Best Samsung Galaxy S5 protective cover 2014 part 1

Best Samsung Galaxy S5 protective cover 2014 part 1

Samsung S View Cover

Samsung's official case has previously been available for the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the S4 and now you can get a quick glance at information on your S5. It's essentially a flip-style cover with a design very similar to Samsung's official Flip Wallet case with an added window at the front that let's you view notifications, answer or reject calls, see pedometer progress and even take pictures with the camera.

To house the S5 you'll need to take off the removable back to clip into a sensor chip to activate the S View Window interface. On the front lid there's also a series of magnets like those found in the iPad Smart Cover to awaken the phone when opened.

At first glance the S View cover looks like it's made of leather, but on closer inspection you'll quickly realise that what looks like real leather is actually synthetic. For the price, we were certainly hoping for something a little more luxurious.

It's a slim fitting case at least and doesn't add any significant weight to the S5. We would have liked to have seen a pull tab to better secure the case and when you take pictures, there's a black line across the top of the screen where the cut out sits too flush against the sensor, though you can take 'square' photos using the window at the front -- a neat addition.

Like the Dot View case for the HTC One M8, the S View case is a really interesting idea and is actually more useful than the HTC's offering. It could really benefit from more interesting third-party app support to make it worth spending close to £50 on. As an official case, it's good but by no means perfect.

Best Samsung Galaxy S5 protective cover 2014 part 1

Griffin Survivor Clear

Griffin’s Survivor range usually offer a rugged, bulky form of smartphone protection, but the Survivor Clear is one of the slimmest so you don’t have to look like you are carrying around a small brick in your pocket.

It’s a polycarbonate case with a clear back, so the S5 dimpled back shines through. There's also a TPE rubber trim around the edges of the case where the corners are more reinforced. There’s all the necessary cut outs and raised surfaces for standby and volume rocker are easy to press. Griffin claims the construction can withstand a 6-foot drop and is engineered to withstand bone-shaking vibration.

While we didn’t drop the Survivor Clear with the S5 in tow from 6 feet, we did try knocking it off from a table a few times and we can confirm it did survive. That's obviously not the same but let's be honest, that's going to be a more likely scenario. There's a lack of a screen protector or a raised bezel so if you drop it on the screen we'd have our doubts if it would survive the fall. We really liked the car tyre-like trim, though, which makes the case nice to grip and compensates for the glossy, slightly slippery back.

It’s the slimmest pick of the bulky Survivor bunch and the raised corners should help offer a nice layer of protection even if the screen is left exposed. For £20, it's a good value option that doesn't entirely hide away the S5's design.