Review: SideCar – The Laptop to Tablet Connector

You may recall that back in September we made SideCar our Kickstarter of the Month. SideCar is an ingenious little piece of plastic that can attach your iPad (or any other tablet for that matter) to your MacBook or PC laptop, allowing you to easily use your iPad as a second screen. SideCar made its Kickstarter goal, and is now in production.

The fine folks at Venos Technology were kind enough to send us a SideCar hot off of the assembly line for us to review. We must say, that while the SideCar is a one-trick pony, it performs that trick quite well.

Overview

The SideCar is piece of plastic, with two slots. One secures the accessory to your laptop, (we used a early-2011 MacBook Pro), and the other slot secures to your tablet. (In this case, an iPad Air.) Via an adjuster knob, you can safely tighten the SideCar so that it attaches your tablet to your laptop, allowing side-by-side viewing of both device’s screens.

The SideCar is easy to setup.

1. Loosen the adjuster knob and slip it onto your laptop’s screen.
2. Hold the SideCar with one hand, while you insert your iPad into the other side of the SideCar, and adjust it to your desired position.
3. Tighten the knob until both sides are a secure fit. (Be careful not to over tighten.)
4. When it comes time to release your iPad from your laptop, reverse the process.

I used the SideCar for a few days, and most of my use was of the “extra screen” variety. I kept my email, or Twitter, or other social apps up in the iPad screen, while using my MacBook’s display for my day-to-day work. I found it quite handy to have, and only a minor inconvenience to un-attach when I needed to pack up my laptop.

The SideCar would come in quite handy for those that like to use their iPad as a second, extended screen for their MacBook, using the iPad as a holder for tool pallets and such for apps that support that feature.

I found one way to use the SideCar in a very useful manner. In another life, I write reviews of movies. I found that using the SideCar, I could view or write about the movie on my MacBook Pro, while viewing information about the movie from IMDB or other sources on my iPad. (As seen below.) Quite handy!

Verdict

As I stated before, the SideCar is a one-trick pony, but it does that one trick very well. If you are a user that likes to use his iPad alongside his MacBook, I would highly suggest you take a look at the SideCar. For the price of $29.99, you may at first think the price is a little high for what the SideCar offers, but after using it for awhile, I believe you’ll feel its well worth the money.

Rating: 4.0/5.0[rating:4.0]

Price: $29.99 – Available for Pre-Order at the SideCar website, shipping May 16th. [DIRECT LINK]

What I really liked:

• Easy to setup and use.
• An ingenious way to use your iPad as a second display.
• Safely and securely attaches your iPad to your MacBook.
• Adjustable, so it can be used with a variety of laptops and tablets.