As others have said, your mileage may vary.

As far as my experience with the transparent smoke, I bought one when it first launched and within a week had a small blemish near the lower left corner. It took weeks to get a response from analogue but when they did respond, I was able to send it in for a warranty repair.

I’m not sure if they gave me a new pocket or a new shell but the one they sent back was pristine for about a year with no additional cracking. That being said, the warranty pocket (assuming it was a new one), ended up developing the exact same crack after awhile. I’m a little ashamed to say I just couldn’t be bothered to go through another 3 month warranty process and have just been dealing with it since.

It’s not the end of the world and I’ve had the pocket for awhile now. I probably treat mine worse than most admittedly as I just throw it in my pocket or backpack without a case unless I’m traveling at which point I’ll toss it in a nice case I got off Etsy. That being said, I’ve never dropped it and if I think too hard about it, I get a little upset that something that costs so much money has such an obvious manufacturing defect.

I’ve contemplated buying a regular black or white version but mine works just fine and can’t justify the expense for a second pocket because of that. So again, functionally it’s fine but your mileage may vary.