- Today, we're gonna take a look at a new phone mount
that has just come out for Concept2 monitors,
and whether or not it is worth your hard-earned money.
For your workouts.
I'm Shane Farmer, this is this Dark Horse Rowing,
where you build the life that you wanna live,
and we use rowing to help you get there.
Do you use YouTube videos to help you row?
Have you tried using some kind of online training program
to help you get better, or set a plan?
Or, do you just like listening to music, perhaps,
while you row, and you've found some odd ways
of trying to secure your phone,
maybe put it on a chair,
or you lean it against a book,
or set it on the ground over in the corner,
or you watch a TV mounted to a wall,
or something like that.
You've come up with your own solutions
to try and keep your phone in place.
Well, there has been a phone mount
that has been available and widely used,
but it was really the only one in the space.
That is, until now.
Check that out.
Enter the Vapor Fitness phone mount for PM5 monitors.
Now, the PM5 monitor is what Concept2 uses
across all of their machines,
the SkiErg, the BikeErg, and the RowErg as well.
They all use the same monitor now.
So, this will fit all of those machines.
I've tested it on all three,
and yes, it does fit.
It fixes a problem that many of us didn't know we had,
if you've been using the plastic phone mount
for PM5 monitors, that issue being,
those mounts were flat on the bottom, here.
Now, the problem with that flatness
is that almost every phone now has buttons on the side.
Mine has a lock button, or a power button,
and a volume up/down, that's my iPhone.
And almost every phone now has those.
The problem came in in that when you would put it in,
centered on that mount,
it would either turn the volume all the way up,
turn it all the way down, or lock the phone,
and the solution was that the phone
always had to be sitting out to the side of the mount.
Now, is that a big headache?
No, it still held the phone,
but that's what design is.
It's iterating, and it's finding
small solutions to pain points.
And that was a pain point
that I guess I'd never really expressed or knew that I had.
Now, what they've done to fix that,
and I think this is just absolutely brilliant,
you can see here...
It's that little ridge, right there!
That ridge separates the side of the phone from the base,
and elevates it just enough that you don't hit any buttons.
Big win for everybody.
Now, just reviewing this thing in general,
I do like that because it's silicone,
it's nice and flexible.
What that means as well
is that I'm never worried about breaking it.
Whereas plastic, I feel like if I stretch it too far,
I'm always worried about snapping plastic.
So, this is going to be able to adjust
to fit any size phone that you may have.
Obviously, it's not going to be able to fit a tablet,
but phones, you're just fine on that.
Because it's silicone as well,
it has a natural grippiness,
which also gives me a lot more confidence
that the phone isn't going to slide out,
or the mount isn't going to slip off the monitor.
I am also a big fan of the color.
It comes in black, and this,
what I call Concept2 green.
You can see it matches both my lighting,
which I have matching the handles,
which are Concept2 green color.
So, it comes in this and/or black,
and the price point, the price point,
the price point on this.
It's $16.99 versus $13.99 for the plastic mount.
Now, there's also, if you wanted full installation of this,
you could pay Amazon $89 as well
for their installation option.
But with that being said, a $3 difference to me
to fix a pain point I didn't know I had,
that was an itch that every time my phone was offset,
it always just kinda irked me a little bit.
And I just think this is a brilliant iteration on an idea,
and they did a nice job thinking it thorough.
So, congrats to Vapor Fitness on that.
Now, it's also important I note,
this isn't a sponsored video,
nor did they even give me this.
Funny enough, I received this in the mail,
from whom I don't know,
because there was no "from" sending address on it,
and I actually reached out to Vapor Fitness
to say thank you if it was them, and it wasn't.
So, whoever you are that sent this to me, thank you.
And I've had the chance to use this
for about a month now,
and I've moved it between all machines,
tested it on all of them,
and it just does a fantastic job.
It does what it's supposed to do,
I've never had to worry that it's going to fall off,
or my phone is going to fall out,
and so, from that perspective,
it's gotten a good testing here at Dark Horse HQ.
Now, before I give my final assessment on this,
two things: number one, of course,
I linked this in the description below,
so if you wanna go check it out on Amazon,
check that link below.
And two, I wanna hear from you,
what is the craziest setup that you've had to do
to keep your phone in place,
so that you could use it during a workout?
I've heard a lot of crazy ideas,
and I'm really interested to know what you have done
to make your phone work for you.
So, my final thoughts on this.
Is this a buy?
Is this something that is worth putting into your rotation?
I'm gonna say an absolute stamp of "yes" on this.
I've been using it for a month now.
I throw it in my gym bag
when I go down to the boathouse to row,
in case I need to Erg.
It has been sitting on every single one of my machines,
and whenever I move machines,
I find that even though I have the plastic mount,
I'm still using this one,
and moving it from machine to machine.
It just gives me confidence, and at $16.99,
the $3 difference to me is well worth it
for you to pick something like this up.
Again, I'm just a big fan.
It's solved a problem I didn't know I had but was existing,
and just kudos to Vapor Fitness
for making a good product, here.
So, if you're thinking about picking up this mount,
number one, make sure you subscribe,
so you get alerted when we come out with new videos.
And number two, check out this playlist
of our top workouts from 2019,
so that you have an amazing lineup of workouts
that you get to watch in your new phone mount.