IINE Magnetic Wrist Strap

Hardware Type: Grip

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Review:

(Note: This product was received at no cost for review via the Amazon Vine program.)

Not long ago, I reviewed the NBCP Switch Joycons Detachable Grip, which presented an interesting idea: what if you had a pair of individual grips for the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons, much like what Nintendo includes along with the Joy-Cons themselves, but those grips could attach to each other to become a combined controller grip, comparable to a different device that Nintendo sells. As it happens, the folks at IINE seem to have had a similar thought with their IINE Magnetic Wrist Strap, which as the name indicates, aims to do something similar, but with magnets.

Unlike NBCP’s Joy-Con grips, the IINE Magnetic Wrist Strap, which also comes in a left/right pair, does not attach to the Nintendo Switch console itself. Instead, it aims for a low profile, it is closer to the small individual Joy-Con grips that Nintendo produces, even coming with their own wrist straps. However, it does have a few noticeable differences.

First, as you can see in the comparison image, these Joy-Con grips (housing my blue and orange Joy-Cons in the image) are wider than Nintendo’s grips (housing the green and pink Joy-Cons). Thankfully, they’re not so wide that they’re uncomfortable to hold in one hand, so for games that require you to hold the Joy-Cons separately, they still work well. The release button also works better than the one on Nintendo’s own grips, which is a big plus, especially if you’re planning to swap them back and forth between these grips and being slid onto the Nintendo Switch hardware.

Of course, the main selling point here is the way these Joy-Con grips are magnetized to join together, and this ends up working both better than you might expect, and yet at the same time worse.

On the bright side of things, the magnets work fairly well, hitting a sweet spot where both grips stick together pretty well once they’re close enough to attract each other, yet the attraction is not so strong that they’re difficult to pull apart, or even slide into an asymmetrical layout if you’re so inclined.

The negative here is one that is probably the reason why these grips are so thick – my hands feel extremely cramped holding these when the two Joy-Cons are joined together in this way. It simply is not comfortable to hold it like this, as novel as it may be. Perhaps for someone with smaller hands, this may be closer to ideal, but I would expect it to be cramped for them too. There just doesn’t seem to be a good way to keep this from happening without making these grips too cumbersome to be held in one hand each.

There’s other problems too. The SL and SR buttons (the buttons that act as L and R when holding a single Joy-Con sideways like a NES controller) do not feel good at all, and are far too squishy. I absolutely would not want to use these grips for any game that requires precise timing and control when pressing these buttons.

Also, despite that I keep calling them “grips” these Joy-Con attachments don’t really add, well, grips. Where NBCP’s Joy-Con grips did at least seek to mimic Nintendo’s larger Joy-Con holder/grip accessory by adding grips on the back at the lower-left and lower-right, this accessory is sticking specifically to just attaching a section to the Joy-Con’s rail, meaning there’s not really any sort of consideration for comfort here.

The other issue here is one of utility – just how likely are you to use grips like these, as opposed to just holding the Joy-Con controllers on their own? Certainly there are some games, particularly those that make heavy use of motion-control, where you’ll want wrist straps – games such as Nintendo Switch Sports and WarioWare: Move It!. However, for most games on Nintendo Switch, it is easier and more comfortable to not bother with any straps at all, and if you’re not flinging your arms around to swing a tennis racket or something, the strap is unnecessary.

In the end, I think the IINE Magnetic Wrist Strap is a really neat idea, but it seems to create just as many problems as it solves, and overall it just doesn’t seem to be all that necessary. Unless you play a lot of Nintendo Switch games with motion control, but still also play games that work best with one single, unified controller, and also have small hands, it doesn’t seem likely that you’ll get much use out of this accessory.

tl;dr – The IINE Magnetic Wrist Strap is a Grip-style accessory that attaches to your Joy-Con controllers to make it easier to transition from using them separately, or connected via magnets. It’s a clever idea, but the SL and SR buttons are terrible, the connected devices are far too small, and the usefulness of these grips was already pretty limited to begin with. Unless you fit into the narrow group of people with small hands who uses Joy-Cons both separately and together, I don’t think this accessory will be worth it for you.

Grade: C

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