Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus
If your iPad doubles as your recipe book, the Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus is a useful accessory that will help keep food and grime off at bay while you whip up your next culinary masterpiece.
As we all learned from Disney's Ratatouille, anyone can cook—even this hapless author— with the help of the Internet. Smartphones and tablets make every recipe imaginable just a tap away, but if you're in the kitchen, it's more like a dirty and dangerous tap away for your delicate electronic device. Enter the Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus ($39.99 list), a sturdy stand that keeps your tablet safe from food splatters, with an oversized stylus that makes it easy to interact with your virtual recipes.
The matte black rubber and chrome highlights give the Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus a clean look that should blend nicely with most modern kitchens. The circular base has a sloped top, with a lip that juts out from the front. The stand is made for Apple iPads, but really it works with any tablet that is less than a half an inch thick. There are two orientations for use, either horizontal on the sloped top of the stand or propped upright in the lip. The oversized stylus features a grippy rubber body with a thick metal end, making for a comfortable balance in your hand. Belkin also includes a small rubber puck to hold the stylus when not in use.
The stand is nice and sturdy, with the non-slip rubber accents helping to keep both your tablet and the stand in place. The stylus, while comfortably balanced, requires considerable pressure to register touches. Slow or light touches often didn't register in my tests, but once I got accustomed to the amount of pressure required, this became less of an issue. The capacitive tip is also magnetized, meaning you'll be able to wake the or from sleep by simply gliding the stylus along the bezel. Both the stand and stylus are washable, which is perfect for sloppy chefs like me. The two parts keep your tablet safe when cooking by raising it off of food covered countertops and making sure you never have to touch the screen with food covered fingers.
It might not be the best stand or stylus, but for only $40 the Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus is a pretty good deal. Both parts are well made and do exactly what they set out to do—make it easy and safe to use your iPad or other tablet in your kitchen. I would have liked to see a companion app, but given the abundance of capable cooking apps out there, it's not really an issue. If you spend a lot of time in the kitchen and your iPad is your primary recipe book, then this is definitely one accessory worth checking out.
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