I like to use my phone and/or my iPad for navigating. We’ve used many different methods over the years for mounting our devices on our dash. In the past, we’ve used vertical surface area to attach Velcro, stick a bit of the other side of the Velcro to the back of your device and you have an easy dashboard mount, but the Velcro on the back of the device gets messy after a while. When we had a Rand McNally dashboard GPS, we used a beanbag type of mount up on top of the dash.

Currently we are quite happy with these magnetic mounts by Wizgear. The mount is a magnet on a swivel base with adhesive so you can just stick it to a flat part of your dash. Your phone or tablet must have a metal plate so it can connect to the magnet. Several stick-on metal plates come with the magnetic mount. These are so convenient! Just touch your device to the magnet and it’s mounted. Want to hold your device? Just grab it and pull it loose.

In addition to the mounts that stick to the dash with adhesives, you can also get ones that clip  on to the the air conditioning vents. We find these to be a bit more problematic, but we love to position our devices in front of the cold air to keep them from overheating when they’re navigating.

You might notice that the iPad mounted to the dash is in a case. We just stuck the metal plate to the back of the case. The mounts are inexpensive enough ($2-10) that you can keep a few extra around just to use as a hand-holder for the iPad as well.

Don’t magnets damage electronic devices like phones? Back in the day of computers and magnetic disks, this was a real problem, but not now. The data storage technology in phones is not magnetic and is not affected by magnets. A powerful magnet may possibly affect the compass in your device, but the small magnets used in these mounts, or other cases, are nothing to worry about.