Of course my own experience with this particular product may be just an outlier, but in any case I might as well share this with anyone out there who might be thinking of getting a hardshell case for their MB/MBP. For specifics’ sake, I’ve got a first generation MBP 15″, without any outside protective skin (such as ZAGG body skins) on.
I purchased the Incase hardshell (from here on known as “the shell”) a week or two after I received my MBP. There were two main offerings at the time: frost white and smokey black. Both were nice looking but I thought the frosted look would be the least conspicuous.
Installation: Snapping on the shell really was a simple affair, as simple as it sounds, except that it was at the same time a workout in itself. A few tabs and a little pressure later and I’d successfully attached the bottom half of the shell on my lovely Bellamy. The attachment for the top part (the screen) was nowhere near as simple. It was first off slightly confusing where and how to orient it so that the “teeth”/tabs would not bump into the bottom ones when closing the laptop. The second thing that peeved me was the amount of pressure I needed to exert to get the damned thing in place. I was worried I’d have warped the aluminum case by pressing so hard.
Note: Another little thing I hated was the hard plastic tabs that seemed like they were scratching the aluminum finish when sliding over the body into place. I don’t like that one bit.
Maintenance: So far, the shell has been decent and not too hard to clean. I find that if you have specks of water and they dry, they leave watermarks (you know what I mean if you’ve worn glasses before). It hasn’t really gotten particularly dirty so I wouldn’t know about how easy it’d be to clean extensively. The only thing is, I’ve had to take it off Belle to get at the small amount of dust that had collected between the shell and Bellamy herself. Kinda lame, kinda stupid. Very annoying, as you already know how tight the fit is between the shell and the computer. It was a pain in the ass to try and pry the damned thing off the computer, and then another pain in the ass putting it back on.
Here’s where I must mention two flaws, one minor and one major. Firstly, there are little rubber nubs inside the shell, on the corners, to serve as padding between the shell and the computer. Two of these fell off without me knowing when I removed the shell’s top part, and I lost one. I only realized after when I found just one of them. The second flaw, which is really the worst part of it all, is that the plastic used to make this shell is ridiculously brittle. I mean, there are shatter marks (sort of like the cracks you see in glass when it’s still one pane) all over the corners (some were there when I bought it, and they were on all of them at the store) and cracks all along the seams where the tabs attach to the body. I assume these are from whenever you take the case off and the shell has to momentarily “open up”/warp a little to let the MBP slide out. In any case, design flaw.
I’m about a year into this $49.99 investment to protect my computer and although it’s definitely served its purpose, the shell has not been worth the price-tag (unlike my awesome Incase Slider for my iPod, props to that case) and I will never ever recommend such a product to anyone else. I’d much rather suggest something such as a ZAGG body shield (ZAGG’s shields are freaking durable and more or less invisible) or a Macally BookShellPro (I have not received mine yet, but the reviews are positive and they are cheaper than the shell’s retail price by $10+ even after additional shipping).
Verdict: I give the Incase shell an arbitrary two armadillos out of seven potential deadly plagues. Save your money. Get something else, something more durable.