Paperlike Like

A few days ago, I acknowledged that even though I’m pledging to make a break from Amazon, they’re still hard to beat purely in terms of customer service. So when a smaller company with fewer resources meets or beats them in customer service, I think it’s worth calling out.

Last year I wrote a review of Astropad’s Rock Paper Pencil screen protectors, and I gave them an A-. The advantages1 were that they can be removed and replaced pretty easily, and the included replacements for the Apple Pencil tips have a finer point that feels more like a ball point pen than a rubber stylus.

The more I used it, though, the more I got distracted by how much the Rock Paper Pencil degrades the screen clarity of the iPad. It’s certainly not unusable, but it’s definitely noticeable if you spend most of the day looking at higher-resolution screens. I also fell out of like with the feel of writing with the metal tip on the coarser screen protector. At first, it felt nostalgic like writing on the ruled paper inside my old Trapper Keeper, but over time it felt more like writing on the plastic cover of the Trapper Keeper.2

So I decided to go back to the Paperlike, which I’d used for a long time on previous devices and never had any major problems with. They’re more expensive, but keeping in line with Apple philosophy, it feels like getting the version without compromises for a device that I use a lot. As part of the pledge to break from Amazon, I ordered a couple directly from Paperlike, reasoning that the extra time spent for delivery would be worth it for the feeling of smug superiority for ordering from a smaller business.

The problem is that I’d completely forgotten that I’d already gotten one back when I upgraded my iPad. It had been sitting there unopened and uninstalled the whole time, and I gradually forgot about it as I labored on, drawing with rubber on unprotected glass like some kind of animal.

The company has a satisfaction guarantee, so I sent a note asking if I could return the extra one. I soon got an email offering me a store credit (for 150% of the cost of the item!) instead of returning it. That alone is pretty great customer service. But the downside to being a company that does one thing really well is that I didn’t need anything else from the store. I explained as much in a follow-up email.

And then, they just gave me a refund. They said I could keep the extra to pass along to a friend. I was so pleased by how easy (and non-wasteful) they’d made it that I felt like I had to spread the word.

This kind of thing isn’t exactly unprecedented, if you’ve been dealing with Amazon for a while, but the assumption is that they’re so big that they can write off the losses without a second thought. I’d imagine that it costs them more to do a return than it would just to let customers keep what they’d bought and issue a refund anyway. I don’t want to make it sound like Paperlike is some tiny mom & pop shop, but it’s also a bigger relative hit for them to favor genuinely good customer service, and it deserves a call-out.

As for the screen protectors themselves: they do exactly what they set out to do, which is improve the feel of using an Apple Pencil on the device, with as little degradation to screen quality as possible. And the latest version is all but undetectable once it’s applied; it just gives your screen a matte texture.

I wouldn’t say it’s exactly like writing on paper, but it’s definitely less slippery and more satisfying than writing on glass. And it has less grip than Astropad’s screen protectors, which means that writing or drawing for an extended time isn’t as prone to tiring out your hand.

My biggest criticism — only criticism, really — is that the process of applying it is kind of a pain. They do every thing they can to make it easier. There’s an instructional video that takes you through it step by step. It comes with a microfiber cloth and wet wipes, to clean everything at multiple steps through the process. And there are various stickers to guarantee that everything is lined up perfectly.

When you first open the package and see all of the guides and stickers, it can seem a little anal-retentive for something as simple as putting on a screen protector. But after you try it once, and at least in my case invariably fail, it all seems like a necessity.

Each package includes two screen protectors, ostensibly so you only need to buy one set for the lifetime of your iPad. But in my experience, it’s a necessity because the first one always gets messed up. You practically have to be in a NASA-style clean room to avoid getting nearly-invisible specks of dust or dirt or stray whiskers that’ll get stuck underneath.

I tried applying one to my 11″ iPad, after re-watching the video, cleaning off my desk and everything around it, carefully following every step, cleaning and dusting the screen thoroughly, and I still managed to get a tiny speck of dust trapped under the screen protector. It left the smallest air bubble in the center of the screen, which was barely perceptible but I knew would drive me insane over time. I’d decided to just relax and not stress about it and use the thing anyway, which is when I noticed that I’d applied it upside down. The screen protector was covering the iPad’s camera, and video from it had the Vaseline-smeared look of late-in-life TV footage of Elizabeth Taylor.

So it might be a good thing I have an extra package, since it might actually take me four attempts to get it right. Regardless, I don’t want my general ineptitude and lack of cleanliness to scare anybody away from the brand; they make the application as straightforward as is possible, and once you’ve got it installed, it works great and lasts for years. I’m a fan, and I wish I’d just kept using Paperlike all along.

1
Apart from the obvious advantage that they’re lower-priced than Paperlike

2
That’s the kind of solid analogy you don’t get from product reviews on The Verge.

1 Apart from the obvious advantage that they’re lower-priced than Paperlike

2 That’s the kind of solid analogy you don’t get from product reviews on The Verge.