 Hey everyone, I am Nathaniel Ruffeljantz from Nintendo Prime, and today we're going to talk about the Switch-Con, and the reason that the HDMI cord is still plugged into it is because the very first time I used it, I couldn't even get the HDMI cord into it. The port didn't perfectly line up with the cutout. So after some forcing, and you could see I had to bend my cord just ever so slightly to make it fit, I got it in there, and it worked. Now I'm gonna attempt to take it out, so let's hope it doesn't break here at the beginning of the video. Okay, look how bent I got that cord just to get it in there. I betcha. Oh, see it? See? See how hard that is to get in there? Anyways, this is the Switch-Con. It is a portable HDMI dongle for your Nintendo Switch. It replaces the $90 dock. But is it a good value? Well, let's talk about that. And let's also talk about the controversy surrounding this little, this little device right here. Let's get right into it. So first, let's talk about the Switch-Con itself. It works. You plug it in and you have to plug in a power adapter as well, just like you would have to with the Nintendo Switch dock, and then you plug the HDMI cable in, and you plug it into your TV, and voila, your Switch is now on your TV. There is no FPS dips. There's no power lag, and they're able to do this because the company that created the board that is inside realized that the reason that regular C dongles, USB-C dongles, do not work with the Switch or just a regular USB-C to HDMI cable, do not work with the Switch is because of the power delivery standards for USB-C. The Switch actually requires more power than the USB standards allow. So while everyone is making devices that fit within those standards because those are considered safe, Nintendo is working outside of those standards, and that doesn't necessarily mean that the power consumption and the power draws unsafe. It's just not going to be officially sanctioned by the people who control the sanctions behind USB-C. But obviously the fact that Nintendo could sell, you know, power adapters and everything that I'll, you know, send out more power is a good sign because that would have to get approved and tested to all heck to make sure you're not going to overheat and have fires and shortages and all that stuff. So yes, the dongle works because it allows for a higher power delivery, and that's it. There isn't some special chip inside of the Switch dock or anything going on inside of the dock itself that makes it special. It just doesn't work within the same parameters that all other USB-C dongles or USB-C to HDMI with power adapter works. Now, it works. That's great. And the SwitchCon also works with Galaxy S8s. I have not tested that, but based on videos I have seen of other people who are testing this product right now, that's definitely true. It works. No problem. No big deal. So what's the purpose of the product? To have a portable dock. That's really it. The idea is that when you're on the go, when you're going to a hotel, when you're going to a friend's house, instead of packing up your dock, which for me is a little more difficult because my dock is wall mounted. So instead of packing up your dock and everything, you just take this little dongle with and you're good to go. Now, obviously, you also have to have an HDMI cable and a power cable. Now, this is important to note because when they sent me my SwitchCon, it came wrapped in bubble wrap wrapped in plastic wrapped in more plastic taped up wrapped in more bubble wrap and then in an envelope and it came from some mansion in Hong Kong. And that matters because if that's how they're going to be shipping the retail product SwitchCon, which probably might come in a box, that means you're paying $70. Let's explore how you can get your hands on this product. So the SwitchCon itself is available through a kick starter project which has just a couple days left to back. And right now it is the only way to get your hands on this product. You have to pledge at least $69 to get your hands on one. You can pledge an additional $69 to obviously get two of them, or you can pledge $589 to get a 10 pack, which obviously might be usable for someone who's trying to do LAN parties or if you are maybe even looking to potentially resell these bad boys on Amazon. It is not known as of yet how this device will be available once it is off a kick starter. But the kick starter aspect of this is why there is actually a lot of controversy. There are two companies releasing this device in the United States. One of them is Svans who has an Indiegogo and then obviously it's the SwitchCon. And they are both using the exact same board, which means that they are essentially the exact same product. And yes, they both cost $69. So the issue that has come up is that this exact board and this exact device is actually already available in China and sells for $30. And it turns out that SwitchCon is actually that same company in China. So they are actually the people that released this device in China in the first place and are essentially rebranding it and charging a significantly higher price point here in the United States. Now if you're hoping to go get the Chinese version for $30, good luck. It's been sold out for months and it's extremely difficult to get your hands on. And so that kind of leaves you stuck with spending the $70 or the $69 to be exact on something like the SwitchCon. The problem is that kick starter has rules and regulations that mean that they need to be raising the capital in order to create a new product. Instead, this is just rebranding of a product they already own. SwitchCon owns the original brand, the original board. It is still not known at this time how Svans was able to get their hands on the boards as well. They might have a contract who knows maybe SwitchCon even owns them so they can create their own competition in the marketplace, which is actually illegal in some countries. But there's some shady stuff going on here when you consider that this product is $30 for customers in China and $70 for it here in the United States. And part of what also makes it a really interesting value and in my mind I'm totally quoting that value word is the fact that it is $69 but does not come with an HDMI cable or the actual power bar you need to plug into your wall. So if you want something that's officially graded to support Switch, you're going to end up having to spend $30 extra on the wall charger from Nintendo. That alone is going to push this product to essentially be $100 aka $10 more expensive than the dock and that's before you add an HDMI cable. Now maybe you have some HDMI cables laying around but if you throw in another $5 to $10 for that now you're talking about over $100 to have the SwitchCon and have it do everything that the dock does in a smaller form factor. Now this Kickstarter has raised a ton of money. At the time of me creating this video there were 707 backers of the just the $69 pledge and then there was even some early bird pledges, 100 backers of that where you could get a $10 cheaper. Those are obviously all gone and there's two backers of the SwitchCon 10 pack. So at this time they have raised $59,690 dollars. So obviously there's plenty of people out there that feel like the portability factor that you could throw this in your pocket throw it in your bag and take it with you anywhere is worth the premium that you're essentially paying to get it. And yes there are third party alternative power strips for the Nintendo Switch but again your mileage may vary you know I personally trust Nintendo made products more and when it comes to something that's this specific now that I know the reason that the Switch doesn't work with other third party you know dongles and power up and you know basically USB-C to HDMI converters is because a power delivery it really makes me wary of trusting any other power strip that does not come from Nintendo. Now if the SwitchCon had come with their own third party power for it I would have tried that out and I would have tested it long enough just to see if it's viable but it doesn't. So again it costs more than the dock. For $90 you can get another dock that comes with the power strip and comes with the HDMI cable but the SwitchCon is still pretty cool. Now obviously my big gripe with the SwitchCon is what you saw at the beginning. I don't know if every SwitchCon is like this it might just be mine but if you take a close-up look at the HDMI port you can see that it is not positioned correctly with the cutout. The cutout is fine the cutout can fit my cable but because it is not positioned correctly you can actually see part of the middle of the bottom and that means I have to try to jam up my HDMI cable in there to physically push the port down a little lower to fit it in there and that is a pain in the butt and I hope that that's not indicative of the quality of this device for other people. Now I've not had an issue with any of the other ports so it comes with two USB 3.1 ports which again that's nice you know it lets you charge your pro controller off of this at the same time hook up any potential peripherals you want to grab an ethernet dongle and that's one thing I would like to see them include in this is local ethernet but it doesn't I'm hoping maybe there'll be a version in the future that has the ethernet port and then it also has two additional USB-C ports which you can use again for charging or plugging in other devices now one thing I was interested in finding out with this device is could I use this in my USB-C port in the back of my computer just as a normal hub a normal USB-C hub you know not for the switch not for anything because honestly with how difficult it is for me to plug the HDMI cable in I don't see myself using this very often now if I got a retail version of one and it had that problem fixed and this is just an anomaly with my switch gone fine but I actually need a couple extra USB 3 ports on my computer and I don't currently have them so let's see if this works so as you can see here I have the dongle plugged into the back of my desktop computer and as I pan down very quickly you could see that it was powering my mouse I unplugged that from my unusual USB strip and plugged it into that and it works so yes you can use it as a normal HDMI or a normal USB expander but at the end of the day we're talking about a device that does exactly what it's advertised to do we're talking about a device that's a little pricey but we're talking about something that's about paying extra for convenience and now that it has a use in the back of my computer I'm actually going to be using the switch con just not for the reason that they sent it to me and that is also a full disclosure the people the creators of the switch con sent me this device and I'm sure they were hoping for a less critical look at it because on the surface it does exactly what it says it's supposed to do it works with the s8 it works with the switch it allows you to hook it up to your tv allows you to expand with ports that's great it does everything it said to do but again there's this controversy it's $30 in china $70 here it's on Kickstarter even though it breaks Kickstarter's terms of service looks like it's going to go through anyways since it ends in a few days and people are getting what they pay for you know maybe you're not someone that cares that it breaks Kickstarter's terms of service because you just want it that's fine and I definitely suggest between this one and s vans that you get this one specifically because this company owns it they have fully come out and it copped up to the fact they own this device they own the chinese version of it so you know that you're getting it from the original makers and I'm sure not every single switch con has the hdmi uh little port struggle but again it still works so it's still functional it still gets the job done um obviously I'm just not personally comfortable shoving it in there but it reminds me of the issue that people used to have with the straps um you know the joy cons and everything and how hard those were to get off and I never had an issue with it but a lot of other people did and again I'm sure this is a thing where I'm having a slight issue with the HDMI port just getting the cord in but you might not so there are some potential red flags here but if you're looking for a device like this if you want a portable device like this I don't think there's anything wrong with supporting it on Kickstarter and getting yourself one but again it's up to you and that's going to do it for this look at the switch con again if you would like more information about the supposed issues between the switch con and s vans and the 30 dollar device in china I will put some videos down in the description by spawnwave an excellent youtuber who does a lot of it you know in depth analysis and news reporting on nintendo and other video game companies and hardware specifically uh usually opens up devices and breaks it down he didn't actually open up he got the s vans he didn't actually open it up but he did extensive research once it became apparent that it was potentially stealing a board from another company anyways my name is any ruffle jantz from nintendo prime if you like this video you know what to do if you dislike it hit that dislike button if you'd like to get yourself a switch con I'll have a link to the Kickstarter down in the description and as always I will see you in the next one