Guest Review of: Matrix PSP Skin from decalgirl

Posting a review by a friend of ours, Idgit and his experience with his skin for his psp!

First, a bit of history about my PSP, because I can.

 

I received my PSP as a birthday present 2 years ago, just a few short months after the PSP was released. When I got it, the first thing I did was I went out and got a few games, then the “shield” that covers the top of the PSP, then, frustrated with the battery life, I bought the extended life battery. After that, it was only games for a few months until I stopped playing with it and it then sat in favor of DS and other console games.

Lately I’ve been in the market for a Personal Media Player as an upgrade for my aging mp3 player that I currently have, plus I wanted a PMP that could handle video. After reviewing the current options, I decided to stick with my current mp3 player for now and, literally at the same time, I realized that my PSP can play media! Problem solved! The PSP came out of the dark storage closet it was in for many months.

The first thing I remembered when I started playing with it again was the thing I hate the most about the PSP – the glossy top that’s a fingerprint, smudge and dust magnet. I started searching online for solutions and came upon the site that had exactly what I was looking for: A small, lightweight, affordable cover to keep my PSP safe from all the elements, including fingerprints. I found www.decalgirl.com.

They have a huge selection of decals, replacement parts and other gadgets for not only the PSP, but the original “phat” DS, the DS Lite, iPods, home consoles and more. Searching the site is easy, especially with the use of the dropdown boxes and the individual page numbers that you can click on. There’s also a “Help & FAQ” section and a “Contact US” section that not only has a phone number you can call, but their mailing address, hours of operation and an “ask a question” form where you can ask about specific problems or questions you may have.

I ordered the “Matrix-Style Code” skin (http://www.decalgirl.com/browse.cfm/4,2756.htm) for $9.99 (plus $4.60 shipping) on Monday night and had it in my hands on Friday afternoon, delivered via USPS Priority Mail.

The following is my review from when I opened the package until the skin was fully on my PSP.

MAILER:

I thought the box inside might be a hard plastic box to protect the skin due to the way it felt and didn’t bend through the envelope, but it was just a piece of cardboard. That’s just me being picky, due to that would definitely add to the overall cost of the skin. $15 is already a great price.

PACKAGING:

The plastic bag “housing” that the skin is in has a bottom that’s shut via sticky tape that’s easily opened and closed and “reusable”. Very nice. I won’t have to rip it open and destroy it, or use scissors; it’s very professional looking. There’s even room for an unnecessary UPC symbol. I guess if places like GameStop wanted to carry these, they could. I wonder why they haven’t…

 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

The buttons on the front of the skin, at first glance, look uneven and like they won’t fit the actual button layout. I’d think they’d be exact, since all the buttons on the PSP are nicely spaced and even. We’ll see more when applied, obviously.

From the website, I thought that the sticker on the back of the UMD slot that covers the silver PSP logo was going to have to be manually put on, but it seems that it’s a sticker that covers the whole UMD slot.

It seems I can remove the center ring if I want to show the silver ring. I’d like to leave the whole back on, but there are obvious white circle lines around the stickers and that might look cheesy, so removing the ring might be necessary.

At first glance, it looks like the front skin wraps up and over to cover part of the top and goes down to cover part of the bottom. In order to make sure it goes on 100% even, it’d be nice if there was a small indent all the way across the top and bottom where that part is on the PSP to help aid in the installation process, but this is probably done to reduce all the lines on the unit. The problem comes with if I put it on crooked; the lines won’t be even. Again, a small, picky observation.

Once the plastic cover is opened and I pull out the skin and the insert, it looks like the inside of the insert has “installation tips” which can also be found on their website.

The first thing the installation instructions tell you is to work in a completely clean, dust and lint free environment. After that, it goes into the steps to apply your skin. The first thing you do is what they have called “weeding”, where you pull off all the excess stickers and copyright stuff off the main paper, as well as the screen area and buttons.

You have to crimp parts of the skin together to get the small buttons out. This is a bit scary, as I don’t want to damage the actual skin, but the skin seems rather tough and resistant to all the crimping and pulling. After getting the right side buttons off, I try and lift the skin off the page to see what happens. It turns out that this method actually works well – half of the buttons stayed on the paper while the skin lifted off, so that method works well too. Your mileage may vary.

Once done, they suggest working on the back first, so that’s what I do. You have to carefully align each piece and lay it on the PSP. As long as you don’t press down too hard, you can pull the pieces up and try and set them again until you’re happy. Once happy, press firmly on the skin piece from the middle, out to the edge, to set the specific piece in place.

When the back-right plate is on, it does cover the screw-holes, so if you ever plan on modding your PSP for any reason, you’ll have to be careful when pushing through the skin to avoid cutting it up too bad.

The right side consists of two pieces – one for the Memory Stick Pro Duo slot and one for the actual right plate. The middle piece is the UMD slot that’s got the removable center ring and the left side is the battery cover door skin piece. The center UMD slot proves to be difficult because as soon as I started pulling it up and off the paper, the center ring broke free of the UMD slot piece and the center PSP logo piece wasn’t far off.

Trying to keep all 3 pieces together until they were on the unit wasn’t working and was actually making things worse, so I tore off the center ring and the PSP sticker and took at least 10 minutes to get the UMD skin on correctly. I had to line it up with the left side of the closed UMD door, then align the center open circle to the ring around the PSP logo in the middle. This took many tries and was quite frustrating. It’d be nice if the center ring and PSP center skin logo were held together a bit better until final placement is achieved, but I eventually did get the UMD door skin and the PSP logo skin on correctly.

Once all those are on and I’m happy, I flip the unit over and work on applying the most important piece – the front skin.

The front skin is quite difficult and it even says that on the paperwork “Due to the large number of controls on the device’s front, it’s a bit more difficult to install.”

Quite difficult? They weren’t kidding.

They continue: “Using two hands, align the top of the skin with the four corners of the screen area. Note that the skin covers the inactive portion of the lens, only allowing the active LCD to show through. Pay attention to the alignment of the bottom controls (volume, home, start, etc) while setting the initial position. Once the initial portion is aligned, to the left and right sides one at a time – the skin will conform to the sloped face. Once applied, wrap the top and bottom edges then press firmly to bind it, removing any air bubbles, pockets or wrinkles in the process.”

That’s a lot of information, but they’re 1000% correct – it’s a bitch to put the front face on correctly and you’re either going to be quite the perfectionist and sit and niggle at every little corner, or you’re going to get it “good enough” and leave it as is, as it’s a pain and a half to pull part of it up and re-set it. I guess you could say I’m somewhere in the middle. I got it good enough, but I also re-seated the bottom row of buttons as the right two (Select and Start) didn’t line up correctly. The speaker holes didn’t line up 100%, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be using the PSP more with headphones than utilizing the speakers, so that’s not that bad for me. If I really want to, I can take an X-acto knife and bore out bigger holes, but I’m fine with its final placement.

Once on, I smoosh everything down and check out the final product. Not bad.

In conclusion, for $15, I got a skin that protects the front and back of my PSP with a really cool design and I won’t have to deal with nearly as many smudges and fingerprints as I would if it didn’t have the skin. On that fact alone, it’s worth every penny.

7.7/10

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