Walk into any motoring or mobile phone accessory shop and you’ll see a plethora of in-car device mounts for sale. A few years ago, these were to hold phones in place when using hands-free devices, which have since been superseded by much more reliable Bluetooth systems. Today, vehicle mounts are being used with another must-have item of touring kit: sat-navs.

Sat-navs have become essential motorhome accessories, great for keeping you on track on tour and reducing map reading related arguments. And now, instead of purchasing separate sat-nav units, more and more motorcaravanners are choosing to use apps on their smartphones and tablets instead. You’re likely to have your tablet or mobile on you when touring anyway, so why carry an additional device? Also, it’s a handy way to keep your mobile or tablet charged, plus the ability of such devices to get online means that system and map updates can happen easily.

Yet despite this trend, most mobiles and tablets aren’t supplied with mounts for use in vehicles – and with a host of options on sale, how do you decide which to buy? So the Practical Motorhome test team has put a selection through their paces to see which are the best buys to keep your devices safe and secure on tour.

We assessed each accessory mount against a number of criteria, to help determine which is the most worthy of your money. We wanted to see how well each performed when being used on a rough road, so each was set up and driven down the same bumpy stretch, to see how securely it held the device.

Ease of positioning and the precision with which the device can be aimed were further points of consideration, bonus points awarded if the mount can be used on a windscreen as well as on a dashboard.

We also wanted to understand the range of device sizes each holder could handle, and to get to grips with how easy or difficult it was to secure your device in and remove it from each accessory mount.

Here we review the Olixar Omniholder, which costs just £10. In terms of mounting options, the Omniholder offers a tough suction cup for screen mounting, plus a round adhesive pad that can be affixed to even-textured dashboards; its smooth upper surface then makes the perfect base for the cup.

Sadly, the product’s versatility doesn’t extend to device size range, which is just 3cm (widths of 5-8cm are catered for). Like the best products here, all positional adjustment is catered for by a single balljoint. As with the Polco Universal Smart Phone Holder POLC23, the Omniholder’s movement range is not in the same league as our group test winning Ram Mount X-Grip RAM-HOL-UN7B-KT. Basically, you roughly position the mount prior to affixing the suction cup to the screen to guarantee that you can angle your device where you want it.

As part of our accessory mount group test, as well as the aforementioned products from Polco and Ram, we’ve also reviewed the Sakura SS4609 Universal Rotating Mobile Phone Holder, the Belkin Window Mount and the Kenu Airframe.