Our Favorite Car Phone Mount Is More Useful Than a Backseat Driver

I purchased two iOttie iTap Magnetic 2 units on sale during Cyber Week 2022, one for each of my vehicles, a beater car and a newish van with a proprietary infotainment system built into the dash that is awful and confusing to use (hence the continued navigation from my phone).

The iOttie mount was quick to set up: All I had to do was pick the spot for the base, secure it to the dashboard (or windshield) with the provided adhesive disc, and clamp it down.

I then placed an adhesive metal plate on my Android phone, which magnetizes securely to the base even through my phone case.

On my first test drive, I realized that I had put the plate too low on my phone for it to stay stable while we turned around sharp corners, and it was easy for me to unstick the metal and reposition it on my phone to a better spot.

If you have a phone that allows for wireless charging, you have to be careful where you place the plate with the Magnetic 2, lest it block the coils that allow the wireless charging to happen. Even though my Pixel 6 supports wireless charging, I rarely use that feature because the phone’s battery life is so great and wired charging is so much faster, so this isn’t a major inconvenience for me.

But if you want the best of both worlds, the iOttie Auto Sense allows for wireless charging with a suction-cup-style base that you can place anywhere as long as the cord reaches your car’s charging port. The Auto Sense uses tiny tension claws to hold the phone, rather than the Magnetic 2’s metal-plate-and-magnet combo.

If you don’t want to place the unit on your dash or windshield, iOttie also makes Magnetic 2 Air Vent Mount and Magnetic 2 CD Slot Mount versions.

While our reviewers tested all of these car phone mounts on bumpy, curvy roads, obviously there are many factors that go into a mount’s success, including where you place it, the size of your phone, and the quality of the shocks in your car.

If you have a large phone, the CD and vent mounts might be a bit weak to hold it. According to our guide to the best car phone mounts, “in our tests, the magnets in all three versions [dash/windshield, vent, or CD slot] were strong, supporting most of our phones either vertically or horizontally over even the roughest terrain. Only the large, 6.7-inch iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 14 Plus, and Pixel 7 Pro gave them some trouble when held horizontally, although the mounts were rock solid with a 6.1-inch Pixel 7a.”

Various staff members report that their phone has broken loose at one point or another on each style of iOttie mount, which can lead to a dangerous situation—please do not ever reach down to try to rescue your phone from the footwell while driving—but the suite of iOttie models beat out more than two dozen competitors and proved to be the overall safest and most stable mounts, in our experience.

We recommend only two other models: the ESR HaloLock Magnetic Wireless Car Charger and the Anker 613 Magnetic Wireless Charger (MagGo), both of which are best used with Apple’s MagSafe technology.

Though you can just dust the unit itself with a microfiber cloth (or your sleeve, to be honest), you may want to consider where you place the suction-cup versions of the device.

“I have the Auto Sense charging version, and I really like the suction-cup mount. But it’s almost impossible to get the sticky base off the dashboard, so I’d be hesitant to use it on a leased vehicle,” says senior editor Grant Clauser.

This article was edited by Catherine Kast and Caitlin McGarry.