The very nice people at Fineday have sent me one of their brand new (currently on IndieGoGo) foldable stands, for phone, tablet, screen, laptop, and more.
The first thing you notice is how small the stand is when folded. 8.8 X 8.8 cm (3.46 inches) square. The second is how heavy it is (in a good way). 412 grams. It’s not like it’s going to weigh you down, but you can be pretty sure it’s going to be good and sturdy as soon as you feel that weight. I should say that there is a smaller, 6.8 cm (2.36 inch) model also available, which is probably better suited to phones, smaller tablets, etc, but I was sent the larger version.
The whole thing is solid aluminium, and that includes all the moving parts and locking mechanism. Even so, how sturdy can something this small possibly be? The answer is very. Very, very. In a way that definitely exceeded all my expectations.
My idea was that I’d start with the laptop to see how well the stand coped with that, then move down to the iPad, which I thought it would be much better suited for, but I never even got that far.
Now, it’s definitely worth saying that the current laptop we have is a mini, measuring 27 cm X 18.5 cm (10.6 inch X 7.3 inch) when the (4.56 cm / 11.6 inch) screen is folded down, but it’s really not all that much smaller than a Macbook Air (for example). So, I haven’t tested this with a “full size” or laptop, but Fineday themselves say “88mm Foldable Stand is recommended to use below 13 inches devices. We don’t recommend using over 13-in devices on the Foldable Stand.”, so that’s fair enough.
What this is really all about is the travelling office/working on the go dream we all have of just having a device and a keyboard in a bag, and that being your entire working set-up. This is the laptop or tablet stand that fits into that set-up perfectly. Something that doesn’t take up too much room, and which is actually up to the task.
Now, foolishly, I’ve realised that when I’ve set the laptop up for the photos here, I completely forgot to pull out the little folding support which is supposed to sit at the base of the device and stop it from slipping off. But you know what? It still didn’t slip off. Even as I swivelled the whole thing round, picked it up, and so on, the laptop did not budge.
All the moving parts on the stand are adjustable – you can tighten or loosen all the mechanisms, and you get the tools with it to do so. So, things aren’t going to start getting loose and wobbly with use.
Clearly, there are many, many other possible uses beyond a laptop stand here, and I’m positive lots of artists would find this stand a ridiculously handy addition to their set-up. It would be a really, really useful thing even if it wasn’t so portable, but the fact that it folds up so small just makes it all the better.
However, I also have a couple of “secret links” for even cheaper offers –