On Planet Earth, gravity is a force to be reckoned with. Fumble your expensive smartphone, and it’s going to accelerate towards the Earth’s center at 32.17 feet/second/second (9.8 m/s/s). If it hits face down and on an uneven surface, chances are good that the screen of your iPhone is going to scratched or shattered. Inateck’s PG5001/PG6001 Tempered Glass Screen Protectors (affiliate link) not only provide an extra layer of protection to your iPhone 7 or 7 Plus screen, but are less costly at just US$9.99 ($8.99 for the iPhone 7 version) than many competitors.
Design
As with most screen protectors, the PG5001 (iPhone 7) and PG6001 (iPhone 7 Plus) protectors can match the screen they’re being applied to as they come in black and white finishes. That being said, if you have a silver iPhone and don’t like the white bezel, installing a black screen protector can give you the look you want.
The Inateck screen protectors are made of 0.25mm thick glass tempered to a 9H hardness. On the Mohs hardness scale, 10 is equivalent to diamond while 9 is corundum (aluminum oxide crystal, also known as ruby or sapphire). What that means is that it would take a diamond or something of equivalent hardness to scratch this protector.
The protector matches the screen of the iPhone exactly with openings in the correct spaces. Unlike other screen protectors that often have an abrupt straight edge, the Inateck protectors are designed with a curved edge to ensure a similar screen feel to the original phone.
Function
I found the installation process for the Inateck screen protectors to be much simpler than that for other protectors I’ve tried. The screen protector comes with an alcohol prep pad and cleaning cloth for cleaning and polishing the iPhone display. Once that’s done, you use the back of a “dust-absorber” sticker to remove any stray dust motes that have fallen onto the screen.
Next, you lay the screen protector face down on the display, aligning it with the microphone, front camera and home button. Using included “guide stickers”, the screen is attached page-like to the iPhone. In the next step, you open the “page”, remove a thin liner on the adhesive that lines the outside of the screen protector, then flip the screen protector back into place. Applying firm pressure to the edges ensures that the protector stays in place.
At this point the guide stickers are peeled off and you have a nicely-protected screen. I found that the Inateck protector fit perfectly and didn’t exhibit the “rainbow screen” effect sometimes seen with screen protectors installed. The screen sensitivity of the iPhone 7 Plus used for the review was unchanged.
You may have noticed that there is no photo of the installed Inateck Screen Protector in this post. That’s because you really can’t tell that it is installed on an iPhone.
Conclusion
Compared to some competing screen protectors costing up to $49.99, the $9.99 Inateck Tempered Glass Screen Protectors offer inexpensive protection against scratches and impacts that could save your iPhone from a costly repair. It’s easy to install, and both looks and feels like the original screen.
