Tripods have been coming up here with reasonable regularity and I have several for which I have not yet published a review.  Ideally, I should go to the range and make a proper video, but it is approximately eight thousand degrees outside in the Southwest and when you try to look up the UV index for this altitude in New Mexico, it basically says "are you f-ing retarded? this is when you stay home".  Perhaps, I should go back to making videos in my living room.

Either way, I have several SunwayFoto tripods here for review and I will do a video or two on them.  Now, that I have been using them for a while, I have to admit that they are well made and that they hold up well.  They also offer one hell of a deal.  The latest one I received is the 2830 and I will absolutely go on the record that if you are new to tripods and shooting off of them, this is the best deal going: https://sunwayfoto-store.com/products/t2830cs-carbon-fiber-tripod-for-hunting-with-inverted-ball-head-arca-swiss-picatinny-rail-adapter-clamp?ref=DLO&variant=42653765468318

This bundles a proper shooting tripod with Arca//Picatinny clamp and a cradle for conventionally stocked rifles. It is a pretty lightweight tripod, so it is not as sturdy as some with larger diameter legs, but the low axis head is very good.  The tripod is light.  Three section legs are quick to work.  It is plenty sturdy enough for most things you do with normal rifles.  If I were starting with tripod shooting, I'd focus on rimfire and midly recoiling ARs.  For that, it is perfect.  For typical hunting rifles, it is plenty sturdy enough for inside of 500/600 yards.

Sunway seems to be serious about the shooting market, so use "DLO" discount code to get another 5% off.

Now, I'll be clear: if you ask me what I will be taking to he field with me come hunting season, it will be the Gen2 Ascent from Spartan Precision.  The guys at Sunway will not like me saying it, but it is the truth.  However, for that, you have to buy into their magnetic stem ecosystem and the tripod itself is almost $1200 plus you'll need a few mounting adapters for your guns and optics.  If you are willing to spend this much money, it is the best made tripod I have.  However, if you are new to tripod shooting, I would suggest a smaller financial investment and more practice time. 

The tripod that is the subject of this article is the T3650 that is much beefier measurably heavier and undoubtedly sturdier.  Price-wise, it is a very good value for the money if you are looking for something that can carry a lot of weight yet collapse into a package that will fit into your luggage in a pinch.

Purely for shooting, having too many leg segments is not ideal.  The more segments you have, the longer it will take to deploy the legs and every interconnect between the legs adds weight.  T3650, as the name suggests, uses 36mm diameter carbon fiber tubes and has five leg segments.

I started putting together a spec table of all the different tripods I have.  There will be more columns here as I go along:

As the specs suggest, it is a burly tripod that gets pretty tall, carries a lot of weight and packs into a fairly small size.  It comes with the usual accessories like spike feet, allen wrenches, adapter plate, etc.  More importantly, it also comes with a couple of different options to fit nearly any head onto the tripod body.  Mine arrived with the IB-65 head and also flat top and bowl adapters.  I ended up swapping the head for the IB-60 inverted ballhead which is also in these pcitures.

They have a few IB-65 heads from the first batch that did not lock all the way.  It locks, but if I mount a rifle in it toward the front of the stock, it can't quite hold it.  

Also, something I found with a large diameter integrated ball head is that when changing the shooting angle, the rotation axis is offset sufficiently far that the rifle buttpadtranslates forward or back a fair bit.

The IB-60 with the rotation axis much closer to the gun, keeps the back end of the stock more consistently.

Also, IB-60 has a tightening clamp where I can more easily adjust the ballhead tension.   The long lever of the IB-65 is either on or off.  With the IB-60, I can lock it tight or leave with some tension yet movable.

https://sunwayfoto-store.com/products/ib-60-inverted-ball-head-for-hunting-tripod-load-55lb25kg?_pos=1&_sid=4251fd49d&_ss=r&ref=DLO

In theory, IB-60 is a little taller, so it might be slightly less stable for shooting, but in practice, I can't tell the difference.  On balance, bowl top tripods like the Pro32 from Field Optics I have are still the steadiest, but we are splitting hairs here.  TC3650 can be set up as a bowl top, but I was looking for more flexibilty here, so I settled on the inverted ballhead.

Overall height of the tripod ended up about eye level for me.  I am 6ft tall and the clamp is right at the same height as my eyes.

In terms of problems with the tripod itself, I really did not have any.  Everything works as it should, but also keep in mind that it had primarily range use for me.  It packs short, but it is not a lightweight tripod.  For hunting, I prefer tripods in the 4lbs and under range.  Another thing to keep in mind when thinking of tripods is that smallest diameter it can pack into it.  That can make a difference whether you can slide into a side pocket of your pack or have to bring an extra bag for it.  It does come with a respectable carry bag.

TC3650 clocks in at just over 6 lbs with the IB-60 head.  However, given how stable it is, the weight is reasonable.  The height becomes very useful when shooting off of complicated terrain since it has enough leg length to accomodate slopes and inclines.  Another advantage of shorter leg segments is that if I want to collapse the legs and open them to the widest splay angle, I do not need quite as much space.  It is a very flexible tripod in terms of accomodating weird terrain.  The clamp natively works for both Arca and picatinny Rails, so you can adapt almost anything to it.

What is my final conclusion?  It is not a cheap tripod.  For how much you get, it is not an expensive one either.  Build quality is very good.  The issues with the IB-65 head that I had appear to be isolated to a couple samples from an early batch.  There is very little you can not do with this tripod be it hunting, shooting, observation or photography, but the price of flexibility is weight.  It is not obsenely heavy by any means and to go lighter you will give something up.  If you are looking for a "one and done" tripod, you could do a lot worse than this one.

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