Capture Your Extreme Sporting With An iPhone 5 And The Hitcase Pro [Review]

Ready for impact: Hitcase Pro protects your iPhone everywhere you shouldn’t take it.

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Hitcase Pro, like Tony Stark’s iron suit, is the penultimate protection for your iPhone 5, even when it’s flying through the air.

That’s because, like the red Avenger, Hitcase Pro isn’t just a suit of armor, like so many cases before it. No, this one’s built for action, with some special mounting and lens capabilities that encourage you take your lovely iPhone on adventures you ordinarily should not, all so you can use its camera to record the chaos and prove you survived.

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MiniDrive Uses SD MacBook Slot To Add Extra Storage [Review]

Not much to see here, apart from the nailfile-esque surface.

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The Nifty MiniDrive is tiny caddy that lets you hide a microSD card entirely inside the SD card slot on your MacBook Air (or any other Mac with an SD slot). The idea is that you can cheaply add storage to your SSD-equipped Mac.

When I first wrote up the MiniDrive as a news piece, a whole bunch of readers got in contact to tell me how much it sucked, mostly because it didn’t fit properly into the SD slot on their Macs.

My experience has been fine, so I’m putting down those bad experiences to being the first wave of Kickstarter order fulfillments. That’s no excuse, clearly – if you sell something it should work – but I can only review what I have to review. And so I will.

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MiniDock Turns Any USB Charger Into A Wall-Mounted Lightning Dock [Review]

Yes, this wall exists in my house We;re decorating this weekend. I promise.

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Bluelounge’s new MiniDock really is mini. It’s a tiny little dock which perfectly matches the cuboid charger that came with your iPhone or iPad mini, and turns it into a wall-mounted dock. The device is as portable and effective as it is handy, especially if you never use a case. I have one here in Cult of Mac’s Spanish HQ, and I have been putting it through its paces in our Extreme Test Lab.

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Old Pan Am Life Rafts Make Surprisingly Good iPad Cases [Review]

This is why scissors aren’t allowed on airplanes.

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Pan Am, a U.S icon that died in 1991, thankfully before it’s name could be ConCatenAted into PanAm, and not before some clever entrepreneur with an eye to the future squirreled away dome of the planes’ old life rafts.

Fast forward to today, when those rafts are being chopped up and made into cases for another American icon: the iPad. For just $20, you can wrap the back of your tablet in a strip of – uh, whatever life rafts were made of in the 70s.

I have been using one on my iPad mini for the last week or two. It’s fantastic, but I had to administer some tough love to get it onto shape.

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This Gorgeous Leather Case For iPad Mini Is Cheaper Than It Looks [Review]

I reviewed the Acase Collatio for iPhone 5 back in May, and I mentioned it was one of the best leather wallet cases I’d tested to date. It looked terrific, its build quality was excellent, and it was nicely priced. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Acase’s leather iPad mini case, then.

I have to be honest, I’ve had it stashed away in a cupboard for a while. I got it not long after the iPad mini was released, but I had so many cases to review at the time that I ended up forgetting about it. Reviewing the Collatio reminded me it was there, and I’ve been using it on my iPad mini since.

Like the Collatio, the iPad mini case is made entirely of leather, and it has a front cover that folds over to protect your display. When you’re using your device, the front cover doubles as a stand for typing or watching movies.

Magnets inside the front cover wake your iPad when you open it, then put it back to sleep again when you close it. They also ensure the front cover stays closed when you want it to.

The case provides access to all of your iPad mini’s ports, buttons, and cameras, and it comes in black, chestnut, and vintage brown, with a $39.99 price tag.

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Own An iPhone 5? Avoid The BlueAnt Q3 Headset [Review]

Ain’t she purdy?

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I have no doubt that the BlueAnt Q3 Bluetooth (BT) headset is a good piece of technology, but like other BT headsets before it, performing well when paired with an iOS device is what’s really important, at least on this site.

After all, here at Cult De Mac, Apple-specific compatibility is everything—we’re not just testing tech for the masses—we want to know how well accessories work with our Apple technology, and unfortunately, when it comes to the Q3, that’s where things start to fall apart.

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The FitBit Flex Will Get Your Ass Off The Couch, But Not Through A Marathon [Review]

The FitBit Flex is a $99 rubber band you wear around your wrist to track how many steps you’ve taken every day. It connects via Bluetooth to your iPhone, or through a dongle to your Mac. If you are utterly sedentary, it’s a fantastic gadget that may very well encourage you to make some slight adjustments to your lifestyle before your heart explodes in front of your computer desk one day. If you are already even lightly active, though, the FitBit Flex is a puzzle of a product that seems fetishistically focussed on how much you walk while utterly ignoring how much you bike, swim or even run.

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AmpJacket Makes Your iPhone Louder And Stronger [Review]

Like a miniature playground… For chicks.

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There are a few things I really like about Kubxlab’s AmpJacket. It’s soft and squiggly, so it’s kind of fun to play with even when not on the phone. It’s also very small when you consider what it does – it’ll even slide into a pants pocket. And finally, there;s the fact that it not only amplifies the sound fro the iPhone’s speaker, but protects that iPhone and even raises it out of the way of spills in the kitchen.

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Cardboard iPad Case Is Way Better Than You Might Expect [Review]

It makes a pretty good picture frame, too.

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Remember that $7 cardboard iPad case I wrote about a few weeks back? I have two here in my apartment, and I have been testing them out for the last week. The review follows, but here’s the short form: They’re surprisingly good; they’re excellent insulators; they’re good for making shopping lists.

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The NUU MiniKey Adds A Physical Keyboard To Your iPhone 5 For $60 [Review]

Some of us can pick up an iPhone and master its virtual on-screen keyboard in a matter of minutes, but for others, it takes a bit of time — especially if you’ve just come from a BlackBerry or another smartphone that has a physical keyboard built-in. For those of you in that latter group, the NUU MiniKey for iPhone 5 is here to help.

The MiniKey is a clip on case with a special feature: a slide-out physical keyboard that aims to give those who don’t like typing on glass a more traditional solution. Its keys are “designed to match the ergonomics of typing with both thumbs” in an effort to help you type faster and more accurately.

The MiniKey has a built-in Li-Pro rechargeable battery (380mAh) that charges via USB, and like most wireless keyboards, it connects to your iPhone via Bluetooth. It boasts 42 backlit keys, with functions for media playback, numbers, common symbols, and more.

I reviewed the MiniKey’s predecessor for iPhone 4 a couple of years ago, and I was pretty impressed with it, so I couldn’t wait to try out the latest model and find out whether it’s worth its $60 price tag.

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