Ezi-Grab Tool Strap product reviews

Frankly I wasnt too sure about this when I first heard about it. How could it be strong enough to live up to its claims? Are the reviews just marketing hype? Only one way to find out.
After strapping it on to my arm I started loading it up with all my smaller tools. The ones I use for working bone and stone for carving. It held every single grinding bit I had, plus most of the smaller drillbits. It held all the tools I need to swap the bits around, plus the full set of miniature files. That was about the limit in terms of space, but it weighed next to nothing.
After unloading all of these, I started to look at the weight aspect. A couple of spanners, a handful of assorted screwdrivers and even a small hacksaw I use to cut bone to shape. This added up to more than a kilo of metal. No worries. It took quite a lot of shaking around to dislodge anything. Not exactly disco dancing, but more than would be expected from normal arm movements during work.
All in all, this turned out to be pretty much exactly as promised although not quite as comfortable as I hoped. You see I find it better to wear short sleeves during carving and this wasnt too comfortable against bare skin. In the end it was worth the hassle of wearing longer sleeves in order to have the functionality in place. A little pricey perhaps, but certainly a good investment if you need tools on hand.

As an IT technician by trade, i'm forever needing a multitude of tools, and i'm also forever misplacing at least half of them. This little beauty has helped to aleviate this problem, by keeping everything together in one place.

I'm able to keep my screwdrivers handy as well as all the various screws and stuff that comes about when dismantling a PC or laptop.

The magnets in this gizmo are strong enough that stuff won't fall off with average movement, and they are not so strong that once you've put them on there that you need to be NZ's strongest man to get them off again.

There is only one gripe I do have though. Why do I still get screws left over after putting a PC/Laptop back together again?

ADMAN claim that this tool strap holds up to 3kgs. We managed to hold a 5kg axe on it, although it didn't stay there for long. This is a product that everyone in our household was pleasantly surprised and impressed with. Not only was it good for big tools like spanners, hammers and screw drivers, it was also good for small things like screws, nails, pins and hinges. When put onto a belt, you couldn't really tell it was there, yet the tools were conveniently able to be found. It is preferable in my house to be worn on a belt rather than on the arm but with the adjustable straps it fits from the smallest arm in the house to the biggest and all of them in between.

When thrown at the garage door from a distance of 6ft, it stayed on and there was not fear of it falling off, also surprisingly, it sticks to my car, which is a good thing for when the boys are working on it as the tools and screws won't get stuck down and lost in the gravel on the driveway. This is the kind of thing that will come in really handy for when we want to see what's inside something and work out if we can fix it. I would love to get these for all the guys for Christmas, especially those that have everything - or at least think they do.

As an avid DIY bodger, all-round disassembler-of-stuff, and frequent repairer-of-busted-toys, there is a selection of tools I prefer to keep handy... an assortment of small screwdrivers, a bigger screwdriver with multiple interchangable heads (such as the Universal Screwdriver), a few creatively-bent paperclips to act as grab hooks and probes, a multimeter, a set of long-nose pliers, and quite possibly a blade of some description.

This can be quite a stack, when laid out across the worksurface... and will of course reduce the usable area dramatically if I happen to have it all out at once. Even the construction of a dedicated work area in the garage hasn't made things easier - Like MS Windows and RAM, the work expands to fill the available space, without much performance boost.

That's where this simple but highly effective device comes into it's own and steals the show. A few moments to strap it on to your upper arm, forearm, thigh even (if you either have thin legs or can extend the velcro strap with a bit of DIY MacGyverism) and suddenly you have a place to store your tools right where you can reach them at a moments notice, that travels with you from place to place, and is as easy to grab from as though it was held there by... well... by magnets.

I found myself able to spend more time fixing and less time shuffling tools around to find that one tiny paperclip-hook or mini screwdriver that always manages to hide in plain sight... all I had to do, at most, was glance at my forearm and there was any tool I needed. I even found the magnets strong enough to lift a full-sized hammer, though it wasn't stable enough to stay in place if I moved my arm faster than a snail's crawl... but the magnetic strength was quite impressive.

Magnetic strength is measured in units called 'Gauss' - the Earth's magnetic field is pretty weak, averaging at less than 0.5 Gauss. Those therapeutic 'healing magnetic bracelets' you find in infomercials usually rank in at anywhere between 300 to 2000 Gauss... an average fridge magnet is a real light-weight at around 10 Gauss... so at a pure guesstimate, based on the weight this belt can lift, I would estimate these magnets are pretty hefty units, with a strength measured in the high-hundreds... meaning you sure can hold almost any small, magnetically-compatible tool you could want.

Overall, a real time saver and one I am certainly glad to have on hand. For a DIY bodger who can't resist the urge to "...just pop it open and see what makes it tick..." this is a timely addition to the essential toolkit. In fact, I plan to buy a couple more and keep one in the office for when I am working on the computers, and another in the car... just in case.