The Nintendo Switch isn’t unlike a NASA spacecraft, in that nearly every part of it has been specially designed to pull double or even triple duty. The system’s modular design means that it has to function as a traditional home console, a portable system, and stand-alone tablet with wireless controllers. Getting a piece of hardware to do that much while also making it easy to use and understand would be an engineering miracle, and although Nintendo has come close in some regards, it has fallen well short in others. Overall, the Switch is an attractive and powerful but oversized portable gaming system that struggles to be a convincing or reliable home console.
Keep in mind that this review is still tentative, as we haven’t yet had the opportunity to test the Switch’s online capabilities, the eShop store, or a wide variety of games that use the individual Joy-Con as stand-alone controllers. Those functions and others (such as SD card compatibility) won’t be enabled until the launch-day patch, which we’re expecting to see either late Thursday or early Friday. We plan to have this review finalized in the following days.
The first thing that struck me about the Switch is the overall quality of its look and feel. Regardless of whether you go for the neon blue and orange set or the more subtle gray pair, the handsome matte finish of the two included Joy-Con feels almost silken, begging to be touched. The console itself – the central tablet piece – is almost alarmingly small and thin when placed next to the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or even the Wii U, but its mostly metal and glass construction gives it a sturdy, substantial heft. At the same time, it’s still under a pound with both Joy-Con attached, making it comfortable to hold for long periods. (See the full dimensions and weight breakdown in our Nintendo Switch Wiki.) Even small details like the way the Joy-Con snap into place on the included Joy-Con Grip to form something resembling a conventional controller convey a premium feeling – the kind of gadget lust that has eluded Nintendo for generations now.
The Switch’s dock and the Joy-Con Grip are two simple pieces of plastic that allow this handheld to dress up like a home console. The dock itself is as barebones as can be; it’s essentially just a combination HDMI and USB passthrough/charging station. It definitely works as advertised: within a couple of seconds of dropping the tablet onto the dock, the picture transfers right over to the TV, and after detaching the Joy-Con (or using a separately purchased Pro Controller) you’re ready to play. The transition back to handheld mode is just as seamless, which is definitely impressive. Even the time from startup to actually launching and playing a game is surprisingly short, and resuming from sleep is nearly instantaneous.
The Grip completes the Switch’s console transformation, housing the left and right Joy-Con to form what feels like the most traditional controller Nintendo has made since the Super Nintendo. This Voltron-esque configuration won’t be beating Sony’s Dual Shock 4 any time soon, but it’s far more comfortable and functional than I imagined it would be from just looking at it. The smallish face buttons are sufficiently clicky and easy to hit, but the lack of a traditional D-pad or full-sized analog triggers will put it at a disadvantage for certain types of games. The Minus button (think Select or Back) is very oddly placed, though: it’s so small and so close to the left analog stick that I can barely hit the button without nudging the stick. Speaking of the analog sticks, they work well enough, but are notably limited in range of motion compared to competitors’ controllers. It’s easy enough to adjust to these tiny quirks, but even once I did, the Joy-Con never felt quite like home the way a great controller should. The other notable limitation of the Grip is that there’s no way to charge the Joy-Con while they’re attached – if their charge runs out (after what Nintendo claims is 20 hours, but we’ve yet to successfully run them down) you must re-attach them to the tablet to charge them. Alternatively, you can buy the $30 Joy-Con Charging Grip.
Though Nintendo has not publicly disclosed exactly what type of display it is, the Switch’s 6.2-inch multi-touch 720p screen is a beauty. Color production is vibrant, and it’s bright enough to be played in fairly direct sunlight. Its generous viewing angles are a huge boon too, with a sweet spot large enough to make keeping an ideal picture easy. And even if you stray out of it, the picture remains visible in a roughly 120-degree arc. Its touch functionality is leaps and bounds beyond the Wii U’s too, making it feel in line with the kinds of touch interfaces we’ve all grown accustomed to interacting with on iPads and Android tablets. There are areas where I could tell Nintendo had to make compromises to hit that $299.99 price tag, but the screen wasn’t one of them.
Apparently, the left Joy-Con is an area where Nintendo could’ve spent a little more. I’m not the only person experiencing de-syncs with it relatively often when playing with the Joy-Con detached or in the Joy-Con Grip, leaving inputs temporarily unread until it reconnects a few seconds later. I’ve seen it happen occasionally with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Link died more than a few senseless deaths this way – but more often when playing 1-2-Switch, which has several mini-games that require you to cover most of the Joy-Con with you hand, potentially interfering with its signal.
I even had this problem playing from the Joy-Con Grip a mere 10 feet away from the Switch console, forcing me to scooch up further on my bed in order to maintain a reliable connection. Distance appears to be a factor. I didn’t have any problems when I played the system in handheld mode with the Joy-Con docked directly to the hardware, though. In fact, for a variety of reasons, this became my preferred way to play.
I’m not the only person experiencing Joy-Con de-syncs relatively often.
At the time of this writing, Nintendo has not officially confirmed the exact specifications of the Nvidia Tegra-based chipset that powers the Switch. That said, it’s fairly clear that the Switch is almost as far behind the power curve of its competitors as the original Wii was when it first came out. For example, Breath of the Wild, which was developed simultaneously on the Wii U, seldom quite makes it all the way to 30 frames per second in TV mode, and it even dips far south of that when lots of particles or physics objects are on screen at once. That it suffers from these performance issues despite a lack of anti-aliasing does not bode well for the system’s long-term capabilities – or its prospects for landing ports of big-budget AAA games.
The limitations of the cartridge-based media may be compounding this issue. Even the massive, sprawling world of Breath of the Wild is housed in a tiny 13.4GB file, and on a big, 1080p screen, it becomes fairly obvious that many of the textures have been heavily compressed. We can’t be certain if that’s a consequence of larger game cards being more expensive for Nintendo to manufacture or of limited video RAM on the Switch, but regardless of the cause the symptoms are noticeable. The art style hides it well in Zelda’s case, but this may be a concern going forward, especially for potential multi-platform ports.
However, these issues are soothed quite a bit by playing in handheld mode. For Breath of the Wild, the Switch renders in 720p in handheld mode instead of TV mode’s 900p, so framerates were more consistent (though some dips still occurred when there were a lot of particles and physics objects on screen). The compressed textures and lack of anti-aliasing were also far less impactful on the smaller screen, and combined with the lack of Joy-Con syncing problems, this made handheld mode my go-to when I wanted the best possible overall experience.
Even then though, there are compromises that caused problems when I tried to treat the Switch as a traditional handheld. With both Joy-Con docked on the sides the Switch is far too large to fit into even the deepest of pockets, which keeps it from feeling truly portable in the way the 3DS, the DS, or even the original GameBoy are. And despite its bulk and corresponding battery size, it consumes power at an alarming rate, to the point where you can only play Zelda on the go for a couple of hours at a time unless you’re within a foot or two of a power outlet (or have another large external USB battery supply you can tote with you). I was able to squeeze closer to three hours out of it by turning down the screen brightness, but that won’t suffice on long drives or flights. (Nintendo claims around six hours of battery life on less graphically intensive games, but we don’t have many of those to test on yet.) At very least, it charges quickly, reaching 85% from being totally depleted in under two hours during one test.
Even if the Switch’s questionable internals and control issues don’t dissuade you from using it like a gaming console, it suffers numerous other issues and inconveniences when it’s hooked up to your TV. The most glaring is that there is no way to lay the system on its side while docked, which is particularly irritating given that the game card slot, headphone jack, headphone volume controls, and power button are all along the top of the system. If you, like many people, keep your consoles in an entertainment system of some kind with shelves, there simply isn’t a convenient way to get to any of this stuff.
It’s trying to be so many things at once that it can’t pull any of them off perfectly.
Sadly, this is far from the only practical inconvenience I ran into. If you wanted to opt for some premium wireless headphones, you can’t because there is no optical port on the Switch. There’s no LAN port either, which forces you to use wireless internet connections over 802.11ac unless you buy a USB LAN adapter. And though the dock has three standard USB ports on it where you can plug in that adapter and other accessories, the Switch itself docks and charges through a USB-C port at the bottom of the tablet, which requires a different cable.
Because that USB-C port is on the bottom of the tablet, there’s an odd conflict: you cannot charge the Switch if you’ve propped it up with its built-in (and rather flimsy) kickstand as a shared screen for multiplayer games like Super Bomberman R, where up to four people can play with one Joy-Con a piece. It’s not a massive deal, but it highlights the push and pull that typifies the system: it’s trying to be so many things at once that it can’t pull any of them off perfectly.
Quite possibly the largest issue is the woeful lack of on-board storage. With only 32GB, seven of which are permanently used by the operating system, there’s no way you’ll be able to go digital with your library unless you buy a hefty SD card (Nintendo says cards up to 2TB will be supported, but that functionality is not yet enabled). Given that Dragon Quest Heroes is the same size as the Switch’s entire internal storage, it’s surprising that Nintendo didn’t at least offer an option for a system with a more respectable storage capacity.
As for the UI, it’s clean and snappy, but not in any way a standout. Unfortunately, as of right now, there isn’t any additional functionality in terms of video streaming, internet browsing, or other services. This will almost certainly change in the future, but until that happens the Switch can’t fill the same all-around home entertainment role its competitors play so well.
It can be easy to overlook this stuff when you’re enjoying Zelda on your own personal screen in the car or in bed.
All of these little omissions and issues make the Switch feel less than ideal no matter which way you use it. But Joy-Con sync problems aside (which can hopefully be addressed with a software update) it can be easy to overlook this stuff when you’re enjoying Zelda on your own personal screen in the car, or in bed while someone else uses the TV.
As a handheld, the Switch is a powerful piece of hardware with a gorgeous screen, but it's too large and power hungry to feel like you can really take it anywhere. As a console, it’s underpowered, unreliable, and lacking basic features and conveniences that all of its competitors offer. It’s nicely built and cleverly designed to be used in a variety of ways, but the bottom line is that the Switch doesn’t do any one of the many things it can do without some sort of significant compromise. Our testing will continue for the next few days as we try out the online features and other functions enabled by the day-one patch, but if I had to score it now I’d give it a 6.7.
Vincent Ingenito is IGN's foremost fighting game nerd. Follow him on Twitter and help him sort out his Street Fighter 5 character crisis.
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