Gravis, a division of the snowboarding outfitter Burton (and not related to the gamepad and soundcard company, to my knowledge) sent me one of their G-Pod third-generation iPod cases to review, and I have to say I’m fairly impressed. There’s a number of subtle but intelligent decisions apparent in the design, like a stiff, sturdy nylon that protects almost the whole unit except for the top left corner, where the remote/minijack plug resides (I’ll presume they had a reason for covering up the hold switch, since it wouldn’t have affected the design in the least to move the flap to the other side). Essentially two, hard flaps of material held together by an elastic mesh, the G-Pod really seems to hold tight to the iPod — maybe too tight, if you ever want to pull it out of the case — and protects the unit from damage by sticking out a little past the edges of the iPod. Unless you clipped the exposed corner, your iPod should stay pretty much unscathed.
I’m not real hip on the camouflage pattern, but it’s not so gaudy that I wouldn’t wear it, and the belt-clip is very sturdy. I clipped the G-Pod to one of the straps on my bag and had no worries at all that it would fall off, despite being a simple clip. Gravis also sent me a Cell Block, a sort-of-hard case with an egg-crate foam inside that has ended up being almost the perfect size for my headphone amp. Of course, what that means is that now I’m the portable audio dork who carries around a bag just to listen to music, but the difference in sound quality and the like has made it all worth it.
It’s a little bit of a downer, if understandable, that you can’t use the dock with the case. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if the G-Pod didn’t grip so tightly, but it’s almost not worth trying to pull the iPod out of the case each time just to use the dock.
One thing that Gravis seriously needs, though, is better Google ranking. I realize they make a little bit of everything — bags, shoes, purses, electronics cases — but it was a real pain trying to find good pictures and information to use for this review (on the plus side, I did find another review of the G-Pod that iPod Lounge had done a couple of weeks ago, so my Googling wasn’t all in vain) until I realized that their Flash-only website wasn’t being indexed properly.
Also, most of the places carrying the G-Pod — including the Gravis web site — appear to be out of stock. Good luck, 3G owners (there appears to be quite a few small retailers dropping inventory notices in the iPodLounge discussions).
Is Gravis retooling for a fourth-generation iPod version? I hope so, because the G-Pod is a great case, and for 15 to 25 bucks, not a bad value at all.
Read – Gravis Product Page [Burton/Gravis]
Read – Gravis G-Pod Review [iPodLounge]
