Review: Dbrand Grip

A package from overseas showed up a few days ago.

I was confused — what did I even buy? I haven’t ordered anything from outside Japan recently.

Opened it up and it clicked. It was the Dbrand Grip I backed on crowdfunding half a year ago, finally here.

Dbrand Grip is a phone case from Dbrand, the sticker company. Case is a loose word for it — it’s really a bumper, a protective frame.

It was an Indiegogo project, and a bunch of overseas YouTubers hyped it up back then. Most of them had the iPhone X bumper though; I backed the OnePlus 5 version.

Inside the box it’s pretty barebones. Being a sticker company, they also threw in a dedicated back skin meant to go with the Dbrand Grip.

So I fussed around and stuck it on. Looks decent.

Front side is protected fine too.

After about two days of use, I’d say it’s pretty good. First off the feel is nice — rubber and plastic combined — and it does a solid job against drops. You could basically toss the phone around without worrying about breaking it.

The details are well done too. It lines up perfectly with the OnePlus 5’s alert slider, which is very nice.

The downside: it makes the phone look bigger. Right now the OnePlus 5 with this on is actually bigger than my Sony XZP.

But big is big. Not like I don’t have big hands.