless charging. That said, aside from emergencies, I doubt anyone would actually do this—the efficiency is indeed quite low.

So between the two ways of thinking mentioned at the beginning, I personally lean toward seeing this as a camera grip that just happens to function as a power bank. At its core, the Belkin Stage PowerGrip is a Bluetooth shutter controller designed with camera ergonomics in mind. The grip area doesn’t use any particularly special materials to differentiate it, but the surface texture is well done and provides decent anti-slip performance. The circular ring around the charging coil, shaped like a camera lens, and the spot that looks a bit like a viewfinder—though it’s more likely where a flash would be—are used to house a small display showing remaining battery level, charging status, and Bluetooth shutter connection status. These details show a bit of thoughtful design.

The Belkin Stage PowerGrip even includes a standard 1/4-inch tripod screw mount on the bottom. Combined with the magnetic attachment, it works for horizontal shots, vertical shots, and even shooting upside down. In terms of grip orientation, you can basically use it however you’d use a camera. The only real downside is the somewhat odd placement of the shutter button. If it were on the top instead of the front, it would probably feel more natural to use.

One more thing: since it connects via Bluetooth and maps the shutter to the volume buttons, this shutter button only supports taking photos. Half-press focusing, zooming, and similar functions are off the table.

In fact, beyond its dual roles as a part-time power bank and a plastic photography accessory, the Belkin Stage PowerGrip also works quite well as a wireless charging stand. The camera-grip form factor means it can stand upright with a stable center of gravity, and the magnetic design further reduces cable clutter compared to typical wireless charging docks. At home, I often just leave charging enabled and drop my Pixel or iPhone onto it, using the screensaver or standby display as a secondary screen. Seen this way, charging might actually be the least important function of this product.