Mashup Review: Moshi Macbook Air Protection

Posted by Adam Aragon in Featured, Reviews | 0 comments

It’s no secret here, we’re fans of Moshi, both their style and quality. But we wanted to try something different. Several accessories for the Macbook air are available to protect, preserve and above all, to not mar the slick good looks of your expensive and shiny machine. If you’re a Macbook Air owner, this is a definite must-read.

Today’s Mashup Review consists of several small products pooled together for the ultimate protection. They are as follows:

(Note the following links will take you directly to the corresponding product page on Moshi’s site) 

• ClearGuard - A soft thermoplastic keyboard cover to protect against dust and spills on your keyboard
• iVisor Air – A seamlessly blending macbook air screen cover that simply disappears
• TrackGuard - A textured metallic finish trackpad protector
• PalmGuard - A blending palm cover for the palmrest of your Macbook Air.

With their powers combined, they are Captain Moshi! Just kidding, but they are a close to complete protection solution for the Macbook Air. More importantly they protect without getting in the way.

We’ll cover all these products one by one as best we can. Tell you our likes and dislikes for each.

ClearGuard

The ClearGuard keyboard cover is one of those things you probably desperately need or would never cross your mind. If you’ve ever spilled Pepsi on your laptop keyboard you’ll probably fall into the former category. To explain, it’s a very thin soft ‘engineering-grade thermoplastic urethane’  - boy that’s a mouthfull. What it really means is that it’s meant to be an almost invisible keyboard cover that lays over your keyboard and prevents dusts and liquids from getting into the many holes that your keyboard necessitates.

Upsides

The engineering here is clear, the keyboard fits like a second skin and once laid down is almost invisible and never seems to need fixing or fussing. It conforms so well that it’s basically molded onto the keyboard and you don’t really think about it.

Downsides

The clicky and tacticle feel of the chiclet macbook air keyboard is a thing to behold all on it’s own and the second skin adds a TINY bit of ‘squishyness’ to the experience. During fast typing sessions it didn’t really trip us up but when you’re poking around sometimes you wanted to mash the button to make sure you’re hitting it all the way. Some people told us they liked it BETTER with the ClearGuard on there, but we think it detracts from the typing experience, if only slightly.

iVisor Air

The iVisor Air is a clear plastic screen with some clever beveling to lay right over your existing Macbook air screen, providing near perfect protection for your super thin and easily damaged screen. It’s scratch and finger-print resistant.

Upsides

The iVisor is designed to both prevent bubbles (we didn’t end up with any) and to blend in perfectly with your screen bezel so you don’t really notice it’s there. With a perfect little cutout for the webcam and sensors and even a cool gradient effect on the bottom of the screen bezel to show off the Macbook Air logo. It really is set it and forget it. It just blends into the background. There isn’t a noticeable glare or distortion

Downsides

It’s a bit of a task to get it to line up PERFECTLY but after 2 tries we nailed it pretty well. Otherwise no complaints this is one of our favorite accessories

PalmGuard

The PalmGuard and TrackGuard are available in some kits for both and separately in some but we’ll break it down piece by piece. The palmguard itself is for the palmrest which is basically everything ‘below the keyboard – besides the trackpad’ so essentially the whole lower half of your machine.

Upsides

It’s cleverly colored metallic to match the finish of the Air. So it blends quite nicely it’s a little thick and stiff but once it’s on there it provides a little extra texture and you feel much more comfortable about putting your grimy hands all over the macbook. It definitely does the job.

Downsides

As stated it’s a bit thick & stiff which makes it difficult to line up ‘exactly’ and if you don’t get it just right you’ll get hard edges sticking out from the edges here and there. Using this WITH the TrackGuard meant it has to be an EXACT science, so I hope you have steady hands. It also makes a slight seam halfway up where it meets the keyboard, but not much.

TrackGuard

The trackguard is a textured sticker/cover that goes right over the trackpad of your beloved Air and while it matches the TrackGuard exactly it does change the feel slightly.

Upsides

It’s a simple enough concept. It fits precisely over the trackpad and doesn’t slide or shift after that. It does it’s job and does it well.

Downsides

I like the slick smooth feel of the native trackpad a bit more than the textured version provided here. Also it seems like my very light touches are sometimes ignored a bit more. This may be a good thing if you’re constantly brushing the trackpad and accidentally moving the cursor, but for me it seemed to reduce the trackpad sensitivity about 5 percent. You get used to it, and knowing your Air is protected is pretty much worth it.

Summary

You may be more worried about your screen or your keyboard in particular, in which case any one of these protection devices will do the job. It’s also quite amazing that you can pair ALL of them together and you won’t lose the look and feel of your sexy and chic ultraportable you love so much.

If you’re the kind of person that had to scrimp and save to get your Macbook Air you’re probably interested in protecting your investment. These covers combined with a nice case should keep your resale value at a perfect 10 and give you peace of mind that you’re slinging around 2000 dollars worth of thin metal slab from work to home to the airport and back again with a second layer of protection.

We like all of the protection devices and think you can’t go wrong with one or all of them. Provided you can deal with the cost and caveats that come with some of them.

Moshi nails it with look and feel… again Rating:

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