Vogels Ringo iPad car, wall and desk-mount kit tested

Tired of holding the Jesus tablet in your arms like some sort of modern day Moses? Wishing you could make your iPad hover in front of you while your hands are free to do more important things -- like cooking, lathering soap onto your body or parting the Red Sea? There's an app for that. Well, actually, there isn't, but there is a Vogels Ringo Universal Tablet Mounting System for that.

We've gone hands-on with the modular stick-your-iPad-anywhere device and, joy of all joys, it delivers on its multi-mounting promises, letting us hang our iPads from just about anything -- walls, desks, car headrests, hell, even the ceiling when we were feeling a little kinky.

Back to basics

The Ringo system is based around the PMC100 base cover, or 'holder'. This is essentially a case that clips on to the back of your iPad -- or iPad 2 if you're ballin' (there's a different case for each) -- forming a partially protective, semi-drop-resistant, and slightly ugly-looking sheathe.

A hole in the back contributes to the industrial-looking design, but it's this element (the 'ring' in 'Ringo') that allows you to attach the iPad to other accessories. 

Table mountin' 

The first of these attachments is the PMC110 table stand -- a V-shaped plastic dooberry that slots into the hole in the base cover. Once attached, it works like a kickstand and allows the tablet to be placed on a desktop in either portrait or landscape orientation.

It's not as simple or as effective as it could be. Its slightly awkward design allows the iPad to be used in either portrait or landscape modes, but it isn't particularly stable. In fact, the first few times we used it, our iPad went crashing to the table. It takes a fair bit of practice to get it to stand up in such a way that it won't be blown over by the faintest touch.

Backseat action

More impressive is Vogels' car mount. This too is hideous (it looks like a Hoover attachment) but it works beautifully, clamping on to the height-adjusting pins of your vehicle's headrest, where it allows rear-seat passengers to enjoy movies in landscape or portrait mode.

The final component in Vogels' iPad-mounting jigsaw is the wall mount. This tiny, hockey puck-shaped accessory has to be screwed into the wall, so it's slightly trickier to setup than the other attachments. Once mounted, though, attaching your iPad to the wall is a simple case of clipping the base cover into the puck and rotating into your desired orientation.

On the whole, we're happy with the Ringo. It's not the prettiest solution we've encountered, but it works effectively. All the components mentioned here are available together in the Vogels all-in-one pack, which retails for £109.95. If you don't need them all, it's possible to buy them separately.