SwingHolder iPad Floor Stand – ‘Book Mystique Review
SwingHolder is a first-of-its kind, hinged floor unit that positions the iPad or iPad 2 at eye level, whether you’re lying in bed, standing at a kitchen counter or a podium, at a workbench, or playing musical instruments — virtually anywhere you need the iPad positioned at a convenient viewing elevation and angle without need of holding, or even touching it should you happen to be doing something messy with your hands.
The Swingholder’s engineering is, both in concept and execution, similar to that of a microphone boom, with a weighted base, a vertical support post, and a counterweighted boom that in this instances supports an iPad holder bracket is a wide range of elevations and angles appropriate to circumstances. The support post and boom are made from powder-coated steel tubing. The base and counterweight are presumably some sort if dense metal for weight, encased in tough, 50% recycled ABS plastic sheathing, with the hinge joints, fittings and iPad bracket also made of this high-strength plastic.
“The iPad is an incredibly powerful device, but few people know its true potential until their hands are taken out of the equation,” says SwingHolder manufacturer Stand for Stuff’s Founder and CEO Marty Springer. “While the obvious advantages of hands-free use are fantastic, some of its other applications are life-altering.”
Springer says necessity led to the SwingHolder’s development. “My wife has a condition that makes it hard for her to hold things,” he explains. So to help her use her own electronic tablet, Springer jerry-rigged what ultimately became a Swingholder prototype using some Plexiglas, a jigsaw and a microphone stand, thus its resemblance to a boom mic stand is more than coincidental.
The Swingholder floor unit stands 58 inches tall at its full height, but can swing as low as five inches off the floor. With the iPad mounted securely in the SwingHolder’s rubberized-grip bracket, its 21″ arm (from the joint) rotates 360 degrees, allowing for a wide range of positioning and adjustment regardless of use. The iPad bracket is mounted on a ball joint, allowing it to swivel through a wide range of angles. The heavy counterweight on the swing arm ensures the device will stay where it is positioned where you want it until it’s adjusted for a new purpose.
Potential uses for SwingHolder include independent iPad use for persons with physical disabilities, hands-free ability to practice or perform on musical instruments while reading from digital sheet music on the iPad, vibration-free iPad mounting while using exercise equipment vibration, as a display or point-of-sale device in retail or at trade shows if you’re in business, knitting while reading pattern instructions on-screen, following iPad-stores recipes and cooking in the kitchen without smearing the display with food from fingers or risking spills or splatter or for that matter while eating – a la the TV tables people used to use back in the ’50s and ’60s, or keeping the iPad handy while watching TV on a TV, watching movies, TV or reading ebooks on the ‘Pad while lying down without arm fatigue from holding the device, and protecting the iPad from drops or damage while being used by children. The possibilities are virtually endless.
Made in USA, the SwingHolder features a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Some assembly is required. Here’s a shot of what’s in the box. Putting it together was easy and only took a few minutes, not hurrying. An included instruction pamphlet is illustrated and easy-to-follow.
The first step is to affix four self-adhesive felt feet to the weighted support base. The main support post attaches to the weighted base via a positively keyed, tapered fitting secured with two Allen hex-head screws. An appropriately sized Allen key wrench is provided. The boom counterweight snaps into the boom tube and locks. A built-in USB cable extender is provided so that the iPad can be charged or wall-powered while in situ. All of the components appear to be well-made, nicely finished, and thoughtfully engineered.
The iPad is secured in the Swingholder’s support bracket by means of a positively-latching swing-open door panel. You just pull the latch lever to unlock the door, slide the iPad into the bracket, then close and latch the door, making sure the lever latches completely. Removal is the reverse sequence. It takes less time than does typing this sentence. The bracket is designed so that you still have access to all of the iPad’s controls and its 30-pin connector port when mounted in the SwingHolder.
Note also that both the front and rear cameras in iPad 2 are unobstructed when the tablet is mounted in the SwingHolder, which can thus pinch hit as a photographic or cinematic tripod, although the iPad camera’s low resolution makes that a bit of a lipstick-on-pig function. Hopefully the next generation iPad will have a decent camera.
The Swingholder is made to accommodate either an original iPad or the iPad 2. The latter, being thinner than the original model of the device, is accommodated securely via four snap-on adapter boots on the iPad bracket frame. These come installed by default, and must be removed if you want to insert an original iPad unit. A point that bears noting is that the forthcoming iPad 3 or 2S or whatever it ends up being called is rumored to be somewhat thicker in section than the iPad 2, but presumably thinner than the original iPad. Scuttlebutt has it that the difference will be enough that at least snug fitting iPad 2 cases will not work with the next generation Apple slab. Whether that turns out to be the case remains to be seen, but Marty Springer tells me that the company plans on making adapter boots for the new model if they are needed, although he says that if the iPad 3 is thick enough, differently-sized adapter boots may not be needed.
One task the Swingholder is not good for, is service as a typing platform. First, its range of screen tilt is not enough to allow a horizontal enough orientation of the iPad’s screen for comfortable and ergonomically sound typing. However, even if it did, you still wouldn’t want to type on it – it’s simply not a firm enough support. It’s OK for banging off short email replies and such, but for longer form typing, the iPad is in constant motion even under the lightest touch, and simply impossible, or at least I found it so. I even found myself starting to feel seasick due to my eyes constantly adjusting to follow the SwingHolder mounted screen’s reactive oscillations to my typing keystrokes.
However, it should be emphasized that the Swingholder is not advertised as a typing platform. I’m no engineer, but my guess is that the support post and boom would need to be made from a less flexible material than relatively light-gauge steel tubing – steel pipe perhaps – in order to be rigid enough to support cantilevered typing, and that would likely be prohibitive both in terms of cost and weight. At approximately 20 pounds, the Swingholder is already no lightweight, nor should a device like this be. I should emphasize that this is not an issue of adequate strength and ruggedness. Steel extrusions are plenty strong, despite being flexible. The SwingHolder’s base and boom counterweight are also heavy enough to be completely adequate to provide a reassuring degree of stability for the product’s intended purposes.
At $239.00, the SwingHolder is likely to be the most expensive iPad accessory you’ll ever consider. Being made in the U.S.A. does impose a cost premium, which is of course why iPads themselves are made in China. A concrete example is the instance of the Laptop Laidback notebook stand, which sold for $150 when it’s earlier versions were manufactured in Canada, but the company that designed and markets it was able to drop the price to $89.95 by redesigning it to be made in high-strength plastic instead of the original hardwood and melamine,and farming production out to a subcontractor in China.
So does SwingHolder provide value commensurate to its price? That would partly depend on how useful hands-free iPad positioning will be to you. For example, if one has a physical disability that makes handheld iPad operation difficult or impossible, the SwingHolder could be a great facilitator – even as Marty Springer noted –possibly life-altering. Likewise, if your business, work activity, or hobby involves activities that would benefit from a SwingHolder mounted iPad, it could be worth every penny and more. However, if it’s more of a want than a need, you’ll have to be the judge.
For more information about the SwingHolder, visit:
http:// www.StandforStuff.com
or
http://www.Twitter.com/standforstuff
