Some people I know are so paranoid about damaging their £500 iPads they never take them out of their homes. Which seems a shame - and sort of defeats the whole purpose of having a portable device that does so much.
Perhaps it's people like this that Griffin had in mind when they designed the 'Survivor' iPad case.
Designed to meet military specifications, the unspoken benefit for this cover that it renders the iPad child-proof as much as it does desert proof. You could give your precious device to a five year-old and know you'll probably get the iPad back in one piece, and kince kids of that age seem to find iPads addictive, magical things, it's something that will appeal to anyone with a child of their own or a hyperactive nephew or niece.
The cover comes in two parts; first your iPad is placed inside a hard shell which has a protective screen. This snaps and locks into place, before you slip the iPad inside a second rubber enclosure, which wraps around the edges of the frame.
Rubber dimples then lock the outer enclosure into the inner shell. There are flaps in the enclosure which can be pulled open to access the dock connector, headphone jack and the high-res camera on the back of the iPad.
The product promises to repel dust and sand, and protect your iPad from drops of up to six feet. Even I am unwilling to test this last claim on my own iPad, but I was willing to drop it three feet onto the floor, screen-side up. The two large shock absorbers on the bottom of the cover meant the iPad landed on the floor with a gentle thud.
Griffin makes no claim about whether it makes the iPad waterproof, and it's fairly obvious there would still probably be water damage if the iPad inside was fully submerged. That said, it'd be well-protected from occasional splashes from say, cooking in the kitchen, likewise it would make me more likely to risk taking my iPad to the beach.
The cover comes with a little plastic stand which can be fixed to your iPad in either portrait or landscape mode. Fully clad in its new armour, the iPad loses no functionality, connecting the dock cable isn't hindered at all and plugging in the standard headphones the iPad comes with is fine.
Any headphones with a chunkier jack are likely to be a problem, though, and the flap covering the HD camera has to be held back by your finger, in order to take photos. But these are minor niggles.
Once you're finished in whatever hazardous environment you're in, taking the cover off is fairly easy and takes about 30 seconds. The inner shell can be tricky to pull off and the catches holding it together don't feel that sturdy. You might not want to be constantly assembling and disassembling it for fear of snapping the inner shell.
All in all, if you're crazy enough to consider taking your iPad to a festival, like throwing dinner parties or find yourself sharing your iPad with an inquisitive small child - or you happen to be a soldier in Afghanistan - Survivor will give some much-needed reassurance.
And at under 30 quid it's much, much cheaper than a new iPad.