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Photography Accessories

Is the PocketWizard Plus VE Transceiver Worth Your Money?

Chris Gampat
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Last updated on 05/11/2026
05/21/2026
5 Mins read
A hand holding a PocketWizard Plus IIIe remote on a wooden desk with cables and devices nearby.
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No one on staff that’s been around and testing camera gear long enough would’ve suspected that PocketWizard would’ve made a new announcement in 2026. Yet, we’ve got the new PocketWizard Plus VE Transceiver. Before the days of flash and studio strobe systems having dedicated radio transmitters, everyone used to have the capabilities to control each other’s lights to a certain extent. And universal triggers were pretty common. Things changed though. In a world where everything is silo’d, how does a new PocketWizard hold up?

The first thing you should know is that I haven’t used PocketWizard transcievers in over a decade. In fact, it was 2013 when I reviewed the Plux X. Now, in 2026, PocketWizard is back with new hardware in the form of the Plus VE Transceivers. These are units from a time long, long ago in the strobist world. This is when every transmitter didn’t have direct power and operational control over the lights, the lights didn’t always have radios built in, and when you wanted to adjust the light, you had to have a lighting assistant (or sometimes yourself) go manually futz with the settings. But I have to say, this review starts out with a ton of anxiety as I see the Plus VE transceiver unit I’m using dangling off the side of the Godox flash that I’m using it with. And for this, I need to channel a past version of myself.

A hand holding a black electronic device with buttons and a USB-C port, over a wooden desk.
A hand holding a PocketWizard Plus III remote trigger above a closed laptop on a wooden desk.
A hand holds a small black device with buttons labeled A, B, and C above a wooden desk.

But first, you should know that the PocketWizard Plus VE unit has channel button on the side and a USB-C port. To turn it on, you hold the test button and the power button at the same time. It’s weird. To charge it up, you need a very specific USB cable — or at least I did.

This review had me going back into the Phoblographer’s now 16 year old archives to find lights that I was using back then. Some of them were the Lumopro LP-180, the Interfit Honey Badger, Interfit Honey Badger Unleashed, and the older Einstein E640 light.

I even ended up looking at the Paul C Buff Celestial – which is probably one of the worst lights I’ve ever tested. Looking back, I’ve done great work with all of those lights the best that I could.

Plus, I needed to dive into some old studio gear that I never got rid of, like my Phottix Luna II.

Why those lights? Well, pretty much everything released today already has radio control built into them. So why would you need or want PocketWizards in 2026? To boot, almost nothing takes a 3.5mm audio jack anymore.

Well, in my research and reading from my previous reviews, the PocketWizard Plus X survived a 7 foot fall with just a scratch and kept working. I’m not sure, in contrast, that my Profoto transmitters would be able to do the same thing. And these days, I’ve even found myself moving away from Profoto for Godox and even Flashpoint.

The PocketWizard Plus VE might work super well with really old cameras – like those from the film days and even some older DSLRs. My previous tests had me making photos even with older Polaroid 185 cameras. For this session, my schedule didn’t allow me the time to make images with this camera even though I’ve got the film available. Nor did it allow me to make multiple exposures in-camera, which I really wanted to do.

Let me first start by saying that powering it up wasn’t so obvious. I had to hold down all the buttons on the front first and then the menu popped up.

In one photo session I did, it seemed like business as normal. I pulled out my old Phottix softbox, set it up, put the flash in the belt, set the power, turned the PocketWizards on, powered on the Nikon D850 and then made a photograph. The exposure was exactly how I wanted it – but that’s because I’ve had an entire near decade or so of lighting images this way under my belt. So for the experienced photographer like me, it will be business as usual. However, it was really nice to not make images with all the controls at my camera for the moment because it meant I needed to be more interactive and introspective. That, in turn, slowed me down and I ended up making really nice photos of the Unseen Saul Leiter book I reviewed.

In fact, I used the JPEGs from the shoot and didn’t even bother with the RAW files.

Of course, you’d think that the battery life would last forever, right? Well, that’s not the case. When I powered the transceivers off, they were apparently still draining battery power. More than that, even when I powered my transmitter off at one point, I could still trigger the receiver. Weird, right?

Small brown bird perched on a bird feeder, with a blue sky and brick building in the background.
PocketWizard Plus VE sample images shot on the Nikon D850. These birds were at my bird feeder.

One of the other big uses of PocketWizards, however, is for remote photography with sports and wildlife. So I decided to try it out in a very unique way. I set up a bird feeder on my balcony and put a Nikon 28mm f1.8 on my Nikon D850. Then I set it to zone focus at the closest distance at f8 with a Yongnuo flash attached to the D850. After figuring out how to set up the transmission and also finding the exact cable set up to charge the PocketWizards (this really is a pain) I was able to do this whole remote photography thing with ease.

And honestly, I’m very happy with the results. I thought that maybe the camera would fall asleep, but it didn’t.

Ultimately, I think that if you’re a sports photographer and need a radio of some sort to trigger remote cameras, then a PocketWizard will be great. But you don’t necessarily need the newest one because your older gear works pretty well. To that end, I really don’t see the need for photographers to buy one. There are indeed new features coming via firmware like locking the settings — which is really useful for event photography. But ultimately, I don’t think that these do enough for most photographers. Lots of us will simply just trigger our cameras using Wifi. Of course, that drains the battery.

I’ll end this review with a sample image gallery of what I’ve made using these units.

A smiling person in a black hat and bandana stands outside in a sunny urban area with buildings in the background.
Three people eating pizza outside on a sunny day, holding paper plates and wearing sunglasses.
Three plates of pizza slices and a Coca-Cola bottle on a white table, with a person holding one slice.
Two men stand indoors; one smiles and flashes a peace sign while the other holds a drink and looks at the camera.
Six young men sit at a table in a restaurant, enjoying pizza and drinks together.
A man in glasses and a hoodie smiles widely at a lively indoor gathering with people in the background.
Two men stand on a sunny city street, with tall buildings and cars in the background.
A slice of pepperoni pizza on a plate with a small pastry on a side dish on a marble table.
Woman in white cap smiling and holding a slice of pizza in a lively indoor setting.
A woman in glasses and a striped shirt sits on a black couch, face partly lit by bright light.
A man eating a large slice of pizza outdoors on a sunny day, with people and buildings in the background.
Smiling man in a black shirt with a Paul name tag stands indoors by a window, holding a drink.
Man wearing a cap enjoys eating a large slice of pizza in a cozy indoor setting.
A hand holding a large pink-frosted donut with colorful sprinkles, partially wrapped in a napkin.
A man in glasses joyfully eating a large piece of fried chicken in a restaurant.
A man in a white shirt enthusiastically eating a large slice of pizza in a brightly lit room.
Three people in Moon Man hats and aprons prepare food under a blue tent at an outdoor event.
Four people wearing Moon Man aprons and hats smile under a blue tent at an outdoor event.
Two hands use forks to share cheesy, grilled bread pieces in a small paper tray.
A person holds a plate with grilled toast, a rice ball topped with seasoning, and a swirl of purple cream.
A smiling couple with name tags poses together in front of a patterned wall; one wears sunglasses.
A person wearing glasses eats a cheesy slice of pizza in a warmly lit indoor setting.
A man holds a plate with a pizza slice close to his mouth, ready to take a bite in a pizzeria.
Three women smiling together on a sunny city street, with tall buildings and taxis in the background.
Man with sunglasses and camera strap stands outside in sunlight, with another person and building in background.
camera pocketwizard pocketwizard plus ve radio sports transceiver
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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