A $49 Switch 2 Case That Clips Into a Mounting System You Do Not Own Yet

Mechanism released its first Switch 2 case after several delays: the Basecase, $49. It snaps on, protects the console, and clips into the brand’s modular mount line, including a $19 Basegrip for a wall or an arm.

It looks good. I would still buy the $15 generic.

Run it through the test I use for everything: capable, cheap, and good-looking, in that order. The case is capable, and it is good-looking. It fails the middle one against a generic that protects the same console from the same drops. Design is worth paying for when it does something the cheap version cannot, and here the extra $34 buys an aesthetic and a connector.

That connector is the real pitch, and it is the part I want to argue with. Buying an accessory because it will work with a system of mounts you might assemble later is paying today for an intention. I have watched enough ecosystems of brackets and rails disappear, or get replaced by a new incompatible version, to know how that usually ends. If the mounts are what you want, buy the mounts, and then the case makes sense because you are using it. If you are buying the case first, just in case, you are funding someone else’s roadmap.

There is one version of this that works: you already know where the console will live, on a wall, on an arm by the bed, and the mount solves it. That is not a future promise, that is a purchase with a job.

So, do I buy it? Only alongside a mount you are actually buying. On its own, a $15 case does the protecting, and the difference pays for a game.