CORDination Station PRO Series 1

Gadgeteer Hands On Review by Julie

January 24, 2005

It is a known fact that home office floors are the perfect environment for spaghetti breeding grounds. Not Italian spaghetti, but cable spaghetti! Just look under your desk and you'll see exactly what I mean. Need a real example? Then check out these pictures of just a few of the items that I have in my computer room at the moment. The scary thing is that I'm in the middle of a remodel in this room and have only about 1/3rd of my hardware setup and plugged in.

Have you ever tried to track down the plug for a PDA cradle or digital camera charger in the tangle of wires under your desk? Not much fun was it? They say that clutter is a cause of stress and stress kills... None of us want to die, so what if there was an easier way to keep your mess of wires neat and manageable? I think I may have found just such a solution with CORDination Station PRO Series 1 from Leap Technologies.

The CORDination Station is a plastic housing designed especially for organizing and powering your collection of adapters, cables, and cords. It comes in black with a black lid, black with a silver lid, white, and two different styles of cammo for those of you that want to go with the Army look.

Hardware Specifications:

Size: 12"L x 12"D x 2.75"H
Weight: ~3.5lbs
Power: 10 outlets, grounded 110 volt, 3400 joules of surge suppression, built-in 15-amp circuit breaker

 

Here's how it works. The top of the CORDination Station has a lockable hatch that pops open to reveal a 430 cubic inch cavity for storing your 'mess'.

The left and right interior walls of the unit each have a 5 outlet power strip built into them where you can plug in your various power adapters for PDAs, Cell phones, printers, etc. The maximum clearance for an adapter is a little more than 2 inches. This can be a problem for large power bricks.

The front and back of the unit have pass thru doors that you can use to route your cables in and out of the box. The doors snap open/closed relatively easily, but when closed there are no grooves for cables. Basically if you use these doors to route your wires, you'll need to leave the door(s) open.

A heavy duty 4.5ft 3 prong cord is attached inside the CORDination Station and must be routed through the back door in order to power the unit and the built-in 10 outlets.

Also included with the CORDination Station are 10 self-adhesive plastic cable holders. These holders have a square base  that match the squares that are stamped into the floor of the unit. Using the holders, you can layout how you want to organize your cables.

Even though there are 5 outlets on each wall of the unit, you probably won't be able to use all 10 outlets. Why? AC adapters are so large that they tend to cover adjacent outlets. As you can see below, I was able to plug in two adapters and was left with only 1 open outlet on the very left.

430 cubic inches may sound like a lot of room, but thick cables quickly fill it. Of course, I could have crammed quite a few other cords into the space, but I wanted to be at least semi neat. I ended up installing the AC adapter for my 5 port  Ethernet switch, AC adapter for my speakers, power cable for my Airport Express WiFi module and the big power brick for my Direcway satellite broadband modem. I wanted to also add the small AC adapter for my Logitech MX1000 wireless mouse, but the prongs of the adapter were oriented in such a way that the adapter would not fit in the allotted 2in tall space.

In the configuration above, I still had the ability to plug in 4 more items into the right power strip.

With the lid closed, you can see the various cables protruding from the back access door. Not quite as elegant as it could be if there were some grooves in the door to route the wires through while still being able to close the door.

After everything was connected again inside and outside the unit, I plugged in the CORDination Station's main power cord into the wall and flipped the power switch on the front to the ON position. I was half afraid that my lights would dim or a breaker would blow, but everything booted up just fine!

From just moving 4 items into the CORDination Station, I was able to ditch my power strip and declutter the floor behind my desk a bit (see pictures below). I guess I could have stuffed all the CAT5 cables into the box too. Not sure how well CAT5 can tolerate extremely close proximity to power cords though.

Left to right: Before and After

You don't have to leave the CORDination Station on the floor. You can mount it on the wall or even use it as a monitor stand on your desktop. The unit can support up to 45 lb.

The CORDination Station is a product that will help you get your cable problems under control. The unit is sturdy and well constructed. If it was slightly larger in order to accommodate wider AC adapters, and had grooves in the access doors, this would be almost a perfect product. As is, the CORDination Station Pro Series 1 might already be perfect for you.
 

Price: $59.95 ($99.95 for more exotic colors)

Pros:
Store and power up to 10 items in one enclosed unit.
Only uses one outlet to power unit
Built-in surge suppressor

Cons:
Outlet space is constricted to a 2 inch tall space
Access doors lack grooves for wire routing