Sometimes, we go somewhere and see an object with very nice colour and can’t help wondering if it will look good in our digital design of something. Yes, sure we can take a photo of that object, then finding out the RGB value of that object by analysing the photo, but it’s not really the best solution because photo colours is affected by a number of external factors such as angle, lighting and reflection. Plus, the process of finding the color values of a particular pixel is not something that most non-technical people can do.

CUBE Portable Color Digitizer is a little gadget created for this very specific purpose. When we see something with nice color, we put the CUBE sensor on it, and it will tell us the RGB values and its LAB values. I know that RGB is how color is displayed in computer screen but to be honest, I don’t even know how to use those L, A and B values. Surely some professional designers would know better, I assume.

First, we need to download CUBE Companion App into our smartphones. It is available for iOS and Android. The process of pairing up CUBE with the phone is fairly easy and well guided through the app screen. The cap protecting the sensor is also useful for calibration, which is something we will be asked to do upon setting up.

Next, when we see a colour we would like to use, we can simply put CUBE on it (without the cap, of course), press the top and see the colour’s digital values in our app. The app will keep history of colours as we need for us to re-use later. Neat, simple and works.

Overall, this is a nice little gadget that does exactly what it promises. The use case scenario is very specific and I imagine not everyone would need this device. Special thanks for my friend Osh Harari who lend me his gadget for this review.