Bracketron's NanoTek Stand holds tight and doesn't let go

Bracketron has provided me with another phone mount from their product line, the NanoTek Stand, and not like the Mi-T grip we previously reviewed, this one is for your desk. This desktop mount uses NanoTek mounting technology to securely hold my phone to the mount that just so happens to grip the desk as well and the conduit between the two is an aircraft grade aluminum stand in silver or black. The stand is built to hold mobile devices in either vertical or horizontal positions, so lets see if it ever loses it’s grip.

The NanoTek Stand is a great accessory for most any desktop as I love cases with a kickstand for this very reason, but most of them are an eyesore, so rather than using a kickstand case, you simply touch your phone to this little stand and it is not going anywhere. I have seen similar, much cheaper, versions of this type of stand, as corporate promotional swag, but none of them had an incorporated cable management that is built to hold most any charging cable and most certainly were not built with the stylish looking aircraft grade aluminum. I have been using for about a week now and there are two items in which I wished were changed in production, the first would be the sharp edges, if they were rounded  it wouldn’t feel so sharp. This is also the case for the cable management system, the sharp edges make me worry the next time I pull on the cable for slack, it will be the time I strip the cable from the rubber coating.  

In the end, this is a great stand as is holds the same style and overall appearance of apple’s aluminum build and never once disappointed when I placed my phone against it. A nice added plus to this stand is that it holds most anything to the NanoTek material as long as it is a smooth non-porous surface. Should the surface get dirty over time, all you need to do in order to clean the surface is simply use a piece of tape on the surface to restore suction to when it was fresh out of the box. Lastly, the NanoTek stand is strong enough to hold the iPad Mini, which makes streaming shows from the desktop easy without using my computer’s resources. The NanoTek stand is available now for the price of $29.95.

Zooka is Carbon Audio's stand and wireless speaker

This next Bluetooth speaker review comes from Carbon Audio in the form of the Zooka for the iPad. What makes the Zooka special is it’s unique design, as not only does it offer wireless playback but it also includes a kickstand and grips to the side of the iPad making for a nice fit while holding the tablet. This speaker is built with a silicone design for a safe, fingerprint free, comfortable grip while on the iPad. On the opposite side from the grip lies the microphone and controls which consist of power, track, volume and sync buttons. It's time to see how this Bluetooth speaker holds up to wireless speakers past.

This is a sleek little speaker, compact and easy to carry around with me in my laptop bag and the kickstand just adds to the numerous ways in which this speaker works well with apple devices. One of my favorite ways to use was placing along the side of the iPad to make the tablet easier to hold while reading for long periods of time. When the Zooka was not holding my iPad upright, it was placed on the top of my MacBook Pro and with the cutout for the iDevices home button it did not cover the front facing camera, making for great conference calls with the microphone and louder speakers. You can tell when the buttons are pressed as they click when pressed, which I hugely prefer; mainly because most wireless speakers use touch sensors making it hard to tell if the input was recognized.

On the other hand, the sound quality was less than what I was expecting, it does not improve the quality per se, but more along the lines of increasing the volume output of what your tablet or laptop is currently capable of. The only other issue I had was with the build quality, the reason to call this out was that the silicone wrap did not line up right, slightly covering the already small charging port. Downfalls aside, Carbon Audio’s Zooka is incredibly versatile, with a handful of devices in which it is capable of grabbing hold of and the additional volume it provides without need of a cable making this a portable speaker a great buy with the price tag of $99.99.