iLounge

Company: FullBodyFilms

Website: www.fullbodyfilms.com

Model: Protection Pack for iPod touch

Price: $16

Compatible: iPod touch

FullBodyFilms Protection Pack for iPod touch

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By Jeremy Horwitz

Editor-in-Chief, iLounge
Published: Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Category: Stickers, Guards and Film

To this day, one of our iPhones remains covered at all times in FullBodyFilms' prior product, the Protection Pack for iPhone. The idea was simple: combine three different best-of-class iPhone film protectors in a single package at a very reasonable price, providing nearly ideal coverage for the device without obscuring its good looks. Now FullBodyFilms has released the Protection Pack for iPod touch ($16), a highly similar package that's just as good as its predecessor, leaving only a small amount of room for improvement.

This Protection Pack comes with four types of clear, iPod touch-covering film: a large piece of rear film that covers almost all of the iPod touch’s back and sides, a smaller piece of film that separately covers touch’s Wi-Fi antenna, and two pieces of front film that provide your choice of either glossy clear or frosted anti-glare protection for iPod touch’s screen and glass face. You apply the big piece of rear film by slightly wetting it down, making sure its curves line up with touch’s, then do the same with the antenna cover.

At first, the sides of the large rear piece won’t stick, but after 15-30 minutes, they’ll hold tight, assuming that they’re properly aligned, which doesn’t take much work or skill. Alignment aside, your only challenge is to make sure there aren’t any air or water bubbles under the film, a process which typically demands the use of a credit card just to work pesky bubbles out of the material.

FullBodyFilms’ front stickers use static cling rather than adhesive to stick to your iPod touch’s face, and are as good as the best of the films offered by other companies. The glossy clear version is invisible on iPod touch’s face, permitting complete visibility and preserving the glass screen cover’s standard level of glare, while the anti-glare version (shown here) is modestly coated with a diffusing material that prevents light from reflecting off of its surface. You can see the differences between the two types of film in our prior iPhone review. As with the iPhone version of this package, it’s superb that FullBodyFilms includes everything you might need in one package.

Once the film has been applied, there are only three parts of touch that are conspicuously exposed: the charcoal-colored bezel around the glass screen cover, its buttons, and its bottom ports. There are also tiny holes where the sides of the film meet at the corners. While this is an impressive degree of protection relative to many of the iPod touch cases we’ve tested, there are some great ones that offer bezel and top-button coverage, such as DLO’s excellent VideoShell, which also includes a rear video stand and only sells for a few dollars more. By contrast, the obvious appeal here is certainly the thinness, followed by the lower pricing; you’ll need to decide what’s most important to you. It’s also worth mentioning that unlike some—not all—iPod touch cases, you’re guaranteed virtually complete accessory compatibility when using the Protection Pack; it only adds a millimeter of thickness.

From our perspective, if you’re looking for an extremely thin protective solution for your iPod touch and want almost as much protection as the best full-sized iPod touch cases out there, FullBodyFilms’ Protection Pack is a highly recommendable option. For $16, you can enjoy the touch’s thin profile as it was intended to be seen and felt, use accessories without any concern, and pick from two different but equally useful types of screen coverage. Unless something dramatically better comes along, this is the solution we’ll be using on our own iPod touches.