PopSockets Swappable PopGrip vs. Spigen Style Ring 2: Which phone grip should grip your phone?

PopSockets Swappable PopGrip

PopSockets are more than a phone grip; they're a pop culture phenomenon! The brand new swappable PopGrips are great for collectors and smartphone addicts. You can now swap PopTops without having to remove the adhesive base, and you can remove the PopTop for better wireless charging compatibility.

Spigen Style Ring 2

The original Spigen Style Ring was one of the most useful phone grips out there, but it was thick and the protruding center post made phones wobble when laid on a tabletop. The Style Ring 2 lets the phone lay flat, works with magnetic car mounts, and looks bolder than ever with colors like periwinkle Orchid Gray and candy apple Red.

PopSockets and Spigen have been the cream of the crop for phone grips for years, but they haven't been resting on their laurels. Last year brought new iterations on both PopSockets — with swappable PopGrips and PopTops — and the Spigen Style Ring's slimmer, sleeker 2nd-gen model. While we'd normally declare a winner between these two, the reality of phone grips is that what's "best" is going to depend greatly upon personal preferences.

Style Ring around the rosy, a PopSocket made for posing

When trying to decide between PopSockets and Style Rings, there are a lot of stylistic and functional features to prioritize, but they boil down to a fundamental choice: do you want to stick your finger through a grip's ring, or wrap your fingers around the outside of a grip?

I'm personally in in the ring camp, and the Spigen Style Ring 2 is the most functional and beautiful ring-style grip we've ever seen, earning an AC Choice Award in its full review. The squared-off base of the POP's ring offers better stability for kickstand use — especially portrait kickstand use, an area where most phone grips struggle or outright fail.

Source: Ara Wagoner / Android Central

Meanwhile, the popping up and down of a PopGrip's two-level accordion is as simple as it is addictive. Many users can be seen popping their PopGrips when they're bored or anxious — I certainly know I do. The new PopGrips are swappable thanks to a simple twist-locking mechanism for the new PopTops, which can be bought separately or with a base as a complete PopGrip. The ability to remove the PopTop also helps thin the PopGrip base down so that it's more compatible with wireless chargers, though the thickness of your case still plays a factor in how effective it is.

If you still need a little more help picking one over the other, the complaints against each model can help you narrow it down. The Spigen Style Ring POP's metal grips prohibit wireless charging. Its metal ring is easier to wrap a single finger around — you can even wear your phone like a super-sized bling ring — but some users feel the metal ring is harder on their fingers over time than the soft plastic of the PopGrip accordion. The metal hinge and bearing can also wear out more quickly than the PopGrip's pop-up, pop-down, pop-up, pop-down, accordion.

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Speaking of, the PopGrip's namesake popping makes it a better fidget toy than kickstand, which only works in landscape and only at one angle. PopSockets can come in just about every style and color under the sun, but that also means that unlike the Style Ring POP's $15 "buy one, you're done," PopSockets many styles and designs can turn into a Pokémon-style "gotta catch 'em all" addiction. There are many people who collect PopSockets, and the new swappable PopGrips and PopTops only make buying multiple styles easier, as you don't have to pull the adhesive base off to swap between them anymore. I already have four PopTops — don't judge me! — and I've found myself looking for more twice this week alone.