Otterbox Mobile Gaming Clip Overview: Half Right

OtterBox, the company best known for its rugged cases, has developed a $ 30 clip that lets you connect your phone to an Xbox controller to play games. This is called the Mobile Gaming Clip, and it’s part of a growing trend of accessories to play console games on the cloud on your phone. What makes the clip from OtterBox different is that it can also work as a phone standard, apart from the controller, although the phone standard feature is not quite as robust as I had hoped.

The OtterBox clip is specifically designed for Xbox controllers, and it works with controllers made for the Xbox One, Series X / S or Elite Series 2 controller. There is also a small recess for the charging port, which means that if you need to connect your Xbox controller to a USB cable, you do not need to remove the clip from the controller. You can also detach the arm from the clip and use it as a stand to push up your smartphone for table games, movies or video calls.

With Microsoft rolling out xCloud, it is working with several manufacturers to offer a variety of mobile accessory companies, including OtterBox, Razer’s Kishi, and 8BitDo’s SN30 Pro for Android, for different experiences. Microsoft aims to ensure that there is a large ecosystem of gaming peripherals once its cloud gaming service becomes more widely available.

Setting up the OtterBox Mobile Gaming Clip is simple: connect your Xbox controller to your phone, attach the clip to your controller, mount the phone, and start playing. It does require more power than other gameplay clips to attach to the controller. Once you have installed it properly, clamp the clip tightly over the controller so you do not have to worry about it coming loose and falling off.

Some mobile game tracks, such as PowerA’s MOGA Mobile Gaming Clip, tend to feel unbalanced, especially with a large or heavy phone or a phone with a larger casing. OtterBox’s Mobile Gaming Clip has a better weight distribution, which made the controller feel a little more balanced.

One of the reasons for this is that OtterBox’s Mobile Gaming Clip has a ‘quick adjustment’ feature, which means you can adjust the angle of your phone when using the track. The arm of the clip can protrude slightly so you can experiment with the angles you prefer. There is also a latch on the arm of the Mobile Gaming Clip that allows you to lock it in place so that it does not slide while in use.

There are three claws to hold your phone in place. The lower claw extends so that larger phones can fit into the accessory by extending a few inches. This makes it easy to fit larger phones into the game clip. The claws do not stop me from reaching the volume or on / off buttons on my iPhone XR, even though it’s a bit cumbersome to have to unlock my phone while using the holder, as it’s sideways in the mountain. The design also makes it easy to use a pair of wired earbuds or connect a charger to charge my phone while I continue playing.

I did have problems when I tried to mount my phone; the phone case I use mainly has a PopSocket in the middle, and it added too much thickness and made my phone less secure in the clamp, and even popped out when I moved the clamp slightly. Eventually I had to remove the case from my phone every time I wanted to use the clip. If you do not have an accessory such as a PopSocket on your phone, the clip should work on almost every standard case.

The most interesting feature for OtterBox’s Mobile Gaming Clip is tabletop mode. You can switch from the controller to the tabletop mode by detaching the arm from the clip section of the accessory, so you can use the game clip as a viewing stand for play or even to watch movies and TV shows. The tabletop feature is an ambitious idea, but in the end it’s more of a kickstand than an actual stand. You have the limited ability to adjust the angle of the phone in this mode, and you can not lift the phone off the table in any way.

The option for a tabletop mode does address one of the biggest problems with mobile game tracks: hand fatigue of a controller, phone and clipping together. OtterBox helps solve this problem by giving you the opportunity to take a breather from the gameplay, but still giving you the freedom to continue playing on your phone.

Over the past few years, the cloud and mobile games market has become a more exciting space in the industry, with successful free play titles such as Call of Duty Mobile and Microsoft really started developing cloud games. As cloud games continue to grow, there will likely be a major expansion in the availability and variety of game clips like these. This means that if you do not like the current options available in the market, there is a high probability that similar products will be released in the coming months and years.

OtterBox’s Mobile Gaming Clip is not the perfect mobile game accessory, but it’s one of the better mobile game accessories available now. It offers me the option to use a controller that I own and not one designed for a specific product (except that it has to be an Xbox controller). It is also a bit flexible to use it compared to other mobile accessories like the Razer Kishi, which encloses your phone in a few controllers.

At $ 30, the OtterBox clip is cheaper than the solutions, but there are still cheaper options if you want to clip your phone to an existing controller. I like how the clip does not feel unbalanced when attached to the controller, and the tabletop mode is interesting. But it eventually feels like an afterthought because of how limited the clip is eventually used on a table. The things that OtterBox’s Mobile Gaming Clip does well are enough to justify the $ 5 to $ 10 price premium compared to other options available in the market.

Photography by Taylor Lyles / The Verge