We recently got hold of the Phottix Battery Grip with built-in rechargeable battery to test out on our Canon Rebel XTI. I have to admit… this is a pretty cool item for the price, and its incredibly convenient. If you shoot your Digital Rebel a lot, this is one of those “must have” items, for the price.

First, this product is built for use with the Canon EOS 350D, 400D, XT and XTi cameras. It has built in Lithium polymer batteries, so it is light weight and has no memory effects from partial recharging. It has 3,600mAh of capacity, so it lasts a long time. How long? Well, I really could not get to the end of my first charge before writing this article, so I will just have to say “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos with plenty of screen viewing”.

The packaging claims:

• 5x More Battery Power
• High Capacity 3600mAh
• Up to 2000 Pictures Per Charge
• No need to buy extra batteries

So far, these claims seem to be spot on. I just really don’t have the time to shoot my Rebel XTi for 2,000 photos to find out when this battery will need recharging. There is a button and a small light on the bottom right. Push it and it reads either green for go, or red to tell you that you are down to your last few hundred photos of power left. For me, thats usually plenty of warning, especially if I have the original battery in my bag as a back-up.

The grip comes with a 110v power transformer that is small and easy to stick in my camera bag. This will charge the battery in 4 hours. And I really like the ability to just “plug in” my camera to recharge it, especially since there is no memory issue on the batteries, so you can top it off after a big shooting event. And I really like how much more “substantial” it makes the digital Rebel feel in my hands.

The only wish I could come up with for this product is a vertical shutter button so I could more easily shoot vertical like on my BG-E2 on my 40D. But that would ad to the cost of this product. And with this unit costing around $37 plus shipping from HK Supplies in Hong Kong, its quite the deal. We have bought many items from HK Supplies on Ebay and their service is fantastic. Their products arrive in about a weeks time.

Our product review, scale of 1 to 5… 5 being best.

Want more photos of this grip? Just search for Phottix Grip on ebay.