My wife came home the other day and said I have a new tablemate for us. Since I can be quick witted at times I of course said, didn’t know we were looking for a new mate, I asked if she was pretty. The wife told me it was a portable. I then reluctantly informed her I already had a portable mate. Of course, after I received my dirty look and a kidney punch after I walked over to check out these new portable tables, I must say I wasn’t really too impressed. I didn’t think they were made very well and were pretty cheap. The frame still reminded me of the old tin TV tray that my grandma would set out for us. The frame was hollow tube that could easily be bent if or when the kids accidently knock it over and bend the fame. It looked to like me these tablemates were just a kickback to the old folding trays or a miniature folding table. She bought them from Wal-Mart for about 25 bucks a piece. Now I am really starting to wonder why we have a dining room table since we just bought new carpet and are trying to keep the floor clean. The wife said they work great at as TV tray where can sit down and watch our new large screen TV while eating and watching the news.

I looked at the TableMate II. I did not like how it slid under the couch or chair. The reason is for people like me that get distracted will take this table and try to stand up with it to move and then end up knocking the thing over. You have to remember to slide the table out and just try to lift the table and put it to the side. I do like how the table mate II slants down if you adjust it. It has 3 tilt angles for the table. The table adjusts up and down from 23” to 30”.

Table Mate II makes a perfect laptop table if you want to sit down to do work on the laptop, I should say if you want to sit down on your comfortable sofa or couch and do work or surf the internet on the laptop. I can say this is am improvement over the classic tablemate. Tablemate II offers a larger surface with to work on. I really don’t like that the product only comes in white. If you have kids that use it, it can get pretty dirty quickly and the white table doesn’t really fit into our brown family room. I would love to see the product come in a type of wood grain or even black.

I suppose if you just looking for a laptop table, portable folding tray or portable folding table the tablemate will work as long as you are not too concerned about the choice of colors. The absence of availability of the tablemate being available as a wood grain folding table amazes me and I think it would be a basic consumer demand. In addition to the color and quality of manufacturing it definitely gives me pause to recommend the product to my friends. To be fair our tablemate has not broken but I can definitely see how my tablemate could easily get broken by our kids over the next year.