Review: Olixar offers a stylish, inexpensive bamboo Apple Watch dock

by Joe White

November 20, 2015

Company: Olixar
Product: Olixar Charging Apple Watch Bamboo Stand with iPhone Dock
Price: $30.99 (£19.99)
Compatibility: Apple Watch
Website: http://www.olixar.com
Date: Nov. 20, 2016

Our Apple Watches are far too nice (and certainly far too expensive) to simply discard on our bedside tables each and every night. Much like the iPhone and iPad, many owners feel that Cupertino’s smart watch is really quite deserving of a stand or dock to protect it from the perils of drops or surface scratches. The market has, rather expectedly, been flooded with docks, stands, and mounts for the Apple Watch, many of which allow owners to protect their device while, at the same time, charging it using the smart watch’s inductive, snap-on charging puck.

One such accessory has recently taken a turn in the AppAdvice accessory-testing labs. It’s from Olixar, and it’s an Apple Watch and iPhone dock fashioned out of a piece of bamboo. Better yet, the dock is fairly inexpensive and it looks great.

The Product

So, Olixar, as a product, is as simple as it is effective. It’s a fairly small piece with one large space alongside a smaller, circular space. The first allows your iPhone to stand upright, while the second is a port for your Apple Watch to connect to its inductive charger. The precise measure of this circular charging port means the inductive charger fits snugly in here. As such, simply resting your Apple Watch on this part of Olixar is enough to begin the charging process. It’s all wonderfully seamless.

Olixar without a docked Apple Watch.

Getting cables in the right place isn’t as simple as it could be, since you’ll need to route both an Apple Watch charger and a Lightning cable in place (in order to charge both devices while they’re docked). Moreover, the Lightning cable will need to be hoisted a good way out of Olixar when the smartphone isn’t docked; if you don’t do this, I’ve noticed that the Lightning cable has an unfortunate habit of disappearing back through the stand and falling out of reach.

Yet small qualms aside, Olixar is a product that looks great, and complements the aesthetics of Apple’s design rather perfectly. There’s also something strangely reassuring about docking your expensive Apple Watch in a stand made out of bamboo, rather than metal; I suppose I feel happy knowing the scratch risk is minimized if the smart watch did happen to slip from its position. Of course, the bamboo is lovely from a design perspective, too. I’m not sure how well Olixar suits the larger iPhone 6 Plus and 6s Plus units; though the stand does support these 5.5-inch smartphones, I do feel that the smaller iPhone 6 and 6s might look better against the dock (which, as mentioned, is rather on the small side).

Olixar, an Apple Watch, and a docked iPhone handset.

I am, overall, really pleased with Olixar as a product. It’s inexpensive but looks well made, and the design of the dock is to my taste. It’s minimalistic, it gets the job done, and the bamboo material is a great choice. I love Olixar, and I think you will too.