MagSafe® Mounts from Moment

Quick Note: I purchased all the products described in the show. There was no promotional gear or compensation from any company, and no one reviewed the content prior to publishing.

I’ve got new toys! Today we take a look at the new MagSafe@ Mounts from Moment.

I love the idea of MagSafe®, and in fact still own a 2015 MacBook Pro, partially because I have never wanted to move from the MagSafe® power connector to USB-C. When I first heard the rumors that iPhone 12 might include MagSafe® I was excited for what accessories might come from it, and when that came true I was excited to buy some.

My first MagSafe® accessory was the Apple clear case, but I hated the white ring that hides the magnets, so I went back to my normal route of using a thin clear case that wasn’t MagSafe. That worked fine with my second accessory – the Apple charging pad.

The charging pad was ‘cool’, but it didn’t work as well as expected. Removing the phone from the pad would always end up with the pad dropping on the nightstand. There are weighted bases you can buy, but that wasn’t for me.

Next was the Belkin 3-in-1 Wireless Charger with MagSafe®, and both my wife and I love those. I do wish the magnets were a little stronger, as I had to switch back to an Apple MagSafe® case to get a strong enough grip, but I highly recommend these. I wish I had reviewed them, but didn’t think of it before installing them.

The accessories I have been most excited for were the Moment MagSafe® Mounts. When these were announced they looked and sounded perfect for so many situations, and they would solve a few real world issues I was having.

Moment is a company known for great products, and while I have never owned their mobile lenses, they have a reputation as the best you can get, with a unique mounting system using their cases.

For their entry into MagSafe®, Moment has a lot of options:

Wall Mount
Car Vent Mount
Cold Shoe Mount
Tripod Mount (Landscape / Portrait)
Pro Tripod Mount (Cold Shoe)
Pro Tripod Mount (Landscape / Portrait)
Multi Threaded Mount

I am starting with two – for now…

The Pro Tripod – Landscape and Portrait – for MagSafe®, and the Car Vent Mount for MagSafe®.

The Pro Tripod for MagSafe® (Landscape & Portrait)

I wanted this for the podcast. I wanted a way to mount my iPhone as my second camera – either shooting from the side or as a top-down camera – as seen in the video for this review. My existing clamp style made adjusting the phone angle MUCH harder, where MagSafe® allows me to spin the phone as needed. There have also been times the phone would go to sleep, or require me to grab it quickly for some reason – like an incoming call during recording – and the clamp style mount would end up locking the phone or take a screenshot!

Unboxing

The packaging is very clean and minimalistic. A recycled feeling thin black cardboard with interlocking tabs to close it.

Inside the first thing you see is a card describing the features, from the cold shoe, to the thumbscrew that allows the cold shoe to rotate and then be locked into place. It also points out the M Force Magnets and the 1/4” 20 threads at the bottom.

The only other thing in the box is the mount itself, and there’s a ton to like about this thing:

Pros

VERY well built
Very impressed with the machining
Long attachment support for portrait mode
Cold shoe is centered connected with a thumbscrew to rotate it
Magnets are CRAZY strong
Nice rubber surface to protect the phone

Cons

NONE – except for my buying experience

More on that in a minute

The bottom line is that I love this thing and want more of these types of accessories.

Car Vent Mount for MagSafe

I have been using a CD player Clamp Style mount for a long time, but I am on my second one because they keep getting loose over time and sliding out of the CD slot. The phone is basically drooping, and I have to keep pushing it back in. Still, I like that position – in my car at least. It’s right in front of my hand, if I need to touch the screen.  I knew I wanted a mount for the center console, not the driver’s door side as I have seen some people do.

That’s where the Vent Mount comes in. I have tried these style mounts before, meaning the cheap ones that come with a small metal disk to place inside your case. They were horrible. The magnets are weak, and they mount to the vent in a way that never seems solid. One of them seemed to bend the vent bars enough I worried it would permanently mess up the look.

This mount solves a lot of those issues – but not all of them.

Unboxing

Same as with the The Pro Tripod, the packaging is minimalistic. Same style black box, and inside there is a card. In this case, there’s not much to talk about on the card. It has the same magnets, and there are some rubber grips to hold onto the vent. Here the packaging changes a bit. There is a cover showing some padded foam like paper through a small window. Removing that gets you to the mount itself.

This car vent mount is the best one of these I have tried, as far as holding onto the vent, and it has a lot going for it.

Pros

Fit my vents pretty well
MUCH more solidly built than others I’ve tried
Mounts firmly, and doesn’t slip when driving – and I tried to get it to drop
Mount has a thick rubberized set of teeth
Doesn’t appear to bend the vent

Cons

Doesn’t work well on all vents
Phone blocks things on the dash
The phone angle is limited to the vent movement
I wish it had a slight left-to-right action

Bottom line: I like the Car Vent Mount a lot, and I think I will get used to the angle issue.

The Buying Experience

I won’t go into all the details here, but if you’re buying any product or service, it’s important to understand how their support works.

All companies, or products, can have issues at some point, what matters is how a company handles those issues. In Moment’s case they don’t have phone support – at all. Not for tech support, or billing. Everything is done via email, and in my case, that didn’t work. I had a total of 7 unanswered emails, an unanswered Tweet where had I tagged the company and the CEO, and a mysterious duplicate charge for the full order amount 3 minutes after an email telling me a refund had been processed. It showed up on my credit card as pending, and then it took 4 days to disappear from the card.

My final impression is this… their communication leaves a lot to be desired. It’s OK to not have a phone number, but if you are going to only use email, and they have a contact form on their site too, then you need to reply to those emails.

Would I recommend these products?

100% yes, if the product is listed as in stock and shipping.

Personally, I will never do another pre-order through Moment again. I didn’t enjoy the experience at all. These were not Kickstarter projects, where supporters know they are backing a product at a very early level, often while its still in the design stages. Ordering a pre-order from a company’s own website, a product they had announced a while before and then opened for orders – with a ship date – is different, at least to me.

At some point I may buy the multi-threaded mount, as it looks like it could be very cool in certain applications.

Moment

Website: shopmoment.com
MagSafe® Mounts: shopmoment.com/magsafe