Elephant Card review: a clever and affordable iPhone Continuity Camera mount - The Verge

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The Elephant Card is simply a portable equine for Mac owners who privation to usage their iPhone arsenic a webcam with macOS Ventura’s caller Continuity Camera feature. Not lone does it fold level for casual portability, but it besides works with oregon without iPhone cases successful my investigating and attaches to some my MacBook’s show and desktop monitor. 

Better yet, it really resembles an elephant with its tusks and ears creating the mounting points. That’s adorable, made adjacent much truthful by the mount’s tiny $7.99 / €7.49 price tag, which returns to the regular $9.99 / €9.90 database terms aft Monday, November 28th.

To usage the mount, you simply unfold the 2 “tusks” that clasp your iPhone, which sends the “ears” backward to make 2 tiny hooks that acceptable implicit your Mac’s display. It’s a precise clever plan from the large minds astatine TeamNobile, the plan corporate based successful Vienna, Austria, liable for the equally originative AirBell.

The Elephant Card is designed for MacBooks that person agelong suffered from notoriously atrocious webcams integrated into their ultra-thin displays. But it besides fits the fashionable Dell UltraSharp U2720Q desktop monitor I person connected to a Mac Mini. The Elephant Card’s ears are obscurity adjacent heavy capable to grip the full thickness of the Dell monitor, but they conscionable hap to gaffe securely into the aerial vents located each on the apical of the display. If your desktop show lacks specified embellishments, past it apt won’t enactment with the Elephant Card mount.

The mount’s ears attached easy to my 12-inch MacBook, arsenic expected. But conscionable similar we discovered erstwhile investigating the $29.95 Belkin mount, the MacBook’s hinges aren’t truly designed to clasp dense objects similar iPhones. The hinge connected my lightweight MacBook supported the combined value of my iPhone 11 Pro and lawsuit until the space exceeded astir 25–30 degrees, aft which gravity took control. On 1 occasion, the mounted telephone caused the MacBook to extremity implicit truthful that the iPhone (lightly) smacked the array — I was gladsome I near it successful the case. To its credit, the Elephant Card kept clasp of the iPhone and MacBook adjacent arsenic I reflexively snapped the show upright.

The “ears” don’t connection    the astir   unafraid  equine   for your costly  iPhone. Care is needed to forestall  an accident.

The “ears” don’t connection the astir unafraid equine for your costly iPhone. Care is needed to forestall an accident.

That being said, the receptor hooks that remainder on the apical borderline of the MacBook show make a alternatively constrictive and flimsy mounting point. I managed to bump the iPhone once, causing it to travel escaped from the MacBook and autumn onto the array with the Elephant Card inactive attached. Using the equine connected Apple’s lightest MacBooks, especially, requires immoderate attraction to debar accidents. For example, I wouldn’t urge regular usage of the Elephant Card with a MacBook placed connected your thigh portion seated connected a seat precocious supra a factual level — your iPhone is conscionable asking for trouble.

The equine holds the iPhone astatine a fixed angle, but that regulation didn’t contiguous a occupation successful my testing. I could either set the MacBook’s show capable to beryllium successful framework for Zoom calls, oregon I could trust upon Continuity Camera’s Center Stage diagnostic to automatically harvest and halfway my look erstwhile mounted connected the higher Dell monitor. 

The Elephant Card is wrong  a brownish  leather wallet held successful  a hand. The elephant’s oculus  peaks out.

The Elephant Card folds up level and fits easy into adjacent compact wallets.

The Elephant Card shares the magnitude and width of a modular recognition card, but it’s doubly arsenic thick. It easy fits into adjacent compact wallets, but it mightiness beryllium excessively heavy if you’re reasoning of squeezing it into the abstraction betwixt your iPhone and the case. For my setup, it created capable of a bulge successful the lawsuit to partially exposure immoderate of the display’s edges to impacts.

Unlike the Logitech webcam, the Elephant Card can’t swivel. No worries, Apple’s Center Stage diagnostic   automatically centered my look   contempt  the iPhone’s precocious   mounting position.<em>The ears connected  the Elephant Card slot neatly into the vents connected  apical  of the Dell desktop monitor.</em><em>A presumption    from above.</em><em>A fewer  from behind.</em><em>A presumption    from the side.</em><em>The Elephant Card tin  beryllium  slotted into your iPhone lawsuit  but it mightiness  beryllium  excessively  thick, exposing immoderate   of the display’s edges to impact.</em>

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Unlike the Logitech webcam, the Elephant Card can’t swivel. No worries, Apple’s Center Stage diagnostic automatically centered my look contempt the iPhone’s precocious mounting position.

All successful all, it’s hard to find immoderate large faults with an accessory that provides truthful overmuch inferior to Apple users for little than $10. The existent 20 percent discount makes it particularly compelling present that gift-giving play is upon us.

Elephant Card is disposable successful bluish oregon grey for the discounted terms of $7.99 / €7.49 through Cyber Monday, with 50 cents from each acquisition going straight to SaveElephant.org to assistance with the rescuing and attraction of Asian elephants.

All photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

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