PadPivot for iPad: A Review

PadPivot strapped to leg

My PadPivot arrived last week. It's a special swivel holder for the iPad, Kindle, Nook and a few other devices. Ordering the PadPivot was an interesting experience. I was one of the many thousands of backers (4,823 by their official count) who used Kickstarter to back the project in its infancy.

For a pledge of $25.00 I was a backer. My pledge would provide me with one PadPivot, a small carry pouch, a tether strap to hold PadPivot on my leg when in use and a dust cover to protect the Grip Plate. Oh, and the bonus was free shipping for USA and Canada. Canada is rarely included in special deals like that so I was pretty happy.

Pledging meant you were backing the development of the product with your money. So you waited. You waited until the protoype units were built, the final unit manufactured, tested and ready to ship. But I didn't mind as my credit card wasn't billed for the pledge for several months. Mind you there were setbacks and I had to wait another 4 months before my unit was shipped. But the two inventors of the PadPivot kept all backers up to date with constant emails and videos.

Yesterday I asked my husband to give the PadPivot a test run for me. He used it for several hours and pronounced it of good quality. He liked that it allowed him to have his hands free for texting on his iPhone while using his iPad! He noted that his arm gets tired after holding his iPad for a few hours so this was a great way to rest his arms.

Using iPad with PadPivot

Two things that he found disconcerting were:

1. Swiveling the iPad to horizontal postion on PadPivot made him feel that it was going to fall off his leg (it didn't and he noted that you could just tighten the tether strap)

2. Because he had to keep getting up to attend to the dogs or answer the phone, he found it annoying to have to remove the PadPivot.  That reinforced his decision that he would not use PadPivot for casual use but rather for extended periods on his iPad. But I pointed out that he could have set the landline phone on the table beside him.

Hubs thinks it would be a great thing to have if you were on a long airplane flight or in some other situation where you were going to use your iPad for an extended period of time. His final summation was that if you use your iPad a lot it is well worth the money.