Overview
Touch screens were once only seen in Tom Cruise movies, but are now becoming a norm in devices such as mobile phones and sat navs and I’m sure everyone will agree, they look great. The only problem with them is that the onscreen keyboard is always the perfect size for a rodent to type out a message; not necessarily a human being. There is however, a new product on the market which addresses this conundrum; the TAD.
Review
Now I have been known for going a bit bananas at my GPS Sat Nav when trying to programme my intended destination. I swear it's just acting like a difficult two-year-old when I type "g" and it registers "h" every time. Well, the people over at TAD Accessories have obviously had similar experiences because they've developed a new product designed to eliminate touch screen tantrums in the car. Introducing TAD, the colourful rubber rings with shaped rubber attachments to make communicating with your touch screen a lot more accurate.
There are three different rubber inserts that you can choose to attach to your rubber ring. One comes to a sharp point, and the other two look more or less the same to be honest. I attached the pointy one to my bright blue ring and went to work on my sat nav screen and my iPhone.
I attempted programming a simple direction into my sat nav using the dreaded on-screen keyboard. My TAD worked a treat and allowed me to hit the right key every time. Not once did I feel that I wanted to throw my TomTom out the window and reverse onto it.
Unfortunately though, I had a completely different result with the iPhone which didn't register anything I was sliding or pressing with the TAD. Apple explains this by saying that using objects on your touch screen blocks the slight electrical charge in your fingers, meaning that the screen won't react. Who knew that you carried this much power in your pinky!
Word from Gaj is that it also doesn't work on the LG phone's touch screen, which really defeats the purpose of a device designed to make using touch screens easier.
The TAD is mainly aimed at people with either long fingernails or wide fingertips. While I have been able to get away with just using the tip of my nail to type on onscreen keyboards up until now, the TAD (when it worked) did definitely allow me to be more accurate just as it is primarily intended to do. This brings us to another use of TAD which, I have to say again, wasn't very successful.
TAD is hailed as also being able to protect your wedding band when playing sport such as golf, or doing something equally as physical and demanding on your hands, like building a house. After trying in vain to slip the medium-sized tad past my knuckle (very similar to me trying to squeeze into a dress that to be honest would only have fit me back in primary school) I let my vanities go and reached out for the large-sized TAD. Now my fingers aren't stick thin, but they are far narrower than every man's that I then had to compare my hand to just to reassure myself that I hadn't been over-indulging on the deserts lately. While I managed to get the large-sized rubber ring on, the man-hands had quite a lot of trouble getting it past their knuckles.
Once I had my fluoro green ring over my wedding band, I then performed the very scientific test of banging my hand on the table. Not because I was particularly hungry, but I wanted to see if it would stay on in a scenario similar to catching a ball in a net ball game for example.
The rubber ring did slip off my band to expose it to the table top, leading me to think that while the TAD would be great at protecting your ring from an easy round of golf where your hand does not face much impact, I wouldn't recommend it for your next wrestling match.
So usability sorted, what else is important to anyone who has the stylish presence of mind to own a sleek touch-screen device? Design. Practically the TAD is designed as well as I think it can be except for one detail. While the website says that you can wear a TAD ring to match your football colours, I haven't seen one football club whose colours are either bright green, bright orange or bright pink. There is also a nice blue or black option, or there's clear which would just get dirty on a sporting field, though you do have more chance of matching it to your daily outfit.
The Gaj-it Verdict
Design: 6/10
Usability: 5/10
Value: 6/10
We Say
I like the idea of the TAD well enough to keep one in the car to programme my sat nav but I would really need to consider whether I would remember (or would dare!) to slip the bright pink thing on the end of my finger when out in public…especially as it could seriously clash with my outfit!
The TAD is very affordable at £2.99 each and can be bought online from: tad-accessories.com/