It seems that in the world of Tech gadgets you have to choose between well made, classy, attention to detail devices that are expensive and poorly made, but inexpensive accessories. You get cheap with cheaply made, and vice versa. Notable exceptions to this rule are the accessories from a company called iSkelter at iskleter.com. Their tagline is “built by people who give a damn”.
iSkelter makes wood lap desks and I had the opportunity to spend some time with a review unit of their left-handed lap desk they call “Tab”. The Tab is a beautifully handcrafted wood piece with angles cut on the edges at the perfect angle to provide no harsh edges to your legs and other surfaces.
It’s smooth and sleek and a joy to hold. The Tab has a slot along the back edge at the perfect angle to take a tablet like a full-sized iPad in landscape mode, or both a phone and a tablet in portrait mode. Embedded into the face of the Tab is a white board, which on the left-handed Tab is on the left half. That seems like an odd addition to a lap desk but as a doodler I can see how that would be fun to make temporary notes on while working.
I’ve used a fair number of lap desks, and $50 for the Tab is a fair price, especially for the fine wood craftsmanship. It’s not cheap but it’s also not extravagant. Of course the Tab comes also in a right-handed model and you can get it without any white board at all.
I’m not sure the Tab solves a problem for me, but they also sell a model called Slate 2.0 that would solve more of my particular problems. The Slate 2.0 is also made of the same beautiful hard wood, but it’s made for holding a laptop. To the right (or left if you’re left handed) you can choose to have an area of plain wood, or you can have the embedded whiteboard for doodling, or have a nice mousepad built in. There’s also a slot to hold either a phone or a small form factor tablet, again at that perfect angle. The Slate 2.0 is wonderfully customizable, including that you can have it created for you for either 11-13″ laptops or 15-17″ laptops. The Slate 2.0 is just $60. I’m thinking that needs to go on my Christmas wish list!
iSkelter has many other models available to solve different problems but they all have one thing in common. They’re made of gorgeous wood, they’re crafted to your needs specifically and they don’t cost a house payment in spite of the quality of their workmanship. Check out the Tab, the Slate and their full-sized entire desks, the Easel to lift your laptop up on a desk and more lapdesks over at skelter.com/.