Do you have the unique problem of Joy-Cons running out of power often, but you don’t want to go through the effort of sliding them back onto the Nintendo Switch to charge? Well there’s now an expensive product for you in the form of the Wireless Charging Grip.

As you may have guessed by the name this product takes the form of a regular-looking plastic grip, much like the one that comes in the box of the Switch. What makes it different is that it actually charges up the Joy-Cons wirelessly, by way of over-the-air power provided by a transmitter.

If that sounds a bit like science fiction this kind of power delivery has been around for a while, with the real catch being in the numbers.

Maybe the most important one here is that power will only be provided to the Joy-Cons within one foot of the transmitter. In metric that’s only 30.48 centimetres. Even if you have your Nintendo Switch setup on a desk, that’s still a very short range.

To charge some Joy-Cons up to full the controllers will need to be inside of the grip, and near the transmitter, for a full 24 hours too.

Then there’s the price – the Wireless Charging Grip and the required transmitter are being sold as a bundle on Amazon US for $149.99 (~R2 525). The official RRP of a pair of Joy-Cons from Nintendo itself is $79.99, so the grip costs almost double that.

Still this is an interesting novelty for those with money to burn, and if the tech improves in the next few years we can see it being a massive draw for controller players to be able to play as long as they want without fear of running dry.

The Wireless Charging Grip is made by a company called Powercast who we’ve admittedly not heard of before today. According to its about page Powercast was founded in 2003 in Pittsburgh and specialises in power over distance and long-range wireless power. Looking at the products page and there’s a few other items that seem more aimed towards developers and businesses.