Skinomi Carbon Fiber Skin Review: Good, But Plenty of Room for Improvement

Skinomi makes many skins for all sorts of devices, including the Huawei Watch which we recently reviewed. I was excited when I was able to get a skin for my Nexus 6P to review, but a little dubious of the overall experience since my slightly negative experience with the Huawei Watch skin.

The Good:

• Good quality
• Feels nice
• Fits under most cases

The Bad:

• Precision is way off
• End result isn’t that good
• Tricky application

I’ll start off the review with the unboxing experience. You get a octagonal box,  and inside you’ll find the skin in different pieces on one sticker sheet, a cleaning cloth, a moist wipe, a plastic screen protector, and a solution for applying the screen protector. There are also some instructions included in the box. It is simple and right to the point (which hopefully cuts down on overall product costs)!

The application process for any skin will be easier if the skin has very precise cuts for the device. Sadly, like my experience with the Huawei Watch skin, this was not the case. I had the most difficulty applying the large piece to the back of the device, as the cuts around the microphone and fingerprint scanner were not nearly as precise as they should be. There is also a 1mm gap around all the edges, so it made applying the large piece quite challenging as I wasn’t sure where to align it properly. Thankfully, the smaller pieces are easier to apply, but they are still challenging. For both smaller pieces on the back, they don’t go all the way to the edges, so again, it makes it hard to determine where to align the skin. The sides were the easiest pieces to apply, but they still didn’t go all the way out to the edges as they should have been. One of the biggest annoyances I found was that the longest side piece, which should stretch from the SIM slot to the charger, didn’t. There was a break in the skin right on the bottom-left corner, for no apparent reason other than to fit the skin onto the generic sticker sheet. I was annoyed at this, as it wasn’t fully adhering, and had the high chance of popping off at any time, especially if one were to apply a case over the skin.

Once it was applied, I wasn’t that happy with the look of it because it wasn’t cut as well as it should have been. I also don’t understand why the back is broken up into three pieces, instead of two as I’ve seen from other companies. It is also a little annoyance that the main skin piece doesn’t wrap around the top visor, instead it awkwardly stops a little up the sides. I really think that Skinomi can do a better job with their skins, and this sloppy job leads me to believe that they make these skins based solely off of measurements found online, instead of having the actual device and doing laser based measurements in order to produce the skin. This is the same issue as what I saw with the Huawei Watch skin.

Apart from these design flaws, the quality of the skin itself is very good. I’ve had no peeling corners, but if there were to be any it would probably be a result of a poorly cut corner. The feel of the skin is also very nice, and offers suitable grip for the device.

I didn’t choose to apply the screen protector as I already have a tempered glass screen protector from iCarez applied. But, if I were to assume the quality of the plastic one included, it would probably feel very plasticy and might not have the best alignment.

In summary, this skin works, but it doesn’t look that good on the aluminum (which I have) or frost variants as it would on the graphite variant. Skinomi could do a much better job making their skins, but for now, I would suggest that if you want a skin for your devices, spend a few more dollars and go with what dbrand or SlickWraps has to offer. However, if you just want some basic protection for your phone, Skinomi should be good for you and on the plus, they are pretty cheap.

[review]