Review: Slope Angel
Price
£7.00 on ebay
Brand // Manufacturer
Slopeangel.com (seems defunct)
What we liked
Cheap and small
What we didn’t
Poor display
Cycles through temperature in C and F before giving you the angle
Can be confusing which angle is being measured
The Verdict
THE SHORT READ…
Amazingly, there are not many digital slope-angle measurement devices out there that are small and light enough to stash away so that you barely notice you are carrying them. This one is. Unfortunately, in operation it’s pretty poor - with a screen that can only be read clearly when viewed at certain restricted angles, a display that makes you wait for the information that you actually want by forcing you to first sit through scrolling temperature measurements first, and finally, it’s not always clear what angle it’s measuring.
THE LONG READ …
I’d been curious about this device for years, always on the edge of memory, tucked away at the back there, meaning it never caught my eye if it had been in any been in any shop I’d been in, and was never present enough in my mind when perusing the internet for stuff. So I was pretty excited when I did spot one in the small but perfectly-formed Mountain Attitude touring & boot shop in Tignes Le Lac, in France, and so grabbed it while I could.
Up until then, I’d been using my (manual) compass, which has an additional angle-measurement arm on it. I like that compass because it’s portable, fitting in my backpack’s waist-strap pocket (super easy to get to when I need it) and is effectively a three-in-one tool, in giving me a compass, slope measurement and board base de-icer (using it’s thick clear base). But it’s analog, and can be a bit hard to read these days, with it’s very fine print, and so the thought of a small, light, digital one with big numbers, was very appealing. So what do we have?
Weight - 16g, including battery and strap! Barely there.
Size - Very small - 60mm x 25mm x 10mm - with a roughy 24cm long strap.
So far, looking pretty good - it sits super lightly in your hand, as shown in the pic above (I’m a size 9 glove, if that helps).
Unfortunately, it’s two aspects related to “looking” let it down.
First about 3 seconds of this….
… then about 3 seconds of this…. and only then go you get what you wanted -
Screen performance - The info shown can be seen very clearly when you are looking at it at about 45 degrees - the characters are very sharply black at that angle - this is the angle the three photos above are taken at.
If you view from any lower angle than this, then the frame of the screen starts to prevent you seeing all the characters, but that’s to be expected. No issue.
The problems start as soon as you start to view from more directly above - which seems like a totally reasonable thing to be doing. Then, those characters fade to grey, and ultimately, when you are directly above it, are barely visible at all. The first photo below being viewed at about 60 degrees off vertical, and the second one being directly above the screen - you can barely make out that that photo is showing 4 degrees slope.
When viewed at about 60 degrees off vertical - and directly above in the next one…
Information display - The screen is non-programmable, so you get what you are given here. Remember, the main point of this device is to tell you what slope it is sitting on, but turn it on and the order of information is:
Temperature in Celcius for about 3 seconds - way too long as I never want this.
Temperature in Fahrenheit for about 3 seconds - ditto
Slope angle for about 3 seconds - barely long enough to register, after having lost some interest waiting through the temperatures.
… then it repeats that for another two cycles and turns off.
I chuckle, imagining Europeans cursing the fact that americans use some totally useless temperature scale, and vice versa, but actually I wasn’t chuckling, I was cursing. Sure, show the temperature, but only when I hit a button to demand that, and show me the slope immediately first, and for a lot longer than 3 seconds!
Measurement - It seems to be designed to measure either along it’s width (first pic below) or along it’s length (second pic below). If measuring along one of those, and if you can keep the other axis pretty flat, then it seems accurate along the one it’s measuring.
The trick is though, that out in the real world it’s hard to keep one the non-measuring axis perfectly flat and when there is a significant angle on both, you don’t neccessarily know which is going to take over and be the one being measured. I’m being a bit nit-picky here, they’ve tried to be useful in the design and allow measurements along two axes, so of course some internal logic has to be there to decide which one to show, but I think it would be clearer if it only measured along it’s long axis - there’d never any doubt then, and would be more practical out on the slopes.
SUMMARY…
It does work, but with quite a few “buts”. It seems like Slope Angel themselves are no more - at least their website seems dead. Amazon list it but no have no stock just now. I found it on Ebay, with plenty of stock.
If you are not put off by waiting through the temperature measurements, only being able to see the screen well at specific angles, and making sure that you are holding it so one of it’s measuring axes is really dominant, then give it a go. For me though, I think I’ll be sticking with my trusty manual compass / slope-angle-measurer / board-de-icer for now.
