protective shell or no shell?

[TrancyGoose]

It's like to be or not to be.
There are thousands of protective shells out there. Literally from 10 EUR to 100 EUR.

But ultimately? Do you strap your MacBook Pro/Air into a protective shell? Either way, can you tell us why?

My thoughts are, yes it does make it look pretty. I have a Fabric shell on my M1 Macbook Pro. However, I did notice the M1 get somewhat warm in it, while completely cold without a shell. As we are in endless lockdown, I decided to remove it for now, since my laptop is almost always on my desk.

On the other hand, they do protect against scratches and dents.

So can the shell actually affect temperature control and would you put one on?

 

[weeesss]

Both my daughters have MBA's with shells. The older one got a shell after denting the top of the previous MBA. I got one as well.

 

[shardey]

I bought a skin for the top/bottom/trackpad area and also am using a hard shell. I don't want any damage done so I went with a case, I don't want any scratches so I went with a skin additionally.

I'm sure a shell could potentially add a very small amount of heat to reside inside the shell. I did a thermal paste job with Thermalright TFX on my 16" so whatever added heat is going to be negated by that and the fact I run a bit more aggressive fan curve. Also use Volta to limit the wattage the CPU can pull.