LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Poor Ronnie Khadaran.
It’s the first day of CES, and already visitors are destroying his booth. They keep ripping the display items from their stands. Instead of talking up his company’s new products, Marware’s director of marketing is busy trying to stop CES showgoers from destroying his booth.
One of the new items on display is Marware’s MicroShell Folio, a $35 hard plastic shell with a magnetic cover that doubles as a stand.
It shares the same name as an earlier product, but is a better design. I got a chance to play around with one on the show floor, and thought it was a nice, relatively inexpensive case for the iPad mini.
The Microshell Folio is thin and light. “You can hardly tell it’s on there,” said Khadaran, and I agree.
The case comes in black, purple, or blue with a soft-touch finish.
The soft polyurethane lid is magnetized, which wakes the iPad when it’s opened. However, the magnets aren’t strong enough to keep the lid stuck to the screen, so there’s an elastic strip that wraps around the front and can double as a hand strap.
The lid is lined with microfiber on the inside, which seems more for aesthetics than function. It’s hard to imagine the microfiber keeps the iPad’s screen clean.
There’s a slot on the case’s back for creating a stand: the lid folds back and tucks into it.
The new MicroShell Folio is half the price the of Marware’s old MicroShell Folio, which is a welcome development.
Khadaran also had trouble keeping visitors from manhandling the new Zoey, a purse for the iPhone 5.
