Gelaskins Review - DS

Skins supplied courtesy of Gelaskins
Website: http://www.galaskins.com/
Phone: +1-416-519-1360

For further information, or to purchase, please visit the Gelaskins website, or give them a call.

The DS is a beautiful piece of hardware. At least, the DS Lite is. The original DS is a bit of a dog. You can put a pretty pink collar on a pitbull, but it's still going to slobber like a mutt. That's why Gelaskins only have skins for the DS Lite.

The DS Lite is precious, and if you want to keep your hardware mint, you have options. You can wrap it in a large plastic case to protect it from scuffs (and ruin the Lite's slim form) or you could wrap it in scratch proof stickers.

There are plenty of skins available from a variety of websites, but this particular brand of stickiness comes from Gelaskins. For myself, I chose the Fuzin Raizin design, being a fan of red and the art style.

The stickers are actually made with a fine mesh between the outer design and the inner sticky, which makes it super resistant to scuffs and scratches. In the interests of science, and with a touch of sadistic curiosity, I gave these things a good scrubbing with my finger nails, my keys, and even a fork. Unless you're being brutal, it won't give up. You might scuff the design, but the mesh itself does a good job of not letting anything get through to harm your baby.

The skin won't protect it from a direct assault with a kitchen appliance, but it will prevent it getting a nasty abrasion as it bounces around your bag next to whatever paraphernalia you keep in there.

The DS Lite stickers come in two sheets, one for the outside, one for the inside. Each sheet has two meshes on it, one for the top, one for the bottom. Applying the upper outside sticker mesh is easy, but the lower outside skin is troublesome, as it has to be fitted around the power switch, volume knob, Slot 2 and the headphone jack. The stickers are versatile enough that you can apply and reapply them without them losing their sticky fingered grip, something I experienced first hand (shaking hands and sticky stuff = bad.)

The inside is a bit tricky, as there are plenty of things to get up, around and over. The D-Pad and the buttons on the bottom screen are difficult to align properly, but like I wrote earlier, there's no harm in trying and retrying. Aligning the stickers, and then wrapping them around the screen properly so that it doesn't over hang and block the view is a pain, but it is doable.

The top screen is also a problem. The speakers on the DS aren't that great to begin with, and covered with a sticker the output is even worse. There are holes in the mesh to match the DS Lite's (continued next page)