I love to lay in bed and read and watch videos on my iPad. To stop my arms getting tired and cold in winter I’ve set up a holder for my iPad. My wife does the same and a son does as well. The current medical view seems to be that using phones and tablets in bed is not a good idea, but for us it has been helpful in improving sleep, particularly to distract my brain from anxiety that was keeping me awake.
I feel that I now have a grasp of some of the features and requirements that gives good results, so I thought I would share them. I was surprised at the limited number of quality holders I could find online that are designed for use in bed. There are a lot designed for use on a desk. The pictures often show them used on a desk or coffee table. On eBay and AliExpress they often include for use on a bed. They may work in some situations but not others. Ads on AliExpress sometimes includes feedback along the lines of “It’s a great well made product, but I couldn’t use it for use in bed because the screen cannot be moved to the desired position.”
Optimal Placement and Adjustment
Most of the holders I have are designed to be clamped onto a horizontal object, for example the edge of a table or a shelf. One of the holders (image below) also has the option to clamp onto vertical object, for example the top of the bedhead.
Clamping one in an orientation it is not designed probably won’t work. The base of most are designed to swing around horizontally. Mounting them so the base swing in the vertical plane is likely to be a problem.
Clamping onto the bedhead may be a simple solution, but it may result in the iPad bouncing around a bit when you move in bed.
My son is in a rental property so that limits options. He has a desk next to his bed and clamping the holder to the desk has worked out well for him. For another two setups I built and installed shelves for mounting. For these, I used hardwood and built it to withstand a lot of stress and then screwed to timber within the walls as I expect there could be significant force on the shelf.
Adjustment method
The Anko holder I have has a flexible neck, the type that is used for some desk lamps and microphone holders. This may be fine for lighter tablets and phones but doesn’t provide enough support when it is stretched out away from over the base. Some arms rely on friction to prevent the joints from moving. Some have an Allen key provided to tighten it when it is set to the required placement. Others have springs to counteract the force of the tablet. This makes it easy to adjust, unfortunately the one we have with this doesn’t seem to be as good quality in other ways.
Viewing angles
Another consideration is the location and angle of the screen you want. I’ve found that many stands, even when fully extended, don’t allow placement of the screen into a desirable position.
Another common issue I found is that while some will get close to the correct position, it will not allow the holder part, usually a ball joint to swivel to precisely where needed. This is often because some of the stands I have seem to have been designed primarily for use on a desk, even though they all include “bed” in the title or description.
Holders I’ve tried
I’ve bought a number of holders over the years. Here they are in order of purchase.
Anko phone/tablet mount
This one came from our local Kmart. It was by far the cheapest at only AU$5.00. There is info about it here on the Kmart page. While it has “tablet” in the title, it has this warning on the back, “Do not fully extend the holder arm to hold your tablet, otherwise it would fall of and cause damage.”
The base clamp doesn’t grip firmly enough for may liking and the flexible neck struggles to hold my iPad. We briefly tried it, but quickly gave up. It may be ok for phones and it certainly is inexpensive.
Ledetech Desktop Stand
I bought this one years ago and have been using it almost every day. While not the same seller, here is one listed on the Australian eBay site. I had it mounted on a shelf to the side of the bed. It generally has been good. It allows the tablet to pivot 90 degrees to the arm allowing it to be position at the side of the bed.
There are a couple of minor niggles. The arm uses friction to hold the mid and lower joints. The mid one can be tightened firmly enough to hold the iPad but still allow some movement. The lower one had to be tightened extremely tightly to avoid it sagging. The arm is not very long at only 37cm long. This means that it doesn’t hold the iPad in front of me, rather a bit off to the side. That hasn’t been as much as an issue as you may think, but I would prefer it to be longer. It seems this one is primarily designed for a desk, but I still found it ok.
Long Arm Bed Desk Lazy Bracket
I don’t have a link to the one I bought, but this one appears to be the same, although this one doesn’t list the length of the arms. It currently sells for AU$24.99 while I paid AU$36.51.
I bought this one for my wife. She used it for a couple of years mounted to the head of the bed. Mounted that way it did shake a bit when she moved and didn’t work well when sitting up.
I have since mounted it on a small shelf/bracket to the wall that has improved it.
The quality is ok. It looks like one of those cheap desk lights with similar styled arms and is easy to adjust like those as well. Each arm is 50cm long giving a reach of 100cm. That’s the longest of the ones I’ve tried. It works well for her, but she only uses it laying down. It’s not really long enough for me to use it sitting up, but that’s mainly because with my vision I need to have the iPad further back.
Bed Tablet Stand for 4-12.9 inches Mobile Phones
I bought this one from here from AliExpress. It currently sells for AU$42.76. I was intending to mount this on a shelf at the side of the bed. It doesn’t allow for the tablet to pivot much to the side as the holder part hits the shaft of the ball joint. I was expecting to have to make a modification.
This one uses friction to keep the joints in position. It comes with an Allen key to tighten the joints. While you may be able to tighten it just enough to hold the tablet while still allowing easy adjustment, in practice I found I had to tighten it until I couldn’t move it without loosening it. The combined length of the arms of this one is about 60cm.
We are not currently using it, but I did try removing two of the arm sections and mounted it to a shelf in the kitchen and that’s what I will probably do again.
MoZhao CT07 iPad Stand
This is another AliExpress purchase. This was the most expensive of all. I paid AU$52.24. This is another that doesn’t allow the tablet to pivot much to the side. I couldn’t use this one without the modification at the bottom of this post. It was rejected by my wife as its arm length was a bit short. Even so, I like this stand.
Without modification it didn’t work very well for me mounted on a shelf at the side of the bed due to the limited movement of the holder part on the ball joint. However, with the modification at the bottom of the post, I overcame that.
It seems to be very high quality. The adjustment is claimed to be “automatic locking”. I don’t know how this works, but the ad has an image with an exploded view of the joints. In practice I find it holds the iPad well but is a little stiff to adjust. The length of the arms combined is about 72cm
After using the workaround below, I found I liked this one so much that I have purchased another for myself.
A hack to allow the tablet to pivot further
I was thinking about ways to allow the holders to be able to swivel the tablet up to 90 degrees to the arm. Making something seemed like a tricky job so I looked at what I could buy or adapt. In the end I adapted a tripod ball head. I wanted one that had the same size ball as the tablet holder in the hope that I might be able to disassemble it and sort of reverse it.
I purchased two different ones. This is the first one I got.
It is a common small ball mount. While it is probably perfectly fine for what it was designed for, I couldn’t find a way to get it to work with my iPad stands. The ball is only 15.3mm which is a bit too small. The cutout for the shaft is only 7.9mm which would have been fine for one of the holders but not the other.
I also purchased an Andoer Mini Tripod Ball Head for AU$8.09 from AliExpress.
This one works well. The tightening method used by this one pulls the body tight all around the ball. This works quite well and has the added bonus of making it easier to use for this hack.
I disassembled and modified the ball head so that it would fit over the ball of the iPad stand and the iPad holder then fitted on the ball mount. This allows the iPad to swivel about 90 degrees to the holder arm.
Conversion
For this to work the ball head mount needs these requirements:
- Ball needs to be close to the same size as the one on the tablet holder
- Needs to be able to be disassembled and reassembled
- Ball piece needs to be able to be mounted in the hole on the base of the ball mount. Ideally with the same size thread
- Shaft of the ball piece on the tablet holder needs to be narrower than the cut out in the side of the ball mount
- There needs to be a way for the ball of the tablet holder to go into where the ball on the ball mount went
I started by unscrewing both the thumb screw and hex screw from the side. Then, pried it open a little with a wide flat screwdriver and separated the parts. All pieces were then separated.
The ball (of the ball mount) was screwed into the bottom of the ball mount. I placed a couple of washers in first so that the thread didn’t go in too far that it would interfere with rotation later. I used some Loctite on the thread to prevent it from loosening. The Loctite worked for the first one I did, but strangely it didn’t dry with the second one, so I used super glue for it.
Finally, the tablet holder was removed from the stand so that the ball is exposed. The ball mount was placed over the ball of the stand and everything reassembled.
I think I’m confused after reading that. Hopefully the images will make it clearer.
In the end we now have setups we are all happy with. If I had looked at other models, I may have been able to find something suitable that didn’t need hacking, but at least a solution was found.
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