Any time I get a new phone, one of the first things I do is make sure I get protection for my phone as well. After all, I’m a klutz. While phones are very commonplace, they also cost a good chunk of change if you break them and have to replace them before your renewal period.
I felt the same way about the Apple Watch. It costs enough that I definitely didn’t want to risk it, no matter what they said about the strength of the glass or the casing, so before my watch ever arrived, I was out their searching the web for the best solutions to keep my new toy safe and protected.
There are already actual cases out their to put the watch in, but I felt this would be too bulky. Plus, I think the Apple Watch is gorgeous and I didn’t want to hide any of it, just protect it. So I opted to look at screen protectors and leave the rest of it naked.
The tempered glass worked pretty well on my phone so I thought it would be the best option and protection for my Apple Watch. After perusing the various options on Amazon, I selected the Skinomi Tech Glass for the 38mm Apple Watch.
When it arrived, I opened it up and laid out all the items to make sure I could get it on without a fuss. Skinomi’s kit included an alcohol prep pad (not listed
in the instructions, btw), a microfiber cleaning cloth, a dirt clean film, a plastic card (for smoothing out bubbles), and the screen protector itself.
The instructions were simple and it took me less than 30 seconds to properly install it. Considering the small size of the screen, it was much easier to get centered with less bubbling than you have with a phone.
It was smaller on the screen that I expected, not covering nearly as much as I thought it would, but it felt solid. I tested out the some functions on the watch to see if the screen protector impaired any of the use, but it didn’t. Not even the functions requiring pressure seemed to be affected.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I discovered that I might be better off wearing my watch naked after all. A corner of the protector chipped within a day. Within a few days, the edges looked like they were starting to come up, though no bubbles formed underneath, which was good. Dust was able to accumulate at the edges, though, making the screen look grungy.
What really surprised me was how I somehow managed to get a chip in the screen protector in less than a week of use! To be clear, I wasn’t doing any extra rough activities and banging the watch on everything. I cannot figure out how a chip managed to get into a screen protector that’s supposed to be so strong without knowing it.
After the initial chip to the corner, I wasn’t that impressed, but decided to continue giving it a chance, just in case 
it was a fluke. After the much larger chip mysteriously appeared, I lost all faith in the screen protector and thought my watch would surely be better off naked, so I removed it. The watch looks much better without it. Maybe later I’ll try another kind of screen protector, but for now the watch seems to be holding up just fine on its own.
