Venom Charge & Store Switch hardware review - "Perfectly functional"

Any Switch owner with a few friends and a lot of games will know the struggle of having to keep the ever-growing variety of controllers charged at all times, just in case your mate comes round for some Mario Kart and wants to give Pokemon: Let's Go a try.

The Venom Charge & Store tackles this problem pretty neatly. With just one USB output going straight into your Switch hub, you can charge two Joy-Cons, a Pro Controller, and a Poke Ball Plus all in one go and still have room for additional controllers or a GameCube adapter.

It's a neat idea, but as one might expect from a piece of kit designed to charge so much at once, it is a bit bulky. Throw in some fiddly plastic bits and you have a perfectly functional but not entirely attractive solution to your charging woes.

Powering up

Setting up the Venom Charge & Store is super easy - you just plug the USB into one of the ports on your Switch's hub, and you're away.

The Joy-Cons sit on the side of the box, while the Poke Ball Plus goes into a Micro USB port on the top which flips up when required. The Pro Controller, meanwhile, needs an extra bit of plastic fitting to it before it slots onto the front.

If you're really trying to free up some space, there's also slots in the back to hold up to four Switch game cases, which is a nice, if ultimately kind of useless, addition.

And, hey, it charges things. As a pure bit of "drop it in and walk away" tech, it works astoundingly well - you just slot everything in, and when the green lights on the front come on, everything's fully charged. Easy enough.

Lack of spark

But it doesn't feel particularly good to use. There's no satisfying click when the Joy-Cons slide into the Charge & Store as there is with the Switch itself, leaving you wondering if they're actually secure and charging at all.

The Poke Ball Plus port is also super fiddly to get at, and feels more like a quick add-on thrown in when the controller landed than an integral part of the design. There also doesn't appear to be a charging light associated with it, so you're never quite sure if it's powering up or not.

Finally, it doesn't seem to charge particularly quickly. Even with my Joy-Cons at a pretty high level of charge, it still appeared to take around an hour to get them back to full.

Switching off

Venom doesn't provide a charge time estimate anywhere on the packaging, so it's clearly not a key part of the product, but it'd still be nice to have things be fully prepared a little faster.

All that said, if you need a charging solution for your Switch which frees up a bunch of USB ports, the Venom Charge & Switch does a perfectly adequate job.

It's not the prettiest bit of plastic in the world, and it's a bit flimsy in some places, but as a storage and charging solution, it does basically everything it sets out to do, and opens up your Switch for some GameCube controller action while all your other peripherals charge up.