Expert's Rating
Pros
- Powerful suction grip, easy to use, cheap solution to using iPhone in your car
Cons
- Clasp tends to snap screen if you’re not careful removing it.
Our Verdict
The Oso Dash Grip is an effective solution to the problem of attaching an iPhone to your car’s windshield or dashboard. We found it sturdy and held the iPhone in place reliably. Perhaps the only letdown is that sometimes the clamp grasps the screen as you try to remove it, but it didn’t seem to do any harm to our iPhone.
The Oso Dash Grip is a iPhone and iPod touch mount that enables you to firmly attach the device to any surface, although it’s primary use is to attach the iOS device to the dashboard or windshield of a car.
Since Apple introduced its new Maps app with turn-by-turn satellite navigation (and Google responded by re-introducing Google Maps, also with turn-by-turn sat-nav), the iPhone has suddenly become a popular replacement for a dedicated device such as a Tom-Tom.
But the iPhone has always been a great in-car computer, sitting on the dashboard and providing access to music, podcasts, notifications, and hands-free calling. And if you combine it with a product like Griffin’s HandsFree Mic then you have a really neat voice-activated computer in your car.
One problem with in-car mounts for the iPhone is that the iPhone 5 is now a different shape to the iPhone 4S, or iPod touch, and so on. The Oso Dash Grip gets around this by holding the iPhone in a vice-like clamp. Open up the two arms, and they spring together to clamp the iPhone into position.
Oso is also claiming the strongest cushion cup in the world, a claim that’s hard to test but we found it certainly very capable of holding the iPhone 5 to our car window and used it for a four-day road trip without any trouble.