I have long been a fan of WaterField Designs, makers of extremely well-made and stylish gear and travel bags. They specialize in using full-grain leather and their bags are hand-made in their shop in San Francisco right here in the good old US of A. It is rare nowadays to find products made entirely in the US, and WaterField’s reputation for quality-made bags that will last several lifetimes is the stuff of legends. The entire TouchArcade staff over the years has all owned at least one WaterField product at one time or another, and so we can personally attest that this stuff, while not inexpensive by any means, is certainly worth every penny. That probably sounds like some sort of paid promotion or something, but I can assure you it’s not. Those who have experienced WaterField products will easily find themselves turning into salespeople for their gear simply due to how darn good it really is.
Anyway, several years back WaterField started making cases for handheld gaming systems, and these tended to range from simple pouches to stick your console in to give it some light protection and carry ability, to full-blown cases to carry your console plus any possible accessory you may own and keep it all incredibly well-protected. Back in 2017 we actually took a look at their entire line of Nintendo Switch cases at that time. Now WaterField is launching an entirely new line of gaming cases called the Magnetic Gaming Case Collection, and since there is a case for all platforms that we cover or have covered here on TouchArcade we thought our readers might be interested in seeing what these new cases are all about. Here is the full lineup of new cases for Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, Playdate, and Analogue Pocket along with their accompanying promo videos.
Nintendo Switch
Steam Deck
Playdate
Analogue Pocket
As you can see from the videos, and as the name of the line implies, the big feature in each of these cases is their magnetic closures as opposed to the regular zippers you’d normally see on gear cases. If you’re anything like me your first thought was “You want me to put my super expensive gaming hardware inside something that closes with just magnets!?" I’m definitely a bit skeptical, but as the saying goes the proof is in the pudding and WaterField will be sending me one of these Steam Deck magnetic cases so I can see for myself. Expect a review in the coming weeks. That said, this isn’t WaterField’s first rodeo, and they’ve been selling magnetic sleeves for laptops for some time now. Generally speaking a laptop is even more expensive than these gaming handhelds are and I haven’t heard any complaints about people having their laptops fly willy nilly out of one of those sleeves. These guys know what they’re doing.
If you like WaterField products already and like the look of any of these new cases you can pre-order any of them right now on WaterField’s website with an estimated ship date of March 24th. Being that these are hand-made it can take several weeks or more before another batch of inventory is available once one sells through, so if you’re the type that has to have one on day one pre-ordering now is your best bet. If you’d rather wait to hear my own thoughts about the Steam Deck version I will hopefully have a review unit in hand soon and you can expect a review to follow in the coming weeks.
