New year, new look: Wrapstar PSP skins

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black," Henry Ford famously said of his company's Model T automobile.

Nearly 100 years later, any customer can have a PSP in any colour as long as it is black, white or pink (or blue or silver, if you're in Japan). Hardly the kind of progress you might expect after a century of development – even the Ford Transit comes in a choice of ten colours.

That's not to say the PSP doesn't look good in those colours, it's just that it leaves little room for personalisation. But that's where skins come in.

We'll admit we've always stayed away from this area of customisation when it comes to our consoles but seeing as the nice chaps at Wrapstar sent some samples through, we figured it only fair to give them a go.

As a result, we've had the rather striking Japan pattern – one of the 20-odd Wrapstar designs currently available at the time of writing – on our PSP for the last four weeks in order to bring you a decent longish term test.

The manufacturer claims application is easy and we're inclined to agree. The back sections took less than four minutes to fit on properly and even the front, which is fundamentally more intricate due to its one-piece nature and the precision necessary to align all of the pre-cut button spaces with those on the PSP didn't consume more than six minutes of our time.

So all in all, a perfect, careful application in just under ten minutes – not a bad investment when the result is a complete change of character for your handheld.

We suspect some designs may not work as convincingly as others but with ours the simple pattern combined with the quality of the shiny, scratch-resistant laminated vinyl covering ended up moulding itself to the PSP to the point of looking factory-fitted on all but the closest of inspections.

Once on, our attention turned to how the skin might perform. Not in the sense of hampering controls – all the buttons are accessible, while speaker openings and even the wireless/save/power lights remain uncovered – but more with regards to how long the pristine look would maintain itself.

We imagined grime soon gathering at the edges, and wondered if these would eventually start curling up, not least because we could hear them catching the inside of our PSP pouch every time the handheld was slid in to storage.

But while we can't vouch for how well it will fare after, say, six months' of regular use, we can at least attest that four weeks of relentless Christmas release reviewing has yet to see any edges lose their adhesive quality – everything remains firmly stuck in place. (Although if you look closely you'll notice the outside edges are minimally grubby – but again, nothing near the level we were expecting given how much use this unit has seen in the last month.)

The skin is still perfectly easy to remove. For the purposes of journalism we've just peeled off the front vinyl and not only did it swiftly come off in one piece, crucially it did so without leaving any glue residue behind – the PSP face is as new as the day we stuck the Wrapstar skin on (which, for the record, was brand new – we'd bought it two days earlier), highlighting the skin's ability to also protect.

Admittedly we can't get it back on – peeling it off has distorted the elastic properties of the material beyond their structural integrity – but then at just under £5 a pop we could always buy another skin without needing to skip a meal.

Besides, we've still got the back panels on and we're likely to keep them there – we prefer their smooth feel over Sony's textured plastic approach. Our fears that they would cause excessive sweating during prolonged play have yet to materialise. And we genuinely like the look the way the design seems perfectly integrated into our (white) PSP.

So if there are major drawbacks, we've yet to find them. Wrapstar skins (which are also available for the DS and iPod) are easy to put on, easy to pull off, and offer a dramatic visual change (with protective qualities) – all for under a fiver.

Anyone tired of the engulfing darkness of their black PSP, the clinical sterility of the white model or the violently garish nature of the P!nk pink version should visit the Wrapstar site forthwith.