As you might have seen from a news article on our main page, the French
company Noreve has started to make PSP cases. Their first case
available is called the PSP Tradition and is made out of high quality
leather and with a velvet interior. The case comes in either black or a
grayish white and holds two memory sticks, one UMD and your PSP nice
and snug. The case snaps closed and has holes on the side of it for the
basic functions with the only things being blocked are a few LED’s. The
case is also packaged with a leather strap of the same color which is
pretty much the same as the one that came with the PSP in the first
place except it's black without any writing on it and you can quickly
tell the difference in leather quality.
The first word that came out of my mouth after opening the box to my
new case was, “wow.” The leather is really nice and soft and the velvet
made me trust it even more for housing my precious new PSP. I put my
PSP in it right away considering the piece of foam I got as a case
really didn’t impress me much. The PSP fit snugly and the design of the
case allows the UMD to fit in there without the case bulging. The game
actually goes behind the disk slot when the case is closed and because
of the thick leather and it fits perfectly. I also keep my cleaning
cloth that comes with the PSP in between here and it fits nicely. It
stays put while playing a game because the back compartment also opens
with a snap. The memory cards fit just as well. They are stored over
the screen and don’t touch the screen at all because there is a light
gap between the screen and the top of the case.
The soft leather is probably just as affective of protecting the PSP as
a leather case would be for a cell phone. The front and back of the PSP
are pretty well off and I’d say could easily survive a slight fall. The
sides of the unit with the power slider and the WiFi -slider don’t
really have much padding to break the fall, but the outer edges case
that actually holds the PSP extend outward a little so that when it
falls there, the side of the PSP doesn’t hit the ground, just the hard
edge of the leather sides. The PSP is pretty well protected overall,
maybe not as much as some other cases like the Logitech one, but this
one does the job well and looks good doing it.
With all of this thick leather, how much bigger does the case make the
PSP? The case with the PSP stands about 1 ½ inches high compared to the
standalone PSP at ¾ of an inch. The PSP does gain some volume, but I’d
rather carry that around than leave my PSP unprotected. The PSP in the
case to the untrained eye sort of appears to be some sort of camera and
pretty much hides the fact that it’s a gaming console, which for some
of you, it might be what you want.
I really only have three gripes about this case and those are pretty
minor. First of all, the top part of the case that surrounds the PSP
and is above the PSP’s screen is kind of in the way. Over time, I’m
sure it will loosen and adjust to where I want it to go, but at the
moment, it sometimes gets in the way of the top millimeters of the
screen which is kind of annoying. The second thing that bothers me is
that the velvet attracts lots of dust. The dust sometimes transfers to
the screen, but luckily I pack the cleaning cloth that comes with the
PSP in my case as well. Last is the price. The case costs just over $50
which is pretty steep. For this quality leather though, I can
understand it. The case will probably only be popular amongst older
crowds.
Overall, this is a very good case with a somewhat steep price. Noreve’s
case holds an extra disc and two extra memory cards which is definitely
better than nothing. The case looks really great and is probably the
best looking case on the market right now. With a steep price tag of
$50, I can’t see many people jumping to buy one, but for a great
looking case with good protection, this is definitely one of the best
choices.
