It's rare to see Nintendo's hardware leapfrog the software side of things like it has with the Switch 2. It's not a good look for a brand-new console, even if we are technically impressed by its capabilities. While spectacularly fun, Mario Kart World is not everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay. Unfortunately, if you're one of those, you're effectively waiting for Nintendo's software to play catch-up. Give it a few months, and we might be singing a different tune.
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Design
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Display
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Performance
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Battery
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Games
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Features
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Value
Now that we’ve spent roughly two weeks in the company of the Nintendo Switch 2, we have some thoughts. One of those is ‘When can we get back to playing The Wind Waker?’ and another is ‘Why do squids look like that?’ We don’t have those answers as we’ve spent so much of our energy focusing on the Nintendo Switch 2 — specifically Mario Kart World — the only ‘proper’ title the console has. Nobody’s lookin’ at you, Welcome Tour.
Like a devious parent, we’re gonna rip the loose tooth out quickly. Two more weeks with the Switch 2 weren’t enough to change our minds that it is not an essential purchase, at least not yet. Nintendo bravely only put out one new-gen title, leaving most of the grunt work to old, refreshed games, some of which you have to pay for to experience any change. Give Nintendo time to cook on the software front, though…
Still a big slab of glass and plastic (and we love it)
What immediately struck us was just how large the Switch 2 is. It’s one thing to read about the 7.9in display, and another thing entirely to see and feel it in your grasp. Despite the generous upgrade, the Switch 2 manages to be even more portable than most of its siblings (barring the Switch Lite), with the biggest changes including the new metallic kickstand and mightily satisfying magnetic Joy-Cons that snap into place.
These replace the old method, which involved sliding the Joy-Cons onto a rail that was similarly revolutionary back in 2017. Don’t be surprised if every Tom, Dick, and Harry begins implementing magnets into their gaming PC handhelds, even if it does come at a cost of no Hall effect sticks. The lack of Hall effect adoption was disappointing, but less so once we saw that Ninty will replace Joy-Cons should they start drifting (for free).
The same goes for whipping out Mario Kart World in handheld mode. Nintendo’s decision to make the Switch 2 a bigger slab of glass and plastic will surely upset some, but we had no issues gaming in handheld mode for hours at a time. Would we like some grip on the back? Sure. But, as is Nintendo’s usual schtick, it’s left that job up to third-party providers, and companies like dbrand have got you more than covered in that department.
Surprisingly, the Switch 2 never felt more cumbersome than the rest of the Switch family, despite the substantial weight gain. The 520g weight in handheld mode (compared to the OLED’s 320g) actually felt more evenly distributed and generally more comfortable, allowing for a more solid grip on those Joy-Cons.
We were slightly disheartened by the lack of colour on the Switch 2 (we’re sure that’ll be remedied sooner rather than later), but Nintendo more than makes up for it by chucking us another USB-C port on the device’s top to enable simultaneous handheld gameplay and charging. It joins the rather scarce line-up we saw on the last console: power and volume buttons, a 3.5mm audio jack, and the old USB-C.
Docked in
Nintendo’s made some changes to the dock, too, though it’s still a plastic USB-C affair like the first. It’s more rounded than its predecessor, and ditches the folding cover like its OLED brethren, making it easier to access the rear ports – a single Ethernet, USB-C, and HDMI. Notice the vents? That’s to give the Switch 2’s new cooling system room to breathe.
The Switch 2 retains the slim form factor of the original (though it’s closer to the OLED), which makes us wonder why Nintendo felt it was right to make the Switch 2’s seat in the dock that little bit wider. While not a train smash, even the slightest touch while docked is enough to see the console squirm around. We doubt it’s causing damage, but we can’t deny it didn’t hurt us seeing the wobble.
Get a grip, Nintendo
A larger screen means larger Joy-Cons, even if you aren’t thrilled about Nintendo sticking with the same basic shape here. For us, the larger size makes up for what is essentially a redo on the hardware front. It somewhat overshadows the other, smaller improvements Nintendo has made — other than their magnetism.
Up against the most recent Switch OLED, the Joy-Con 2’s front-facing buttons and R&L triggers feel identical to their older siblings’. That may be more to do with general wear and tear on our end than anything Nintendo has done, but we can’t say the same for the Switch 2’s ZR, ZL, and analogue sticks, which feel vastly superior to the OLED’s, with smoother movements and a more tactile response from the triggers.
Nintendo has never been afraid of gimmicks, and the proof is in the mouse-control pudding. Not once did the idea of turning our Joy-Cons into a mouse appeal to us, and we liked it even less after trying it. It’ll do the job well enough — with the help of some extra attachments for each Joy-Con out of the box. No, our problem lies with its generally uncomfortable feeling. A regular wired mouse, however, works just fine.
Though the Joy-Con 2s are just a copy-paste job of the first, Nintendo has added a new “C” button that’ll immediately call up ‘GameChat’ — Nintendo’s new Discord-like chatroom feature. While not overly egregious, it’s a button that will effectively stop working in March 2026, when Nintendo starts charging to use GameChat. We can’t say we’re thrilled about paywalling a physical button, but hey, this is Nintendo we’re talking about.
We should note that your old Switch 1 hardware is more than compatible with the Switch 2, and we had plenty of fun putting our trusty Pro Controller to good use. Anything to avoid that R2,300 price for a new one, anyway.
Only Nintendo could make backwards-compatible hardware an issue for the user. Re-using old controllers with the Switch 2 is a big win, though it comes at the cost of not being able to wake the console without a physical button press. We’re hoping this will be “fixed” in a future update, though we’re worried this is meant to be more of a feature than an actual bug.
OLED who?
Fortunately, Nintendo didn’t just stop at making the screen larger. It’s no OLED, but the Switch 2 rocks a 7.9in 1,920 x 1,080 LCD that proved plenty bright for us indoors, thanks to the HDR10 support. VRR is also here, pairing wonderfully with the 120Hz refresh rate. Games like Tears of the Kingdom quickly became a handheld favourite, something we couldn’t ever say for the last Switch, even with that gorgeous OLED display.
We had no issues with the Switch 2 hitting the promised frame rate across games like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, though Mario Kart World, with its colourful tracks, shines particularly bright and really pops in handheld mode. Gameplay is crisp, and the bezels, while noticeable, quickly fade into the background.
But can it run the Lost Woods?
The Switch 2’s performance is nearly everything we wanted it to be. Its internals deliver smooth gameplay across next-gen titles (assuming you can cut them a bit of slack). Nintendo has never been one to push the pack forward with pure performance, preferring to let the software speak for itself. All we need now is… the software.
Most folks will opt to stick their Switch 2 into the dock and hook it up to a big screen, and we can confirm this is definitely the way to go if you’re playing with home court advantage. You’ll get an upscaled 4K resolution (from a native 1440p), solid 60fps gameplay, and 120Hz refresh rate if you don’t mind dropping the resolution. It manages the feat with a custom Nvidia chipset tucked inside, though Nintendo’s playing coy about any specifics.
Easily the most frustrating quirk when playing games docked is the lack of any VRR support. The native display handles it well, but we’d have loved to see it make the jump through the USB-C dock. It’s not entirely clear why VRR was left out in the cold, but we’re hopeful it’s something Nintendo can overcome in a future update, even if the fix is reserved for a future version of the console.
It’s bolstered by 12GB of LPDDR5X physical memory, though Nintendo cordons off 3GB for general use, according to the folks at Digital Foundry, tripling that of the original Switch. 256GB of storage is also a boon, though with games tending to be much larger this generation, a microSD Express card is almost a necessity. So far, doubling the storage to 512GB has proved effective, but it won’t remain that way forever.
It can’t square up against the PS5 Pro (or even the base PS5, for that matter), coming closer to a PlayStation 4 Pro in terms of raw performance, with the added benefit of DLSS. Its true power, of course, is its ability to run even the most hectic games on the go. We’ve yet to try out anything too taxing like Cyberpunk 2077 for ourselves, but we can confidently say that Hogwarts Legacy, which was laughably sub-par on Nintendo’s last console, performs admirably, with the biggest change being seamless load times and a steady FPS.
Not that Tears of the Kingdom or Breath of the Wild were ever much of an issue for the first Switch with Nintendo’s rigorous optimisations in place, aside from a choppy and occasionally inconsistent fps that we can thankfully say the Switch 2 puts to bed. We immediately headed for the infamous Korok Forest to put those 60fps dreams to the real test, and walked away from the experience impressed.
Both titles’ cartoony cel-shading art style doesn’t benefit much from the internal upgrade, though things like sharper blades of grass (seriously) and the surrounding world feel more crisp and genuinely alive. It wasn’t perfect, however. During our time with Tears, we noticed the very occasional bouts of blurriness — usually when transitioning back to gameplay — before something kicked in internally and brought back the sharp, clean look.
It’s certainly not a dealbreaker, and was something we had to look for after we first spotted it, and will likely go unnoticed by many. We’re hoping it’s something Nintendo can patch out with time. But it begs the question: is it worth the R180 upgrade price? Yes – it’s easily the definitive way to play some of the all-time Zelda greats. But is it worth picking up an all-new console for a game you’ve already played? Certainly not.
Big juice freak
This was a bit we skipped over entirely in our first impressions, simply because we hadn’t spent enough time with the console yet. Now that we’ve got many, many hours under our belt, we can confidently say that the 5,220mAh battery is easily the Switch 2’s biggest flaw. That’s not to say it’s bad. Others have cited the roughly two-hour battery life when playing Mario Kart World as a major blemish, while we see it as a crowning achievement.
When you get a proper look at MKW, you’ll get an idea why. We seldom played Mario Kart without the max brightness and a Bluetooth controller, which, in our eyes, makes the 120-minute runtime all the more impressive. When we slowed things down with the ol’ GameCube Classics, we stretched that up to five hours plus before the console started sending us warnings.
Could we do with some extra juice? Sure, and we expect we will by the time Nintendo is ready with an OLED refresh in the next two or three years. But what we’ve got now for a handheld console sporting decent internals is more than okay by us. Less impressive was the long charge time, requiring at least three to four hours to charge to full, though we limited this to around 90% to preserve battery longevity.
More of the same
Where the Switch 2 suffers most from being a ‘Proper Switch Pro’ is a lack of any innovation in the basic OS. Aside from some simple icon changes and a couple of new noises here and there, everything looks and feels like a regular old Switch, with the only exception being the new and improved eShop. It’s blisteringly quick now that it’s a native app, and not a web browser, essentially calling up the store’s web page for every use.
It’s just too bad that the eShop is fairly barren at the time of writing. This isn’t a new complaint. Surprisingly, only a couple of weeks later, our minds still haven’t changed. Mario Kart World is a whole lot of fun, and the backwards compatibility improvements shed some bright light on the Switch’s best, but underperforming titles. Still, we’re simply astounded Nintendo didn’t have anything more than a cartoon racer ready to go at launch.
Nintendo Switch 2 verdict
The Nintendo Switch 2 is nearly everything we’d hoped it would be. It retains the lovable charm of the first, refining the internals with some functionally robust hardware, a larger and brighter display, and it’s as portable as ever. Nintendo’s got something special on its hands, just like we (and everybody else) knew it would. It’s not without faults, like the middling battery and missing VRR in docked mode, but its biggest sin is one we’ve not mentioned yet.
That would be the R12,500 price, firmly placing it above the PlayStation 5. You could argue that this is a good deal considering the PS5’s five-year age gap, but we wouldn’t. The Switch 2, while bearing excellent hardware for Nintendo, still loses out to Sony’s efforts. While we reckon it’s a reasonable price to pay as a die-hard Mario Kart fan, anyone looking for a more casual Nintendo experience should do so if it ever goes on special or when Nintendo puts out software that might interest them. A new Legend of Zelda, perhaps?
