Techlada – Tech news and random reviews

Almost like clockwork, shortly after the release of a new Apple portable product, a relatively young company appears on the scene with a modular case system designed to be paired with a variety of different attachments. Mophie did it with the first video-ready iPod and iPod nano back in 2006, companies such as Gizmac and Barefoot Innovations have done it with various iPhones, and now a company called ModulR is trying it with the iPad. The core of…

With a silver plastic device holder and a metal leg, Green Figure's iHolder iPad Stand ($50, distributed by Pyramid Distribution) is the latest iPad stand we've received for review -- and somewhat interesting. Though we're not totally thrilled by the device frame, which only works with completely bare iPads, we like the fact that it rotates smoothly into portrait and landscape orientations, and tilts into three locked angles for viewing. The leg has…

Just Mobile’s first iPhone product was Xtand for iPhone, an iMac/Apple Cinema Display-inspired leg with a rotating iPhone mount in the center. The rotating feature let you watch videos in widescreen orientation, or charge and sync your device in landscape, using a rear thumbscrew and a modest height adjustment system to change the iPhone’s viewing angle. Later, the company debuted the laptop-specific Xtand Pro, which was designed to…

Apologies in advance, Eccentric Goods, for what has to be said in honestly evaluating your new iPadValet ($100) stand for the iPad: for many reasons, this really isn't a good idea. Positively gargantuan and inefficiently designed by comparison with virtually every iPad stand we've previously looked at, iPadValet uses 1/4" thick aluminum to form what comes out of its large plastic carrying box as a set of long metal brackets, unfolding first into…

LapWorks is a newcomer to the Apple accessory space, and its previous collections of PC and netbook add-ons go a long way towards explaining the iPad Recliner’s dicey, not exactly Jony Ive-caliber design. Rather than using the aluminum we’ve seen in most iPad stands at this price point, the iPad Recliner is made from a mix of half-black, half-silver-painted hard plastic and semi-soft rubber. The only metal part of the stand is a single…

Griffin’s approach with iPad stands has been a lot more fashion-conscious and less brainy than we’ve come to expect from the company over the years. The aluminum A-Frame uses a plastic-aided hinge and sculpted rubber pads to adjust and safely hold an iPad inside while only modestly changing its viewing angle to your needs. It looks nice, feels completely solid, and holds an iPad—that’s it. Loop operates on the same principles,…

Unlike rival products from companies such as Luxa2, Just Mobile, JaDu Industries and Griffin, the M2 and P2 are just non-positionable aluminum device holders that are designed to passively hold whatever fits into their U-shaped arms. Based on the shapes of recent Apple iMac and Cinema Display legs, both M2 and P2 use a single piece of metal that has been bent to form a foot, a leg, and a two-fingered device cradle, with two holes in the leg for USB…

When we took our very first look at Skadoosh a couple of months ago, it was a substantially different product from the one that’s shipping: a little rough around the edges from pre-production manufacturing, the relatively small machined aluminum stand contained a novel plastic iPad holder that was capable of ratcheting to change the device’s viewing angle, and a metal flip-out kickstand that was only needed when the iPad was reclined to…

Unlike competitors whose stands were designed to be light and thin, Thought Out has once again taken the opposite approach with Stabile, which uses a solid steel frame shaped to hold the iPad without any question as to its stability. The nearly four-pound stand comes in either black ($60) or silver ($70), each with black rubber pads on the bottom and on the iPad-holding mount, and the same fixed 55-degree non-adjustable viewing angle. A hole in the…