The Facts
Specifications according to the manufacturer:

- Patterns: 12 designs: Aloha, Dragon, Wood, Snake, Karakusa, Sakura, Fire, Stone, Orange, Green, Sparkle Silver, and Sparkle Gold
- Fits: iPod shuffle both 512MB and 1GB
- Price: US $19.95
- Web site: Tunewear

Construction and Materials
The Poptune stickers are very thin and have a gloss finish on the face of them. The back is what I would describe as moderately sticky. Each set of stickers is comprised of a piece for the USB cap, one for the lanyard cap, one piece for the entire body of the shuffle, and then left behind are a circular piece for where the control pad goes (this sticker also has control pictographs printed on it so you could apply it to the iPod) and a rectangular piece for where the slider fits. The piece left over for the slider is too long, of course, to actually fit on the iPod's slider, but you could cut it shorter and apply it to the iPod if you wanted.

The designs are printed in vivid and attractive colors. The special sparkle finished are vibrant, and well, sparkly. The wood pattern and the marble pattern don't look very realistic, but they look nice nonetheless. There is a small red Tunewear logo printed on one side of the USB cap sticker and on both sides of the lanyard piece.

Subjectively, I think the designs that Tunewear have chosen are very nice. With twelve designs, most people will be able to find at least a few that they like. My favorites are the dragon, Karakusa, Sakura, and solid green ones.

The cut lines of all the pieces are clean and even. The sizing of the main, large piece for the body of the iPod shuffle is exact and fits around all of the contours very closely. The lanyard cap sticker is amazing in how closely it fits around the hole for the lanyard string. In contrast, the sticker for the USB cap is too large and I had a sticky border of material hanging off of it's dimensions.

Application and Usage
Due to the one piece design of the Poptune stickers, when you apply the piece to the main body of the iPod shuffle, you've got to line it up perfectly. The instructions say to start applying it to one corner of the shuffle and work your way around. I developed my own system that worked better for me - place the sticker face down on a desk and push the iPod down onto it. I found that I could line it up better that way.

However you apply the sticker, you don't want to have to remove it too many times because it does get noticeably less sticky with multiple applications. Tunewear claims that you can reapply these stickers, but I don't think they would stay on very well after more than one application. In fact, the joint between two parts of the sticker on the top of my shuffle near the headphone jack was continuously getting snagged and would easily become unstuck.

Having a one piece design means that these stickers cover not only the sides of the iPod, but also wrap around the corners. Not all sticker designs do this, and that is a bonus for the Poptunes in my mind. However, they are very thin, so don't expect a lot of protection in return. But since they provide complete coverage, and if you've got a design that you really like, the Poptune stickers look great on the iPod.

The Bottom Line
The Tunewear Poptune stickers for iPod shuffle are like a hot swimsuit model, they look great on the surface, but they don't have a lot else going for them. They're too thin to be very protective, but they cover all of the iPod, including the corners. The sticker for the USB cap fits rather poorly, but the other pieces fit with amazing accuracy. They're not sticky enough for repeated uses, but that makes them easy to remove and they won't leave any residue behind. Twelve sets of stickers for $20 is a pretty good deal, and with that many of them you can decorate your iPod for quite a long while. And that word - 'decorate' - is exactly what these Poptune stickers do and they do a fine job of it. 3/5 stars.

The good: Nice designs, vibrant colors, complete iPod coverage, they look great on the iPod.
The not so good: They provide very little protection, a challenge to apply, not sticky enough, sticker for USB cap too large.

For more information: Tunewear

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