Best Car Phone Mounts: Stay Connected and Safe

To quote our own Jonathon Klein, “These guides are living documents.” It’s estimated that roughly 3 billion photos are uploaded to the Internet every day. There aren’t quite that many new car phone mounts introduced to the market, but it may not be far off. So what is the best way to hold your smartphone today, may not be tomorrow. So I will continue to update this guide as we test more mounts. If you have a favorite mount, let us know. If you’re a manufacturer of mega mounts, mail one out, man.

I started out this guide by doing research online, and talking to my co-editors who all have opinions – boy howdy do they have opinions. Then, it was ordering up some products and seeing what worked and what didn’t. As you’ve probably already guessed, I quickly discovered that like just about every consumer product out there, “best whatever” is hugely subjective by use case. I’ve tried to cover a few of them here and pick out mounts that work well in those cases.

Amazon and other online retailers sell literally hundreds of different phone mounts for your car. Most people are looking for something easy to install and easy to use. A vent mount like this from iOttie installs, literally in seconds and it works on most cars on the market. Jaguar and Mercedes owners with cool jet engine vents will need to look elsewhere. For attaching your phone, a magnetic mount is by far the easiest and quickest method, literally hold your phone up to it when you get in and grab and go when you exit the car.

There are a lot of options that look just like this one, but the iOttie is made from quality plastics that will hold up over time, even in hot climates. It comes in either blue or black and works with a wide variety of phones. If you have a heavier-than-average phone, like an iPhone Pro Max, you will need to look for a different mount. My experience says that for heavier phones, you need a physical connection like a clamp.

This particular mount has no charging abilities, but it is well out of the way of cables so that won't be an issue. For slightly more money, iOttie does offer basically the same mount but with wireless charging.

Sorry McLaren Elva drivers, this one isn't for you. Slapping a suction cup on the inside of the windshield is the de facto method of mounting driving peripherals in your car even decades before the plush Garfield craze of the 1980s. They work incredibly well and are easy to install and remove. With an extra adhesive pad, you can even stick them to surfaces like your dashboard – but that's kind of defeating the point. Like the suction cup itself, this phone mount from Scosche totally sucks, but in a good way.

Besides offering the ease of mounting in the car, the flexible arm has nearly infinite adjustability. You can turn it, and curve it, if it were longer, I imagine you could tie it in a knot. Your phone is held on with magnets, but I'll say this again to ensure everyone sees it, it won't hold the big boys. My iPhone Pro Max did the comedic, slow slide down the mount until it eventually fell off, in bench testing. I won't even bother trying it in the car. My wife's Pro, non-max, held on just fine.

Scosche is a brand with a long history of making quality electronics peripherals and accessories for them. The plastic feels high-quality and will probably last several generations of yearly updated phones. It comes with the aforementioned adhesive pad allowing you to stick the suction up to just about any surface, but again, why? At the time of writing this, a single mount was under 20 bucks and a two-pack was 30 bucks. If you really want a magnetic, suction cup mount, this is hard to beat.

I can hear a lot of you furiously typing complaints already, this isn't a car phone mount that you just buy it, install it, and go. This is more like the LEGO of phone mounts, and you may be able to buy a kit that's easy to assemble, or you may end up having to use your imagination to build what it is you're after. Also like LEGO, it's kinda pricey for building blocks.

It starts with a phone case, available for most popular smartphones, with a receiver on the back Peak Design calls a SlimLink. It offers a mechanical click-in connection with mounts without disrupting the ability to wirelessly charge your phone. A huge variety of mount types are available ranging from simple adhesive and vent mount parts, all the way up to roll cage and handlebar clamps. We've tested this out in Klein's Can-Am and E-bike, after miles of off-road testing, there was never a need to call IT to report his iPhone missing in action. Not yet, at least.

Even if you can't find a suitable mount in Peak Design's catalog, it offers parts that will allow you to connect the SlimLink receiver mount to GoPro's system and also to 1-inch ball and socket system. There are also mini tripods, mounts for quarter-twenty photography standard, if you can't find a way to make this work for holding your phone on whatever vehicle it is you're operating, you'll probably be better off just holding your Pixel in your teeth.

Like Peak Design, iBolt is another system for mounting devices instead of being a simple phone mount. I've chosen the cupholder mount as the starting point, simply to demonstrate another option in the guide. This particular mount is expandable, so whether you have the tiny European-sized cupholders meant for Red Bull-sized cans or you have real 'Merican cupholders designed to hold a 48 oz Glutton Gulp, this will fit. More importantly, it won't involve keeping track of extra pieces to change sizes.

The system is based on a 1-inch ball and socket joints with arms available in multiple lengths. This is a secure design with tons of adjustability. The clamps for holding devices are equally tough and are available in sizes that will allow you to hold small phones all the way to tablets.

If you don't like the cupholder, you can choose from magnetic, suction cup, bolt-down, and clamps. As with anything customizable, prior planning will yield the best results. Do some measurements, figure out where you want the device and where the mount will go, and order up exactly what you need.

I initially selected this RAM mount based on the X-Grip clamp that holds your phone. The spring-tensioned device holds onto your device with four rubber bumpers and offers clamping forces high enough to keep it secure even on bikes. The suction cup mount is equally worthy of praise. The twist lock actuation provides secure mounting on the levels of pro-level rigging mounts I've used in the past to hold action cameras to the outside of cars on race tracks.

Like some of the other mounts on this list, the RAM system uses balls and sockets to allow different-sized arms to change the length while the joints themselves give the mount huge articulation. You could make this thing two feet long if you really wanted, but it wouldn't be stable.

Like the other systems in the guide, this is going to look pretty expensive next to the literally countless options you can find online which are basically throw-away purchases. This will last you years and is adaptable as your needs change. By once, cry once – as the old saying goes.

The minimalistic iOttie Velox Magnetic Air Vent Phone Holder offers a simple-to-install, simple-to-use design that will keep your phone secure. It’s also built with high-quality materials and is sure to last. If you’re on a slightly tighter budget, and don't want to block your vents, the Scosche MagicMount Lex Suction Cup Mount might be a better pick.

You’ve got questions. The Drive has answers.