Charging stand ends up as a lackluster device.
Having a charging dock for my Apple Watch and iPhone 7 Plus next to my bed is a necessity. I love the convenience of having my chargers right next to my bed nice and organized. Since I use my iPhone 7 Plus as an alarm clock it is pertinent that it is charging during the night. The Oittm charging stand looks great next to my bed but it isn’t constructed well enough to use it where I need it most.
Unboxing: When I unboxed this, judging by the picture it seemed to me that most of this would already come together. However, every bit of it needed to be assembled without clear instructions. I prefer stands that come with built in lightning cables but this one you have to provide both the Apple watch charger and the lightning cable. So to be fair to the Oittm charging stand I used both factory cables that came with my devices to install on the inside of the stand’s case. The one good feature that stood out with this stand is that it allows you to have two extra USB ports for anything else you would need to charge.
Putting this together was kind of a struggle. The reason it was a struggle was that you have to wrap the cables up and make them fit inside the small area where you plug them into the two USB ports on the inside. Now I do feel this would have been much easier if I used very short cables but to me, the product should be built around the factory cables and not using ones you would have to go purchase. It would have also been much easier if the base snapped together and had a tighter hold. The issue is the cables on the inside pushed the lid of the base up and you had to make these cables stay down in order for it to close properly. I also wasn’t keen on the fact my phone was going to be sitting in the air but I had in the back of my mind that the silver backing would offer it support and stability. That was not the case. The silver back comes with a type of screw that was intended to be loosened to make it adjustable. However, even after using tools to try to get that to have a tight enough seal to hold it in place it never stayed put. It does offer support to my phone but it’s just poorly built. Once I had it all together I came to the conclusion it does look nice and I like the way the apple watch lays on its side.
Testing it out: Putting the devices on there I didn’t find too many issues. The one thing that stood out to me though is the lightning cable doesn’t have enough support to it to where you would be able to push it down into the base. The watch part of the stand is the one part of the whole thing that I like. I like the Apple watch display when it’s charging on its side. Then came the moment that I really was over using this charging station. I woke up in the morning and went to take my phone off of it like I do with all my charging stations that I’ve had before. I went to lift it off and the lid of the base came up with it. Now that can be remedied with using two hands, one to stabilize the base and one to remove the phone. Since this is the only stand I’ve used that you have to do that with, I would much rather use one that doesn’t require two hands. My devices did charge while on this but it really comes down to the build of this product being lackluster.
Overall: I just feel that either I got one that the base doesn’t seal right or that the product just isn’t that great. You’re basically paying for a glorified stand and if the stand isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do then it really isn’t worth getting.
BUY FROM AMAZON
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