iLounge

Company: Incipio Technologies

Website: www.MyIncipio.com

Model: DuroShot

Price: $25

Compatible: iPod touch 2G

Incipio DuroShot for iPod touch 2G

By Jeremy Horwitz

Editor-in-Chief, iLounge
Published: Friday, January 2, 2009
Category: Cases - iPod touch

As one of three new Incipio cases for the second-generation iPod touch, DuroShot ($25) combines a complete hard plastic body shell with two different-colored silicone rubber fitting inserts, screen protection, and a video stand. You can pick whether to use the white or black insert inside the shell, which comes in your choice of colors, adding more resilient body protection than most of the company's other case offerings.

What Incipio has become expert at achieving over the past two years is a correct balance between budget pricing, protection, and design. Its cases are rarely if ever the most beautiful we’ve seen—something we’d blame as much on color choices as on occasional seams and certain contours—but they tend to do a very strong job of meeting a need. By contrast to the company’s other cases, DuroShot is the design for those who want a iPod touch hardshell but don’t want to give up button protection to get it. Simply put, as much of a pain as it is to deal with initially installing the thin rubber interior, it works to protect the top and side buttons, while padding the touch inside; the video stand is also a welcome pack-in. The only issue is the molding of the bottom port openings: the headphone port hole’s too small for the biggest connectors, and the Dock Connector port hole may similarly have issues with large-cabled and full-bottom accessories.

These days, we put a substantial premium on easy accessory connectivity, but other than that issue. we genuinely liked DuroShot. Our feeling is that making a hardshell with integrated rubber padding and button covers would be easier for users—black is an easy color for that rubber given the otherwise black parts on the touch—and that solutions with more bottom coverage would be preferable, but this is a very nice case if you’re using your touch mainly on its own or in Apple-standard docks.