This will be the first review of many products from the UK outfit Tech21. Today we look at one of their iPhone cases and even after a half-dozen iPhone case reviews, we’ll be the first to admit: we still have no clue what we are doing (don’t worry, plenty of headphone reviews are lined up.) Blah, blah, blah. Just like always, Daniel hasn’t finished editing the unboxing video – but until that gets up, hopefully this will carry you over.

Unboxing

That video is coming. We got a lot of stuff in our box, you likely won’t be ordering four products from Tech21, so it may be different. Inside, it’s just the case. That’s all.

Design

We received the black rendition of the genuine leather case, Tech21 also offers an orange one. The stictching was pretty good – although not perfect. It’s an odd case in a lot of sense. There is no 30-pin hole, although are holes for the speakerphone. A velcro strap at the top allows you to slide the phone in. Despite no obvious button, the lock screen button is still completely functional. There are holes for the camera and headphone jack respectively, although we found occasionally the top corner of the camera got covered by the case.

Protection

It’s odd. The phone is fitted with Tech21′s d30 technology which is designed to help the shock flow better throughout the device. The problem is so much of the phone is exposed, most notably the corners. While it appears as if some of the drops might not effect the corners given the structure of the case, we are a little concerned. Additionally much of the sides are left uncovered and were points of concern on the safety side. There is however ample padding on the top and bottom of the case and the sides that are covered receive padding. In the end given the aforementioned areas of concern, we still don’t feel that comfortable with the case.

Usability

Our largest problem with the case had nothing to do with protection, rather usability. Sure, taking your phone out of its case every-time you need to charge it is annoying, but the home button was on a completely different level. The top portion of the case makes the screen significantly harder to use because of how high the leather sits off the phone. In particular accessing the corners and typing on the horizontal keyboard become significantly more challenging. That pales in comparison to accessing the home button. Because the leather extends around half the button, even for our not-so-large fingers, accessing the home button was an adventure. Holding the phone on our ear felt awkward to say the least – we aren’t sure how to describe it, but the case made the phone significantly less comfortable on our ear. We imagine some of that has to do with the top portion of the case warping. (Picture above)

In the End

While we had few nice things to say about this case, that isn’t the case with the Tech21 line as a whole. There were plenty of issues we had with this case and in the end we were left wondering what was the opinion in the room when this case was being thought of. After using the case for only three days we were astonished at how much more difficulty the case added to our iPhone experience. You can purchase the Tech21 Slim Fit for $29.95 from myGearStore.com.