I tried this sketchy Switch 2 dock so you don’t have to

My favorite thing about handheld consoles is their versatility. If I want to play my Switch 2, ROG Ally X, or Steam Deck OLED in my living room on my TV, I just slide the portable into Nintendo’s official dock or hook it up to my Jsaux 6-in-1 Multifunctional Docking Station, depending on what device it is. Then, if I want to take the handheld on the go, I just pop it out and game away wherever I want. However, lately, I’ve changed things up a bit and I’ve been doing a lot of my Switch 2 gaming in my basement office on my computer monitor while my son is sleeping in the evening.

Sure, I could move the Switch 2’s official dock downstairs, but that would involve unplugging the dock, moving it, and then hooking it up again. That creates a lot of noise and could potentially wake the sleeping baby up. My gaming time is limited these days, so making things as plug-and-play as possible is essential. So, against my better judgment, I recently dove into the wild world of third-party Switch 2 docks, and to my surprise, I seem to have found one that actually works as long as you’re willing to put in a bit of extra work.

Say hello to Jemdo’s Switch 2 HDMI Cable Dock

It’s colorful and kind of weird, but works surprisingly well

Back in the OG Switch era, it was commonly believed that third-party docks could potentially brick your Switch or, at the very least, break the USB-C port in some way, preventing you from docking and charging the handheld. When I discovered this, I stopped using the Nyko dock I purchased, and I didn’t delve back into the world of third-party docks until Genki’s supposedly safe Covert Dock released a few years later. It’s all very technical, but the problem is reportedly tied to dock voltage issues, third-party dock PD controllers, and some not very third-party friendly encryption on Nintendo’s end.

There’s a possibility that third-party Switch 2 docks could suffer from the same problems as the original Switch, but it’s still unclear right now. What we do know for sure is Nintendo has intentionally broken the Switch 2’s generic USB-C dock compatibility with a dedicated encryption chip in its handheld.

After doing a bit of research on Switch 2 docks, there seem to be a few out there that claim to have already cracked Nintendo’s encryption code, despite the fact that the handheld only released a few months ago. I ultimately landed on Jemdo’s Switch 2 HDMI Cable Dock because it’s relatively affordable and, compared to Nintendo’s official Switch 2 dock, it’s pretty sleek — it’s basically just an HDMI-to-USB-C cable. I’ve also never seen a USB-C cable that’s orange and blue before, so it caught my eye.

There seem to be a few versions of the colorful cable available, including a black one, the colored iteration I bought, and a dock-like dongle, but they all seem to support 144Hz and HDMI 2.1 (in Canada, I had to select the $40 144Hz/HDMI 2.1 version specifically in the Amazon listing). Making the situation even more confusing, the dock is sold on Amazon under several different brand names that I’ve never heard of before, including this one called Yigorn (some listings often also sell a 60Hz/4K version, so make sure you select the correct one).

Be prepared to download a very shady firmware file

The process is kinda of terrifying, but it works

With my research out of the way, I placed my order and Jemdo’s Dock arrived a few days later, but to my surprise, it didn’t include a power brick. To solve this issue, I dug up an older 60W iPad charger I had lying around and plugged it into the colorful Jemdo Dock when I set it up in my office (this is the same wattage as the official dock). Since I run most of the consoles in my office through an HDMI switcher, I slid the HDMI end of the Jemdo Dock into the box, the USB-C side into the Switch 2, and plugged in the iPad charger. To my surprise, it actually worked immediately, displaying Donkey Kong Bananza in all its glory on my monitor, but something felt slightly off. Colors seemed a little washed out, particularly with games that support HDR like Mario Kart World.

This is where things get a bit wild, so bear with me. I saw comments on Amazon and Reddit indicating that there’s a firmware update for the Jemdo Dock that fixes its HDR issues, but I wasn’t able to find a link to it anywhere. After a quick Google search, I stumbled across this video from a relatively small YouTube channel called Glitched. Their video is focused on a cable that looks identical to the Jemdo Dock, but with Cabletime branding. I assumed that this was just another company branding and selling the same Switch 2 dock given they encountered the same issue. To solve the problem, Glitched downloaded firmware for an 8K version of yet another different brand of cable from another company, and to their surprise, it actually worked on the Cabletime version.

At this point, I figured I didn’t have much to lose, so I went ahead and followed the link in Glitched’s bio and downloaded a rather terrifying-looking Chinese .exe file from a random Google Drive. The program opened, and a red line appeared on my screen that turned green after a few seconds. There’s no way this could work, right? The entire situation is just too weird. Yet again, to my utter surprise, HDR now appears on my display when I’m using the Jemdo dock with the Switch 2, though the handheld appears to have trouble switching out of HDR when returning to the menu, but this could just be an issue with my LG Ultragear 27GP950-B 4K monitor.

And after all that, I now have a working third-party Switch 2 dock that seems to run nearly as well as Nintendo’s official dock. It gets a little hot after a few hours of use, but that’s the only issue I’ve run into in the past few days. Will it break my Switch 2 at some point over the next few weeks? I don’t know, but I definitely hope not.