Off Brand Battery Grips, a brief review.

[RyanLilly]

I had mentioned in an earlier response to another thread that I would give my thought about an aftermarket battery grip, so...

The grip I have came from the Gadget Infinity website, same as the makers of the Cactus flash triggers.
The grip is a clone of the canon grip for the 20D-50D line of cameras. It look pretty much Identical, the Shutter button feels about right, but the wheel and other buttons don't give as much resistance, and feel just a bit different. It has just a slight bit of wiggle when mounted to the camera, it is very slight and does not bother me and is still feels solid unless you actually grab the camera and try to wiggle it from the grip. The cannon grip feel just a bit more solid overall, but that is hard to quantify.

The buttons on my grip worked very intermittently when I received it, so I cracked it open and found some of the worst soldering that I have ever seen. My problem ended up being with the ON/OFF switch and with a few minutes of testing with a meter, and a bit of solder I had it patched up, but the quality was so poor I could see potential problems in at least a half a dozen other parts of the board
,So unless you love troubleshooting crappy Chinese electronics, I would say spend the money and go name brand.

 

[250Gimp]

I have a grip that I got from Link Delight for my Xt, and I have been very happy with it. IT attaches really tightly to the body but as you found, the wheel is loose, or doesn't have enough tension on it.

I haven't opened it up to check the electronics, and probably won't unless it craps out.

For now though, it works great.

 

[Dao]

From what I read from the Net so far, the non-oem grip that made for the XT/XTI/xxxD series are much better than the one that made for xxD series.

Few of the manufacturer claims that grip use the same mold that mold the OEM version. So the end product fit very good with the camera. But that seems to be not the case with the grip that made for the xxD series.

 

[RyanLilly]

yeah, it seems to be working ok for now, the extra weight and size really balance the camera well, but it does not fit that tight. I'm going to try a few thing like some foam tape or weather stripping, but it's not really that big of a deal. The canon grip has come down in price since it was introduced, so for the prixlce difference, I'll go with canon if I get one for my second camera.