You know what’s great? MagSafe. It’s not just because it’s a nice way to charge my phone (questions about how the waste heat affects my battery’s lifespan notwithstanding); I love being able to easily add things like grips or cooling fans to my phone, or quickly slap it on my dashboard before a drive. It’s just nicer than fiddling with clamps, and charging that way keeps my phone’s USB-C port in good shape for when I want faster charging or data transfers, and I haven’t had to deal with a cable whose housing splits open by the plug in literal years.
What if you could do the same thing with your gaming handheld? Well, you really can’t yet, but you can get a little taste with this Belkin Charging Grip for Nintendo Switch 2, a grip accessory I’ve been testing that goes beyond just protection and ergonomic enhancement, to include a back cover and a Belkin-made, magnetically-attaching 10,000mAh battery onto the back of the console. With the grip, you can more than double handheld Switch 2 playtime without fussing with wires or a fully separate external battery. Just slap Belkin’s battery on, plug it in – despite my MagSafe comparison, it doesn’t magically add wireless charging to your Switch 2 – and go.
Design and Ergonomics
If you’ve used the Dbrand Killswitch or Jsaux Split Protective Case, you’ll be familiar with Belkin’s approach here. The Charging Grip, minus the battery, comes in three pieces: two Joy-Con 2 grips and a backplate that clips onto the Switch 2’s main body. The grips slip on over the controllers just like the Killswitch ones, only instead of hooking over the top of the controllers, they hug them near the release triggers. I found that they were actually easier to slip onto the Switch 2’s detachable controllers more easily than Dbrand’s are, and they fit like a glove, with no wiggle once they’re in. As with the Killswitch Joy-Lock grips, you can also force them to detach from the console if you hold it by one Joy-Con and shake it enough, but I wouldn’t call my test of that “normal use.”
I found that I didn’t like how the Charging Grip felt to use. The grippy texture is fine, but something about the way they flares out makes it feel like my hands were pushing them out of my grip during certain movements. It wasn’t bad in full-on handheld mode, but it was distracting when I played with the Joy-Cons detached, and it made my hands reflexively tense up a little bit. It’s not as cramp-inducing as playing with naked Joy-Cons, but it didn’t do as good a job making me forget about the controllers as my Killswitch Joy-Locks do.
One big advantage that Belkin has over other Switch 2 accessories is that it actually fits in the Switch 2 dock. Whether that’s an advisable way to use it, I’m not sure. Belkin assured me its engineers hadn’t found issues with the system overheating, and the cover does have big holes to let the console vent, but the system also seemed hotter than usual when I removed it from the dock after a long play session. It may have been my imagination, and when I removed it I didn’t notice the exterior of the console itself was hotter, but on the plus side, the cover is as easy to remove as it is to put on.
The cover also has cutouts for all the buttons and the Switch 2’s ports. I wish the company had gone with buttons over the top of the power button and volume rocker, the way you might find on a phone case, though. Having to contend with a cutout amplifies the awkwardness of using the Switch 2’s buttons, which are nearly flush with the system, and I kept finding myself accidentally putting the console to sleep when I wanted to turn it down. Also, the slimness that lets the case slip into the dock makes it feel like it’s not terribly protective. (Did I do drop testing to find out? In this video game economy? Hell no.)
With regard to the battery itself: it’s slender and flat, with a single USB-C port and a short, embedded cable that folds into its body and loops up just over your Switch 2 when it’s plugged in, using its right-angle USB-C plug. The magnetic connection between the battery and case is strong enough to to easily snap the battery onto the back of my Switch 2, but only just. The battery never flopped off of my console while I was idly using it, but it only took one firm shake for me to send the battery flying onto the couch I’d aimed it at. I wouldn’t buy this for an excitable kid, lest they fling it off while it’s plugged in and tear a chunk of the inner USB-C tab off, a risk made plain to me, once, when I tried to walk away from a big, heavy power bank with my still-connected phone in hand.
Unsurprisingly, slapping a 10,000mAh battery onto the back of your Switch 2 adds a lot of weight to the console. The Charging Grip itself weighs 0.44 lb, or about half of an original Nintendo Switch. Adding that much weight shifts the balance back and makes the Switch 2 a lot less comfortable to hold. I didn’t mind the heft when I was curled up on the couch with my hands braced on my knees, but it made it a lot harder to hold it in a way that didn’t make me look like a bent-over gremlin when I was trying to sit upright. Maybe this is an old guy thing, but longer play sessions stress the crap out of my neck, so I try not to look down at harsh angles when I’m playing on a handheld.
Battery Performance
Belkin’s claim that the Charging Grip’s battery can get your Switch 2 an extra charge and a half is about right. When I drained my Switch 2 to five percent charge and plugged in the Belkin power bank, the power bank was left with a little over 30 percent once the Switch 2 was full again. A second charge from there got me up to roughly 45 percent.
It took just over three hours of playing Nintendo’s Star Fox demo, Mario Kart World, and Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade before I had fully exhausted Belkin’s battery and was back on the console’s internal power. That’s not as good as the battery that Belkin includes in the Belkin Charging Case, which gave me almost two full charges and let me play for more than three and a half hours before I was on internal power, but it’s certainly more convenient to be able to play in handheld mode, ergonomic issues aside.
I love the modularity of the magnetic back cover and power bank combo, and although the Belkin Charging Grip’s, well, grips aren’t my favorite, they do feel good, and fit my Joy-Con 2 controllers. I like that it docks fine without an adapter, and that my Joy-Con 2 controllers didn’t seem any more prone to accidentally detaching from the console with the grips and backplate on than without them.
The trouble is that the power bank adds so much weight when attached that, in most cases, I’d probably rather just plug my Switch 2 into one of the many power banks I already own. I could see it being handy on a plane, where I usually stick it on the tray table to play anyway, but anywhere else that’s not me half-horizontal on a couch just seems like a recipe for wrist and neck pain. And it’s an extra $60 to add the battery, which isn’t cheap. Ultimately, there’s just a lot more value in Belkin’s grips and dock-compatible back cover on their own than there is in the battery-included kit.
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom’s Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
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