hi, welcome to 'lachlan likes a thing', ashow where i take a thing and see whether or not i like it. now, the thing we're looking at in this videois the official apple iphone 5s leather case. now, in case you missed it, along with therecent introduction of the iphone 5s and the 5c, apple announced it's own line of leathercases for the iphones 5s, and on a recent
iphone dock review, trip to the apple store to check out the 5s,i picked up one of these, because i'm a big fan of lightweight, kind of form-fitting cases,and i wanted to see how this compared. so, in the review, we're going to have a lookat the look and feel of the phone, we're going to talk a little about durability, and stainresistance, and we're going to have a look
at compatibility with different headphones,and some ipod docks. first things first though, if you're in anapple store right now and all you want to know from this video is will this case fiton an apple iphone 5, i can confirm yes it does. i've been using it on my iphone 5, itfits just fine so if that's all you wanted to know, just click the 'like' button andgo ahead and buy one. now first of all this case retails for 39dollars in the us, or 48 dollars in australia, and that's quite a high price to pay for aniphone case. now i think it's a reasonable price if the fit and finish of the case isreally good, and the materials used are really high quality leather.
now, i can't actually confirm if the leatherin this case is from an animal or it's a protein leather, like made from eggshells, but itdoes say on the back that it's made from natural aniline leather, and what natural anilineleather is, is it's some kind of animal leather or protein leather that's been dyed in a syntheticsoluble dye. so you can see here the dye they used is thered dye, i got the red edition because i think it looks really striking and it looks reallycool with a black iphone case, and also it's the product red edition of this product, sopart of your 48 dollars goes towards supporting the fight against hiv/aids in africa. so,i think that's pretty cool. now, as you can see the case is quite minimalistin design. on the back we just have a very
subtle, slightly recessed apple logo, andon the front we have this microfibre insert which feels really cool. now, the material itself, the leather itselfhas a kind of grip and texture to it, and if you can see in the video there's a bitof a porous surface to it. now, that's quite good, it feels really nice in the hand. onething is it's actually not as grippy as i thought it would be, and that's because ithink there's actually been a coating that's been applied to this leather, which i'll getinto in a second, but let's just show you how you pop the phone it. now, as i said, this case fits my iphone 5,so to put the phone into the case, all we
need to do is pop it in, and it's quite easyto put on and as you can see, once it's on it fits really snugly, quite tightly, thefit and finish is really nice. in terms of bulk it actually doesn't add agreat deal of bulk to the phone, you can see that it only adds a few millimeters to theedges. let's have a look at each side of the case.now on the top of the case, we have the power button, and it's been slightly raised. now, i actually found out that with this caseit actually removes a bit of the tactile feedback you get from this button, you you don't getas quite as nice a button feel, though it's relatively easy to press the button.
on this side we have the volume control, soraised buttons again. now these buttons are actually quite nice to press, you still getquite a lot of tactile feedback. you can see here that the vibrate and silent switch hasbeen recessed slightly into this case, so you've got to dig your fingernail a littlebit more in to activate that switch, which may or may not be a good thing for you. on this side of course we have nothing, onthe bottom of the case we have perforations for the speakers, and also the hole for theheadphone jack and the hole for the lightning connector. now, you can actually see that these holesare quite deep, and we'll get into what that
means for different types of headphones andipod docks in a second. now, on the front side of the case, we cansee that there's actually a bit of a lip on this leather case, which means that if youput it flat on the surface, the glass won't touch the surface, and that's really nice,because you kind of rarely see lightweight cases with a lip on the front, so i reallylike that feature about this case. now, i can't tell you anything about the long-termdurability of this case - i mean it looks well-made, but i've only had it for a fewdays - but i can tell you that on the back of the box it does say that the appearanceof the leather on this case will change over time. so that's one thing to note.
in terms of protection for the phone itself,you'll note that the phone is protected on every angle,basically, so it is quite protectiveof your phone even though it doesn't add a great deal of bulk, so that's really cool. now one thing to note is that originally ifound the case very hard to remove from the phone, because the leather was so snug, butafter taking it on and off a few times, i found that the leather actually has loosenedup a little, and it's a little bit easer to take off the phone, it's still not easy, butit is easier. so the leather might loosen up over time if you keep taking it in andout, so that's one thing to note. now, it terms of stain and spill resistance,i can't give you my long-term experiences,
but i can show you what happens when you puta drop of water on this case. so, we just put some water here, and as you can see immediatelythe water just beads on the surface of this case. now this could mean one of two things. oneis that this case is not actually made of a porous material, like leather, and i findthat unlikely, because it would mean that apple was just basically lying about the product,or it could mean that apple has applied some sort of coating on the case that preventsthe water from immediately absorbing into the surface of the leather. now as you can see here, i've just wiped offthat water that was on the case, and you can
see that the water has begun to absorb intothe surface of the case itself. so, i guess you have about 30 seconds to wipe off anyspill that gets on this case, before it starts staining the phone. so as you can see this is just water, so itwill dry away after a period of time, but if you were to spill any liquid that had colouron it, you can imagine that it might stain the case itself. the other thing to note isthat these kind of coatings like scotchguard on furniture, they might wear off over timejust from touching the phone, so that's one thing to note, the spill resistance mightdecrease over time. now we move on to compatibility with differentheadphones and i can tell you unfortunately
this is a bit of a deal-breaker for me. icollect headphones and you can check out some of my reviews on my channel, what i can tellyou is that with this case because of the smaller hole for the headphone, a lot of headphonesare not going to fit into the headphone jack. for instance this is the audio technica m50,which is a relatively popular studio headphone, and you can see that the jack is just farto large to fit in this hole. now, basically any headphone that you own that has a screw-typeconnector, that's originally used to plug in or screw into dj consoles or any kind ofmixing console, none of those are going to fit into this hole, and there's also someother headphones and earphones from different manufacturers with larger jacks that mightnot fit into this hole.
so if you have a favorite pair of headphones,what i can really recommend is that bring that pair to your local apple store and justtry them out in this case. i think a lot of the apple employees will actually have thiscase to demonstrate to you, so you can avoid the hassle of having to return it. now as far as ipod docks go, unfortunatelyi have to report more bad news. this is my phillips ipod dock which i use as a bedsideipod dock to charge my phone, and if you're a regular subscriber to my channel pleaselet me know in the comments if you want to see me review this, i think it's quite a neatlittle machine. unfortunately with this case it cannot makea connection with the lightning connecter
because the case has such a deep recess forthe lightning connector. so, again, if you're going to get this case be prepared to returnit if it doesn't work with the ipod docks that you have at home. so as far as thin and lightweight cases withgood grip for the iphone go, what do i think is a good alternative? well, this is a funny story, let me show you:this is the case that i actually got, basically on the first day that i had my iphone, andit's by a pretty much no-name company called metalslim from china, and i hadn't heard ofthem, i basically bought this case as a stopgap solution until i bought a better case, butactually since buying this case, and i've
had my iphone for about a year, more thana tear now, i actually haven't found a case that i liked more that this case. it has a nice kind of texture on it, it'sgot a opening on the bottom and an opening on the top so it means that you can accessany of the ports and it's work with any ipod dock, no problems whatsoever. it's still gota lip on the front, so it will protect the glass, and it's quite a cheap case. so, you know, i couldn't actually be any happierwith this case, and it was a bit of a surprising find, because i haven't really seen thesein any retail stores. but, you know, check them out online, i think it's a pretty goodcase.
one drawback of this case is because it doesn'tprotect the front, bottom, and the front top of the edge of the phone, i've found thati've gotten some slight scratches on this bezel, but overall i think it's a pretty convenientcase to use as far as apple's case goes, while i reallylove this colour, and i really love the fit and finish of this case, unfortunately i'mgoing to have to take advantage of apple's rather generous return policy, and returnthis back to the apple store, because you know, it's not working with some of my accessories. so that's something to keep in mind when you'relooking at this case. now, if this review has helped you, decidingwhether you want to buy this case or not,
please like this video and subscribe to mychannel for more reviews. you can talk to me on twitter @lachlikesathing or on facebookat facebook.com/lachlanlikesathing. thanks to everyone who's subscribed to mychannel, and who's like my other videos, and enjoy the rest of your day.
