Thoughts on the PopGrip Slide Stretch

Hey All! Present-day Dan here. If you want to pick up this PopGrip Slide Stretch after you read my take on it, here’s a link to it on the official PopSockets website! I don’t get any commission from this, but I know that when I read about a cool product, I like it if there’s a link for easy access. So here you go!

Also, to follow up on my statement that it might cause wear to my leather case: it’s been confirmed by PopSockets that it can cause patina, right on the product page. It has on mine. But that’s the joy of leather products — they age and wear and show that they’re used. No one wants a leather product to look pristine forever. If you do…that kind of scares me.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled post!

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With several MagSafe compatible accessories on the way that I knew I want to pick up (including MagSafe compatible PopSockets and the Anker PowerCore Magnetic 5000), I figured it was time to get myself a proper MagSafe case.

Since getting my iPhone 12 Pro, I’d been keeping it in a clear Insignia case that I got at Best Buy right before the phone was delivered. While I’d do like the case, it didn’t have magnets in it for MagSafe compatibility, so I figured I should get myself a different case now and save myself the headache of making a decision later.

Back when I had my iPhone 6 I had it in a leather case and I really liked it. Looking at the official Apple MagSafe cases available, I decided it was time to pick up another leather case. So far, I’m really liking it.

The one issue that I needed a solution to was my PopSocket on my old case. The one option I’ve found for reliably mounting my phone in my car has been the PopSockets PopMount 2 Car Vent mount. Now I don’t actually know if you can stick the 3M adhesive that’s on the back of a PopSocket to a leather case, but I wasn’t in any hurry to find out. With the MagSafe compatible line of mounts still a month or two out, I needed to figure out something…

Enter the PopGrip Slide Stretch.

This device is so simple, yet so ingenious. Instead of sticking a PopSockets base onto your phone with adhesive, this product lets you essentially clip a PopSockets to your phone instead. While I did struggle to understand exactly how PopSockets is defining “curved edges” for a phone case, I can tell you with 100% certainty that it works with an iPhone 12 Pro in a MagSafe leather case.

To me, this product represents engineering at it’s finest, as the enter accessory is two “wings” that expand to grip onto your phone, two rubber bands which is how that magic happens, and an integrated base for you to attach your PopTop too. Seeing it, I get how it works, but I can’t help but wonder how long it took R&D to get the design just right.

Much like a traditional PopSockets base, you can twist off the PopTop to put a different one on at any time. When I picket this one up, it came with a plain black PopTop — I needed to fix that and get Grogu on their STAT.

But it also has benefits that traditional PopSockets bases don’t have. The first of those is that it slides. That means that if you don’t have a PopMount handy and you need to prop your phone up in portrait mode for a quick FaceTime call, you can just slide the grip down to the bottom of the phone, pop it out, and bam — phone’s standing there next to you!

I don’t have many friends, though, so I don’t make too many FaceTime calls. That’s where the second benefit comes in: you can just slide it off! This is wonderful for when you need to wirelessly charge your device.

Now technically all swappable PopGrips are Qi charge compatible because you can twist the PopTop off…but there’s a huge asterisk that has to go with that: you have to have a good enough case to pair it with. If not, you’ll run into the issue I did.

The Insignia case that I mentioned earlier? Qi compatible and great for drop protection…but it lived at the edge of the bubble for being Qi compatible. Adding a PopSocket base to the case pushed it just far enough over the line that all of my wireless chargers knew that the phone was there, but also that there was enough space that an obstruction was detected. That meant using my wireless charger at night meant that I had to take my case off of my phone and hope the cats didn’t knock it to the ground in the meantime.

I know what you’re thinking: won’t sliding the grip on and off cause wear and tear on your leather case over time? I sure hope it does! When Apple first said that using the official MagSafe charger with the leather case would potentially leave a ring, people flipped out. I don’t understand it, though. Part of the joy of using a leather accessory is developing the patina over time, along with any other wear and marks that tell the story of how you regularly use the product.

Overall, the PopGrip Slide Stretch is a product that I really enjoy and would absolutely recommend if you want all the joy of using a PopSocket without the fun of a 3M adhesive base. This accessory also pairs nice with the PopMount 2 Flex, which I recently did a review on that you can read here.