We’ve heard excellent things about Hard Candy’s iPad cases. They’ve been featured around some of the biggest tech sites on the internet. So, we were curious to try one out.
First of all, the term sleeve isn’t really appropriate. It’s more of a binder for your iPad. The concept is to place the device into the red clasps and zip up the shell to protect your iPad. I have zero concerns that the iPad would be at jeopardy in this device. It’s padded enough to protect the device from daily hazards. The outer shell is really well made, so it pains me to say that we’re a little disappointed on the whole with the sleeve.
The red clasps for the iPad don’t securely hold your iPad inside the sleeve because the clasps are glued to the fleece on the inside of the sleeve. Gluing the clasp this way means sticky glue residue all over the place once the clasps start slipping, and trust us, they’ll start slipping. After two uses we lost one of the corner pieces entirely and the iPad was falling all over the place. Not ideal by any means.
If Hard Candy can fix this problem, perhaps by stitching the corner pieces into the sleeve somehow, the case would be be excellent for those people looking to toss the iPad into a knapsack just before class.
At the price of $49.95 we expected a little more quality out of the most important part of a sleeve: the mechanics that hold your iPad in place. If you’re still interested in picking one of these up, you can get them on Amazon.
Update: Hard Candy stands by their work and have started to replace any sleeves that were sent out with the glue issue. The new models now have the velcro stitched to the rubber bumper. It’s great news, because outside of the glue issue we had, the case on a whole was excellent.
