I get your point, however the reality is the cost to process an order is fixed. It’s the same for postage stamp sized expansion module skin as for the 16" laptop.
They may well keep some stock of popular items, I’d expect the X-Ray skins to be printed/cut to order.
The modular laptop concept doesn’t fit Dbrand’s business model at the moment. Pick’n’Mix selections are likely uneconomic due to being labour intensive, and requiring a bunch of custom website programming.
To sum it up: dbrand is expensive and inflexible and should be avoided, if you want a skin tailored for your Framework Laptop 16. You can get enough raw skin to cover two of them, if you tailor it by yourself, for as little as $9.
Yeah, that’s such a shame. They refuse to sell expansion card skins separately… I suppose you could cut out 4 (?) squares out of the touchpad skin part yourself if you don’t plan using it.
Anyone knows any alternative to dbrand?
Thanks for the research! Seems like there is currently no true valid alternative.
I already submitted a request for Expansion Card skins addon to dbrand, let’s hope they listen us!
I already did that and received a negative answer, even though I offered to pay extra, hence my search for alternatives. Sadly, it looks like there’s only one alternative left: DIY!
That won’t work unless almost all of the upcoming FL16 skin buyers boycott them, until they give in. One of the arguments for rejection was high enough demand as-is. I already bought the skin for ~$10, just need to tailor it by myself. Dbrand’s prices are exorbitant, so I lost interest anyway.
I had really liked the Obsidian or the dark skin, but then noticed a plastic white thin rectangle in the top cover of FW16 which is apparently for antennas, and all the dark dbrand skins have a cutout for it which looks odd to me:
I ended up ordering the X-ray variant, because for now they are including both Light and Dark versions of it in the same order which means I will get 12 skins for all my expansion cards. I want to apply the dark one on the laptop, but perhaps the light top or bottom cover can be cut and applied around the palm area to hide the spacers gap.
I first noticed it in the sponsor segment of the LTT review and i just checked in dbrand’s instructions video:
It seems that all of the skins in those videos don’t have a cutout, even though it is shown in every preview for every skin in their customizer.
This could mean that only the metallic skins have a cutout (though they say it shouldn’t have any effect on wireless anyway) or none of the skins have a cutout and the preview hasn’t been fixed yet.
Maybe someone about to order could check that with their support, or someone who ordered a metallic skin could give us feedback.
I got my dbrand skin. In case anyone is wondering, the antenna cutout is scored so you can remove it, but you could also leave it in if you don’t mind the seam (some patterns would probably hide it completely)
In the LTT review, he just didn’t follow any instructions, so that is probably why there is no visible cut out. It just wasn’t removed and you can’t see the seam on the video
On my skins (x-ray and obsidian and matte black) the cutout is scored but also a small (5mm?) bit is removed at the end of the strip. My guess is it’s to facilitate removal of the strip but basically that means you can leave the strip but a small piece of the underside will be visible.
I actually see the same on yours, except it’s not removed, just scored, same as the strip itself.