Best Cases On Show At CES

The Cult of Mac crew got its grubby hands — and we do mean grubby! — on hundreds of iPhone cases in Las Vegas this week.

Here are the ones we most wanted to take home.

Flir One Case Gives Your iPhone Predator Vision

FLIR One debuted their all-new thermal imaging camera case that gives the iPhone 5 and 5s the power to pick up heat signatures up to 100 meters away from live people, animals, and pretty much anything else around you.

Flir One makes thermal imaging products aimed at professionals but the Flir One case will bring the heat sensor to the everyday consumer. It cost $349, which sounds ridiculously expensive at first, but compared to Flir’s cheapest stand alone model that sells for over a grand, it sounds reasonable.

The detachable case comes with a thermal imaging camera on the back powered by its own battery source with up to four hours of charge. It comes with a custom app featuring different filters to interpret the heat signatures, and can be used for all sorts of household projects like looking for studs behind your wall, checking for water leaks, heat leaks, or even ferreting out a termite infestation. It also doubles as a really cool, really expensive, long-range thermometer.

Flir One says we can look forward to tracking heat with it sometime this spring. — Buster Heine

iZZi Slim Lens

Think the only serious, affordable quiver of lenses available for iPhone 5/S iPhoneography are the ones from Olloclip? Nope. Wrong.

iZZi Gadgets has actually offered a lens case for the last year or so in the Orbit Pro, a machined alloy case and four-lens — wide-angle, fisheye, telephoto and macro — carousel (it looks like three lenses, but as with Olloclip’s lenses, the wide angle unscrews to become a macro). The obvious difference, besides the alloy case, is that the Orbit Pro keeps all the lenses on the phone and swappable by a simple rotation of the carousel, compared with the Olloclip method of sliding lenses on and off the iPhone. But the Orbit Pro is bulky, suffers from slight vignetting (darkened corners) and carries an eyebrow-furrowing $240 pricetag.

Now iZZi has fixed all that with their new iZZi Slim. They’ve move the lenses closer to the case, eliminating the vignetting; the case is now made of plastic, making it much slimmer and lighter; and the price? $100. Which is less expensive than the $120 of the combined Olloclip 4-in-1 Lens and Quick-Flip case combo. — Eli Milchman

Retro Cases Add A Game To Your iPhone

PureGear has a lineup of cases that turn your iPhone into a retro physical game, no app required.

The PureView retro game case line up comes with three different analog game options: a traditional maze, a circular maze, and another called Undecided that’s kind of like playing Plinko from The Price Is Right, except you’re aiming for Yes or No instead of fat stacks of cash.

Pureview recently added new option for the iPhone 5c as well as some limited black and grey editions for the iPhone 5/5s. Each game case will set you back 30 bucks, but they’re more addicting than Candy Crush, don’t need WiFi and won’t waste your battery. Oh yeah, and they’ll protect your iPhone when you get mad and toss the maze across the room. — Buster Heine

Clever New Space Pack Will Double Your iPhone’s Battery And Storage

Mophie’s Juice Packs are widely considered to be the best battery cases you can get for the iPhone. They attach via Lightning and give you a backup power reserve for long days when a normal charger isn’t available.

Today at CES, Mophie unveiled its new lineup for battery cases for the iPhone. The Space Pack not only doubles battery life, but it has a pretty cool trick up its sleeve: additional storage.

Available in black and sliver, the Space Pack adds up to 32GB of storage that can be accessed any time the case is on the iPhone. The SSD hard drive inside the case works with Mophie’s free Space app. You can view just about any file type in the app’s browser and create folders to manage your stuff.

If that sounds cool, it’s because the idea is awesome. Not only do you have an extra reserve of battery life, but you can effectively double your iPhone’s storage.

Mophie launched preorders at CES with shipping slated to begin on March 14th. The 16GB model costs $149.95, and the 32GB model costs $179.95. Not cheap, but maybe worth it if you need more battery and storage than your iPhone can offer. — Leander Kahney

New Straitjacket Case: Where Hard Plastic Meets Silky Silicone

Loop Attachment, the company behind the awesome Mummy cases for iOS devices, is at CES in Las Vegas this week showing off its latest product for the iPhone. It’s called the Straitjacket, and it fuses a hard plastic bumper with the silky smooth silicone that Loop Attachment is famous for.

The result is a minimalist case that’s protective without being too big or too bulky. It carries the Mummy’s trademark design, which aims to showcase your iPhone’s beautiful aluminum casing, and it provides complete access to all of your handset’s buttons, ports, and cameras.

The Straitjacket also holds a credit card, so you can slip your favorite piece of plastic in the back and not have to worry about carrying a wallet.

“The Straitjacket represents the next step in the evolution of our design language,” said Christopher Peterson, Chief Creative Officer of Loop Attachment. “The driving design intent of the case was to balance the common conviction for slim, space-saving design with the desire for tasteful expression.”

The Straitjacket will be available to order from Loop Attachment’s online store in late January. Pricing is yet to be confirmed. — Killian Bell

Fre iPhone 5/s Case Goes Camo

I’m not sure I get the whole camo thing. But it’s everywhere, it’s really popular and people can’t get enough of it. Trucks, iPhone cases, curtains, lingerie — if it exists, it probably comes in camo. (Note: If you need camouflaged lingerie, you’re probably doing it very wrong. Or very right. I’m not entirely sure at this point.)

If you know camo, you’ve heard of Columbus, Georgia-based Realtree, the outfit LifeProof partnered with to camouflage up their uber-popular Fre iPhone 5/s case, which now comes in four Realtree colors: Xtra, Max5, Xtra Green and APC, which is essentially pink. Pink camo.

The Realtree Fre is available for the same price as the non-camo Fre ($90). — Eli Milchman

The Fastest-Charging iPhone Battery Packs In The West?

The simplest solution is always the best. Take external battery packs for your iPhone, which are sometimes hard to use when you’re actually talking on the phone. Either you have to remove your case to snap in a battery case, or you have a long cord dangling to an external pack in your pocket.

MyCharge’s clever Talk & Charge ($100) is a slim external battery pack that works with any and every iPhone case on the market because it doesn’t physically attach to your iPhone; you just hold it against the back of your iPhone while talking, like an electronics sandwich. Simple.

It’s almost the same size and shape as an iPhone 5s or 5c. It boasts a 3000mAh battery (good for more than two full iPhone 5 charges) and a Lightning cable built right in, so you’ll never forget your charging cable again. It’s a nice touch.

In fact, I think all of MyCharge’s wares are thoughtfully designed. The tech is pretty good too. According to the company, they are the fastest chargers on the market. Check out their well-designed charging bricks:

I was impressed with the Hub series of external battery packs (3000-9000mAh, $80-$120), which offer 13 to 40 hours of extra talk time. Each brick has built-in cables for Lightning and micro USB, which tuck away nicely into a slot on the side when not in use. Likewise, AC outlet prongs in the bottom can be pulled out when the brick needs recharging. Altogether, there’s no need for all the extra wires and chargers you need with other other external battery packs. It makes for a neat, compact, all-in-one solution that’s one of the best I’ve seen.

MyCharge claims its products are the fastest-charging battery packs on the market. Not only do they charge your devices faster, they are themselves recharged in less time than competing devices, according to the company.

It’s a combination of using the best components available and having good, smart firmware, said Jim Dara, president of MyCharge. For example, while competing batteries output the same voltage to every device plugged into them, MyCharge’s packs maximize the voltage for each device. So iPads get the maximum 2 amps and charge faster, Dara said.

I couldn’t independently test this, but Dara said the company is very careful to test its claims and tries very hard not to overstate them. I believed him. — Leander Kahney