Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsGreat concept, but fails to execute / not thought out…
Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2021
EDIT: Dropping a star due to customer service. Have exchanged a few messages back and forth with them now, and each time has been about one MONTH from message to reply. Definitely won't be buying any Native Union products in the future. As a heavy Amazon shopper, you're much more likely to get better customer service from the average random seller of generic $5 products than from this brand.
Read this before buying! At the time I’m writing this there are only a handful of reviews and I see at least one other mentioning the problem of this stand hitting the camera area if you have a case on and I can positively confirm that this is true with the iPhone 13 mini as well. I bought a few cases and the one I have on in the pictures is the one with the smallest/camera protector lip of all of them. (There may be some on the market with smaller ones but this is the smallest of the 5 popular cases I have bought).
You can see that the case does hit the stand. It does not hit it enough to prevent charging, but just enough to cock the phone off to the side a bit and make it look low quality. If the stand was 1-2mm shorter or slightly rounded it would fit.
Again these specific pictures are on the 13 mini. I did have the 13 pro (not max) for a couple weeks and while I didn’t measure with a ruler, the pro’s placement of camera vs MagSafe area seemed very similar to the mini (Ie don’t expect that since the 13 pro is physically larger than the mini that you won’t have this problem, you likely will).
I assume most people are considering this stand because they want something premium that has some heft to it so it doesn’t fly around on your desk/night stand. But another problem with the design is that there are two small rubber strips (on the edge of the main piece and on the edge of the foot) that are very small. Unfortunately it seems they valued the Industrial look over function and so didn’t bevel the edge to maximize contact area with the desk. So despite the weight, this stand can still move around quite a bit! For comparison, I have another brand’s stand which has one of those tacky bases on it intending to halfway glue it to the surface, but not wanting to leave residue on the wood, I stuck some rubber feet on it. That stand weighs half as much as this one, but because the rubber feet make so much more contact with the wood, it doesn’t move nearly as much!!! (Ie another design failure that could have been prevented by just adding a tiny bevel.
Another couple oversights are with the “foot”‘s design. A tiny notch in the foot would allow the cord to go straight out behind the stand and be less visible. Since there is none it forces the cord out to the left or right side where the white cord is very visible. Also there is nothing to keep the foot in the stand besides gravity. It’s a slightly snug fit that holds it with friction. If you’re traveling with it, you may like the ease of removing the foot, however given the weight and purpose, this likely isn’t geared to travelers. There should be some type of glue or screw or retaining clip to hold the foot in. As of right now it’s firm enough that you can gently pick it up without the foot falling out, but I imagine with manufacturing tolerances and temperature fluctuation this won’t be the case for everyone.
I can confirm this stand is heavy and the finish is nice. It definitely cosmetically looks and feels nice. It’s just a shame that some tiny design changes, that likely wouldn’t have cost a penny extra in production, weren’t made. In my opinion this brings the value down on this from the current $50ish dollar price to about $30. Undecided on whether this is going to be returned (due to hassle) but unless price drops or they tweak the design, I believe this is really a 3/5 star stand…
