iLounge

Company: Womp!

Website: www.Wompgear.com

Model: Access

Price: $19

Compatible: iPod 5G

Womp! Access for iPod video

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By Jeremy Horwitz

Editor-in-Chief, iLounge
Published: Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Category: Cases - iPod 5G (with Video)

Continuing on from yesterday, we're doing reviews of fifth-generation iPod cases that we consider to be somewhat similar to one another: using familiar shapes, they differ mostly in materials and pricing. For several reasons, none merited our standard-level recommendation; in a marketplace crowded with 5G case options, all of them could have benefitted substantially from design and price tweaks.

With Womp! Access for iPod video ($19), Australia’s Womp! Products has released a “gimme” of an iPod case design: a camouflage-colored holder. Available in pink camo, black urban camo, and beige desert camo, Access is mostly made from a canvas material, but has a soft suede-like interior and elastic sides designed to accommodate 30GB, 60GB, and 80GB iPods. With 30GB models inside, its bottom Dock Connector hole is properly aligned but on the precariously small side; larger models offset the hole to make it even less usable. The screen and Click Wheel holes are also on the small side, but properly aligned, and the former’s covered by a layer of glossy plastic for screen protection.

As with the cases we looked at yesterday, once you get past Womp! Access’s major selling point - the camo coloration - there’s not much more to recommend it. It uses the same sort of open-sided, open-topped, and open-Wheeled approach that many generic iPod cases use, offering only half the protection we see in better cases. A belt clip is integrated into each case’s back, and non-detachable, along with a metal D-ring that could conceivably be attached to a lanyard or wrist strap if you have them. None is included.

The only saving grace of such a simple and modestly protective design is a low price. At $19 per case, Womp! Access is priced aggressively enough that you might consider the purchase easy and the case almost disposable, though in truth it feels that way, and doesn’t exactly inspire confidence as an iPod protector. By camouflage standards - DC Shoes/Incase and Gravis have both done similar cases before - we consider Access more of a cheap cosmetic accessory than anything else, and it rates our limited recommendation for that purpose alone.