The small criticisms I have of the Vapor range all stem from one and the same thing.
- Pricing is borderline nuts, with most cases costing $99 - $150, plus shipping and taxes where applies.
- And because of the pricing, at 150 dollars per pop, one would expect NASA levels of precision and finish. But the product is actually not that precise.
Dont get me wrong, it doesnt rattle and its not loose or anything, but in my book, for the money I expected it to be super precise and to fit like it was part of factory design. I expected the bumper to go all the way to the screen, all around the phone, few microns short of being like a watertight gasket. I certainly did not expect to see any part of the metal strip.
Partially because tolerances are too big, and partially because the whole assembly relies on rather low rent rubber padding inside the bumper the gaps around are fraction of a mm uneven which spoils the effect just a bit. On my Black Ops the padding is ever so slightly visible in the corners. Because tolerance was overshot by a mm or so, the more you line up the bumper to one side of the phone, the more gap you create and more of a silver strip you see on the other. If you lift your phone in the case up to the light, you'll see the light leaking through holes where the measurements are just slightly off.
Screen shield, although a mere freebie, is actually slightly too small. And then we have the back plates. Rather than it being proper back plate that is held by the edges of the bumper, the back plate in Pro versions is just a sticker, for the back, so with imprecise fit of the bumper itself it doesnt cover ridges between back panel and bumper walls and dust and **** gets in there and is impossible to clean after couple of weeks.
Before you get wrong impression - its really good case, and the fit is very good by any regular standards. But we are not dealing with regular standards. If the vapor was 50 bucks I would give it 10 out of 5 starts for quality, but because its 150 bucks I'm sorry but I expect it to fit like a nano component on the motherboard of USS Enterprise. End of. Call me OCD, but the product, as it is now, just doesn't.
So all I can say is - its worth gettng only if you try to find one at fraction of the price on ebay, being sold by some guy who bought it for his Verizon phone just to discover it doesnt fit. 50-70 bucks is the max this thing should cost.
