Nintendo Switch 2 Reviews Are In And The Verdicts Might Surprise You
For most users, especially those not acquainted with the Steam Deck or other PC-based handhelds, the most immediate difference between the original Switch and the Switch 2 is going to be the physical size. The Switch 2 has a larger 8" screen that necessitates a larger overall body, putting it in roughly the same size class as the Nintendo Wii U gamepad—or the Steam Deck, albeit that it is quite a bit slimmer than the Steam Deck.
Ars Technica's Kyle Orland says "there's something about seeing the hardware next to an original Game Boy or even a PlayStation Portable that really highlights how far handheld gaming hardware design has come in the last few decades." He produced the adorable photos above, which illustrate what he was saying. There are more comparisons in his early review, which include the original Switch, the Wii U Gamepad, a Steam Deck, a Legion Go S, and even a Nintendo Virtual Boy for some reason.
Switch 2 Screen And Display Output
It's not all good news, though. While many reviewers gave positive impressions of the screen early on, more technically-minded outlets were unimpressed. Despite claiming HDR support, many reviewers have found that the screen's brightness tops out just over 400 nits, barely qualifying for the lowest level of VESA DisplayHDR on that metric alone. The difference between HDR and SDR mode on the internal screen is extremely minimal; most users should probably just leave HDR turned off in handheld mode to avoid the small performance and battery life hit it requires.
Also, while the previous-generation Switch came in an OLED model, there's no such option for the Switch 2. The integrated screen is an LCD, and not a particularly low-persistence one. Digital Foundry tested the screen and found that it actually had worse image persistence than even the 2017-model Nintendo Switch. This isn't great for fast action games or especially, 2D side-scrolling titles; that outlet's John Linneman said he prefers to play some games of that style on his Switch OLED because they simply look much cleaner and have less motion blur on that system's display thanks to rapid OLED response times.
Furthermore, there's considerable weirdness when connecting a Switch 2 to a TV and using anything other than a basic display mode, like a 120 Hz refresh rate, Ultra HD resolution, or HDR output. The Switch 2 natively outputs DisplayPort video through its USB Type-C ports, but DisplayPort and HDMI are not at all compatible protocols; converting one to the other is not remotely straightforward. As a result, certain things don't work that well—for example, the Switch 2 does not support variable refresh rate (VRR) operation on an external display at all.
It may be possible to work around this with a USB-C to DisplayPort cable and a native DisplayPort input, but we haven't seen anyone test this yet. It's probably not worthwhile, because apparently the even VRR support on the internal display is somewhat questionable anyway. Digital Foundry once again reports that while VRR is easy to confirm as functional using the $10 Switch 2 Welcome Tour app (that includes a dedicated demo for it), it's hard to find cases where it actually work well in games. It seems like VRR might work well above 40 FPS, but it's up to game developers to implement Low Framerate Compensation.
HDR support can be awkward, too, as revealed in HDTVTest's video "I Measured Nintendo Switch 2's HDR Settings - No Wonder Most Games Look Awful. Here's The Fix." We're not going to go over his entire findings here—instead, you should watch the video if you have an HDR TV that you intend to use the Switch 2 with. The gist is essentially that Nintendo's HDR settings are both clumsy and confusing. Mr. Teoh's video explains succinctly what the problems are and how to actually get a good HDR picture out of your Switch 2; if that's something important to you, you'll definitely want to check it out.
Nintendo Switch 2 Controls And Input Options
Obviously, when playing in handheld mode, you'll use Nintendo's Joy-Con 2s to play. The updated Joy-Cons are larger to accommodate the larger body of the Switch 2, but they're also a bit bulkier and more robust to improve comfort. Many people have commented on the fact that there's a bit of slop in the interface between the Joy-Cons and the Switch 2. The new mechanism uses magnets, and while it's better than the previous rail-based system in many ways, it's still not flawless. The Joy-Con 2s return all of the same controls as the originals, along with the addition of the C button for the GameChat feature and the presence of optical sensors on the inside edge, allowing them to be used like mice.
Opinions vary widely on the utility of the mouse control feature. Some people, like TechRadar's Rhys Wood, say that it works very well on a variety of surfaces and is brilliant to use. Others, like Eurogamer's Christian Donlan, were less enthusiastic, calling it "weird and undercooked." Whatever they seem to think about how well it works, most people seem to agree that actually using the Joy-Cons in mouse mode is a little awkward and un-ergonomic. Fortunately, you can actually just plug in a USB mouse to the system and use that, if you have a handy Type-C mouse, adapter, or dock.
Besides the included Joy-Cons, you can also play games on a Nintendo Switch Pro controller. That can be the original ones which you still have from your first-gen Switch, or the new controller, which adds the C button for GameChat as well as two configurable paddles on the back. Actually, the whole controller is configurable using a menu in the Accessibility portion of the system settings. You can rebind the controller on a per-game basis, which is frankly fantastic for games without proper rebinding. Jump goes on the bottom button, developers—which is "B" on the Nintendo platforms, by the way.
In summary, while the Joy-Cons are convenient, and the larger size of the Switch 2's Joy-Cons is a huge bonus, they're still not particularly ergonomic, and you're probably going to suffer hand cramps after way too little play time. It's to the point that Tom's Guide calls the new Pro controller is "a must-have", while also pointing out that the back paddles are a remarkably salient addition thanks to the ease of configuration.
Nintendo Switch 2 Online Play And Battery Life Experience
On the topic of the GameChat feature, PC Mag points out that you don't have to buy Nintendo's camera—although that publication also remarks that the official camera is more suitable for couch use than most USB-C cameras, which are intended for PC-style videoconferencing and feature a narrow field of view. Eurogamer praised GameChat effusively, saying that it works very naturally and makes a great place to catch up with friends and family—although reviewer Christian Donlan also pointed out the fact that GameChat is only free until the end of March 2026, which he described as "a bit naff and money-grabbing."
Of course, playing premium online games on a Nintendo Switch 2 does require the Switch Online subscription. Most reviewers have an 'it is what it is' stance toward this requirement, but we feel it's worth noting that this requirement doesn't exist on a Steam Deck, ROG Ally X, or Ayaneo Flip 1S. Then again, those machines also won't play Mario Kart World, so there's that.
In further comparisons to those systems, the Switch 2's battery life in handheld mode seems to bottom out around 2 hours in a game like Cyberpunk 2077, while it tops out around four to five, depending on what you're playing. That's a notable downgrade from the Switch OLED and Switch Lite, which may make it seem poor if you're used to those. It's really not much worse than the original 2017 Switch model, though, and it's also quite similar to the higher-end PC-based handhelds, like the ROG Ally X.
The key difference is that those PC-based machines pack in massive 80-Whr batteries to achieve that kind of longevity, while the Switch 2's battery is just under 20 Watt-hours. It's a phenomenally efficient machine, as Digital Foundry proves out by running the same Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark on the Switch 2, docked in Performance mode, and also the PlayStation 5 Slim. The PS5 Slim draws fully ten times as much power as the Switch 2 rendering the same scene.
There are a few big conclusions from this, and one of them is indeed that the Switch 2 is highly efficient. Another key takeaway, though, is that game hardware demands scale quadratically with multiple factors like resolution, frame rate, and overall workload (level of detail, draw distance, number of entities, and so on.) This is why you can play the latest demanding games like Doom: The Dark Ages on integrated graphics, and it's why Cyberpunk 2077 can run on the Switch 2 at all.
Switch 2 Performance And Backward Compatibility
Well, it's that, and also a healthy dose of DLSS upscaling. This is the first gaming handheld to feature graphics powered by NVIDIA RTX, and that means it's the first gaming handheld to offer NVIDIA's AI-powered upscaling solution. The Switch 2 makes use of what appears to be a customized version of NVIDIA DLSS for upscaling in many of it games, and the results range from decent (Fast Fusion) to phenomenal (Cyberpunk 2077). DLSS uspcaling is how some Switch 2 games are able to offer 4K-resolution output, because the tiny integrated GPU inside absolutely doesn't have the fill rate or bandwidth for gaming at 8.3 megapixels.
After all, this is still tablet hardware we're talking about. The T239 chip inside the Switch 2 is incredibly potent for what it is, but what it is is a highly-integrated SoC with a very small Ampere GPU and a handful of Arm processor cores onboard. It's still a titanic upgrade from the Switch 1, featuring more and faster CPU cores, a radically more powerful GPU, triple the RAM and double the bus width, eight times as much storage, and more. It's still just a 20-watt tablet processor at heart, though; the Ryzen Z1 Extreme in the Lenovo Legion Go dunks on it, to say nothing of the upcoming Ryzen Z2 Extreme.
All that power doesn't go to waste; the Switch 2 can leverage its spec upgrades on games both old and new. Indeed, many reviewers have reported that the Switch 2's backward compatibility feature is the best that Nintendo has ever done in this regard. It's not quite on the level of the Xbox Series consoles (where games get upgrades from system-level patches), but it's very close. The vast majority of Switch 1 games run just fine on Switch 2, and without any updates at all, can enjoy higher frame rates from the jump. They also can often feature improved resolution on games that made use of dynamic resolution.
When Nintendo released the list of Switch 1 games with compatibility problems, many people were afraid that the backward compatibility wouldn't be great. What's neat, though, is that even games on the list will attempt to run; they're not blacklisted from launching entirely like with the PlayStation platforms. This is neat because they may simply have issues that only affect one part of the experience, like with Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection, which PC Mag reports as broken in online but working fine in offline play. Nintendo's working hard at fixing these problems, too; games like Alan Wake, Rocket League, and Wolfenstein II, listed as broken in the initial compatibility list, now work just fine thanks to updates.
There's more on the way, but this is it, for now.
Why the emphasis on backward compatibility? Because you're very likely to be playing a lot of Switch games on the Switch 2, as there simply aren't very many Switch 2 titles yet. Even if we include "Switch 2 Edition" games, there are only six exclusive games for the Switch 2 right now: Mario Kart World, Fast Fusion, the should-have-been-free Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, Konami's Survival Kids, and then the upgrade packs for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
To be clear, there are many other games on Switch 2 already, like the aforementioned ports of Cyberpunk 2077 and Hogwarts Legacy as well as titles like Street Fighter 6, Fortnite, and Sonic X Shadow Generations. If you're not a hardcore gamer and you've missed out on some of these titles on other platforms, the consistent take on these ports from reviewers is that they offer a generally competent, only-slightly-compromised version of the games versus the TV-first home consoles. In other words, you won't be missing out on much if you pick up a promising port on the Nintendo Switch 2, which is good.
Nintendo's Switch 2 Owes A Lot to PC Gaming
Perhaps the most pertinent ponderance from all of this analysis is that the Nintendo Switch 2 is arguably better compared against contemporary portable gaming PCs than against non-portable gaming hardware. You can really see where Nintendo took cues from the PC gaming handheld market when designing the Switch 2. The second USB Type-C port, the magnetic latches on the Joy-Cons, the robust cooling, the 120-Hz VRR screen, and the expanded connectivity all remind of recent PC-based handhelds.At $450, or $500 with a game, it's in generally the same pricing ballpark as the Steam Deck, and not too far off of the ROG Ally, MSI Claw, or Ayaneo Slide—albeit that none of those come with a dock. It has fine features you won't find on the other consoles, like the impressive GameChat function with its NVIDIA RTX-powered denoising and background removal functions. It also has the benefit of DLSS upscaling where no other handheld does. We generally recommend the use of Intel's XeSS on the AMD-powered handhelds, and it's quite competent, but still no match for the latest DLSS models as employed on the Switch 2.
Comparing the Switch 2 against one of these PC-based handhelds essentially comes right down to the old console versus PC comparisons. The Switch 2 does everything you would want a handheld gaming system to do: play games docked or on battery, let you talk to your friends while doing so, and offer a compelling audiovisual experience while doing so. But that's all it does, and so it won't do all the ancillary things that a PC-based handheld could do, like run PC applications of any sort you can imagine: productivity, content creation, or even emulators for other game systems.
Many outlets, including Rolling Stone, describe the Switch 2 as evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. Unlike previous Nintendo consoles, such as the Wii and the original Switch, the new system doesn't really have a whole lot that's truly new to bring to the table—it's mostly just an evolved, refined version of the original Switch. You could argue that this is suggested right from the name, but this does make the purchasing decision a bit more nuanced.
Ultimately the answer of whether or not to buy a Nintendo Switch 2 is probably going to come down to the same thing it always does with Nintendo hardware, which is the company's exclusive games. It's early days, so that list is short right now, but Nintendo has some real powerhouses in the pipeline, like Donkey Kong Bananza, Metroid Prime 4 Beyond, and Pokémon Legends Z-A. If you simply have to play these games—or the pack-in title, Mario Kart World—you simply have to get a Switch 2.
The smart buy might actually be to pick up something else for now, though, and wait for the inevitable Switch 2 OLED model. Most of the disappointments with the extant Switch 2 revolve around its screen, and it is almost a foregone conclusion that Nintendo will be releasing a slightly revised Switch 2 in the future with an OLED inside. That display will assuredly have superior HDR color, drastically reduced response time ghosting, and likely lower power consumption too. Full disclosure: Nintendo has not said a peep about this, and we have no particular knowledge about it. It does fit the pattern, though.
The only question is: can you shove down your fear of missing out that long? The Switch 2 OLED, if it comes, likely won't be before 2027, so you'd have to wait to play The Duskbloods, Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion, Hyrule Warriors: The Imprisoning War, and the new Kirby Air Riders game—never mind all the stuff that's already out.
Reading that, we wouldn't fault you for running down to Walmart to snatch up a Switch 2 system for yourself right now.
