This week Apple World Today has reviews of three Apple Watch charging stands: the Griffin WatchStand, the Nomad Stand for Apple Watch, and today I’m looking at Fuse Chicken’s $25 Bobine Watch.
Design
I’ve been a big fan of Fuse Chicken’s Bobine product line since back in the day when the flexible stand first became available for the iPhone. Now it has a new job; that of holding up your Apple Watch in the car or on your desk.
As with the other Bobines, the Bobine Watch uses a flexible metal coil that stays in place however you bend it. The bottom of the coil acts as a base, the middle as an adjustable arm, and the top has a plastic fixture to hold the 1M or 2M charge cable that came with your Apple Watch.
One design decision that appears to have been made by Fuse Chicken in order to speed up development and delivery of the Bobine Watch is that they did not build a charge cable into the charging stand. As a result, the standard Apple cable just hangs off of the top of the Bobine Watch, which is kind of sloppy looking. However, I understand the reasoning: Apple doesn’t yet allow third-party chargers for the Watch, which is what would be required in order to run the cable through the steel coil.
What is nice about the Bobine Watch design is that it is equally at home on your desk or in your car. Fuse Chicken supplies a pair of adhesive clips (“Dash Stabilizers”) that can be used to install the Bobine Watch in your car. Pop a Watch charge cable into the top of the Bobine, run it down to a standard car USB plug, and you can start charging your Watch in the car.
Function
The Bobine Watch, like the other charging stands we’ve reviewed this week, is designed to hold the Apple Watch charging cable so that it’s not just laying on a table or nightstand. It does that well, and I’ve always loved the playful shape of the Fuse Chicken Bobine products.
It worked well on my bathroom counter, which is where I charge up the Watch every night. The extra weight of the 2M cable tended to make the “head” of the Bobine move a little bit; I’d recommend using the shorter 1M cable if at all possible. Fortunately, the entire Bobine is infinitely adjustable, so it’s not hard to bend it into a shape that’s perfectly stable. That flexibility also lets you place the Watch into the watchOS 2 Nightstand Mode.
There’s a bit of a gap between the flat “face” surface of the Bobine Watch and Watch Sport charging cable disk so that the disk and Bobine head weren’t flush. As far as I could tell it didn’t compromise the ability of the cable disk to hold the Watch magnetically in place.
Conclusion
The only one of the charging stands we’ve looked at this week that can also be used in a car, the Bobine Watch is inexpensive, fun, and amazingly flexible. That being said, I hope that a future version comes with a built-in charging disk and routes the cable through the steel coil.
