Why You Can Trust CNET Vaja Leather Suit for MacBook Pro review: High-end protection for your MacBook
This handcrafted laptop shell looks sharp, but might give you sticker shock.
- Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
Your MacBook Pro, with its unibody aluminum construction, may seem impervious to most damage from everyday handling, but I've seen enough dings, scratches, and dents to tell me otherwise. That's why some choose to cover their MacBooks, whether Air, Pro, or Retina Pro, with an outer shell.
Vaja Leather Suit for MacBook Pro
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Most of these are plastic or silicone rubber, and usually fairly disposable. Covering the iconic design of a MacBook is something a lot of people would not want to do, although I have seen plenty of candy-apple-red MacBook skins in the real world over the years.
Another option is to go for a high-end shell, such as the Vaja Leather Suit. This all-leather cover fits over your MacBook Pro, offering protection while transforming the aesthetics of your laptop into something that isn't immediately recognizable as a MacBook, but has its own premium look and feel, and will at least stand out the next time you're in a coffee shop full of backlit Apple logos.
There are, of course, some drawbacks. The first is price. Vaja handcrafts its leather pieces (see one of its laptop bags in this roundup of leather laptop carriers), offering a large number of custom combinations of colors and accents.
This particular black leather version is sized for a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and is one of a handful of stock color options, all of which cost $270. Customized versions can take up to 30 days to make, and cost $290.
That's a stunning amount to consider for a laptop shell for most people, and several of my CNET colleagues after seeing the Leather Suit for the first time, guessed that it might cost $99 at most. Still, actually installing and using the Leather Suit, it's extremely well-made, and fits this 13-inch Retina MacBook like, well, a glove.
You install the shell via preinstalled adhesive strips on the interior surfaces. The bottom of the laptop slides in with two small straps covering the front left and right edges, while the top panel has a very slight overhang just in the center to hold onto the lid and also provide a finger grip for opening the laptop. The adhesive pulls away without much trouble, but I'm sure repeated reinstallations would kill the adhesive strips pretty quickly.
When installed, the shell leaves the ports on the left and right edges of the MacBook exposed, so you won't have any trouble getting to them. The keyboard and touch pad are likewise unencumbered, although having the two tiny straps across the left and right front edges does break the symmetry of the leather and aluminum.
It's a valid concern to worry about excess heat from covering most of the outer surface of your all-metal laptop with thick leather. In anecdotal use, the MacBook did not seem to run hotter, or use its fans more frequently, but note that the vents on this particular MacBook blow up from the bottom half of the hinge assembly, and the leather blocks very little, if any, of that air.
Besides being more expensive than any other laptop shell or cover we've seen, the Leather Suit has one additional disadvantage. While solidly built, it's also heavy, weighing 0.94 pound. That means adding it to this 13-inch Retina MacBook took us all the way up to 4.6 pounds -- which is a big increase in travel weight.
Conclusion
The Vaja Leather Suit is definitely cool-looking and built for long-term use, but also expensive and heavy -- the latter point can defeat the purpose of having a MacBook Retina or Air model in the first place. But if you don't mind paying a premium, it'll help your MacBook stand out from the crowd, while still feeling just as high-end.