Best Skins Ever — Perhaps

I’m a bit prissy when it comes to my dis­play screens on my mobile devices and tech­no­logy. I like put­ting screen scratch pro­tect­ors on them. To pro­tect them. To give me the peace-of-mind that they’ll sur­vive the harsh treat­ment they get in my vari­ous bags and packs, and that the pro­tect­or, not the screen, will absorb any harsh treatment.

I’ve done this with my digit­al cam­er­as, my hand­held GPS units, my PDAs, and now my iPad.

While there are a num­ber of dif­fer­ent screen pro­tect­or and skin vendors, for my Apple devices, I’ve chosen skins from Best Skins Ever (yes, that really is their name).

A friend recom­men­ded them, had pro­tec­ted his gear with them, showed me his devices with the pro­tect­ive cov­ers applied, and gave me a few point­ers about installation…which was wel­come, as it is a bit tricky, but the FAQ and tutori­al help walk you through the pro­cess. Refer to them to get a good over­view of installing the covers.

A word of warn­ing, the applic­a­tion pro­cess can take up to 45 minutes, to get it done right.

My exper­i­ence installing the pro­tect­ors was mixed. The edge cuts on the cov­er is so pre­cise that if you’re slightly off, as I was when apply­ing it to my iPod Touch, you’ll even­tu­ally notice.

In my case, I missed on the align­ment of the back and had a slight tab not com­pletely adhere. I plan to trim it off with an hobby knife. What’s totally cool though, the adhes­ive is very strong, and that ‘lif­ted tab’ did not lift the remainder of the back cov­er at all. It’s quite tight.

As well, I was ini­tially dis­ap­poin­ted with the clar­ity and trans­par­ency of the screen cov­er skin. Hap­pily, this clears up after about a week or two as the adhes­ive sets up. I’m very pleased with the way my iDevices look with through the screen covers.

Giv­en that I was rather impressed with the product, I man­aged to hook up with Michael Her­ring, the Pres­id­ent of the com­pany and bounce a few ques­tions off of him.

BG: The skins mar­ket is pretty com­pet­it­ive — what is it about your skin that makes it bet­ter than the others?

MH: We take the time to design our kits with the best cov­er­age pos­sible while remain­ing easy for the cus­tom­er to apply. Not just some­thing that’s easy for us to man­u­fac­ture. I still have a hand in design­ing every skin. We also have a track record of hav­ing some of the best cus­tom­er ser­vice and we do it all while offer­ing one of the most afford­able options in the market.

BG: On the web­site about page we learn a bit about your philo­sophy about qual­ity and pri­cing, espe­cially in light of com­pet­it­or pri­cing. What drove you to choose to com­pete in Dav­id vs Goliath style?

MH: We were for­tu­nate enough to get our start early and make a name for ourselves. That being said, we’ve always felt if we simply offered a good product for a fair price and took care of our cus­tom­ers then there would always room for a com­pany like ours.

BG: Look­ing for­ward, any insights on new skins for hard­ware lead­ing up to the hol­i­day buy­ing season?

MH: We always like see­ing new Apple products and Android phones but were really look­ing for­ward to the new Black­berry Play­Book. Unfor­tu­nately it does­n’t look like it will be here in time for the hol­i­days.  We’re still wait­ing for some­thing excit­ing from RIM since the torch was a bit of a let down.

BG: Any secrets or spe­cial tips you’d like to add regard­ing skin applic­a­tion and maintenance?

MH: Patience is the key to a good applic­a­tion. I’ll be the first to admit the applic­a­tion isn’t as easy as your aver­age screen pro­tect­or but the final res­ult is also much clear­er and tough­er.  Clean­ing is best done with a slightly damp microfiber cloth.
Yes, there are many skins and cov­ers for your digit­al devices, many more expens­ive too. But in my humble opin­ion, for the price, these are pretty good skins, per­haps the Best Skins Ever 

Oh, and if you fol­low @bestskinsever on Twit­ter, you’ll often see dis­count codes offered around the weekend.

This post of is one of many I pub­lish weekly at the Future Shop Techb­log. Read more of my stuff here.