The Nintendo Switch 2 is finally here, and so far opinions are mixed. I and
several members of the team have had them for about a week now, and it's
clear that Nintendo got a lot right, but it's also clear that there are some skid
marks on the rainbow road of Nintendo's most expensive console ever. First
impressions, at least for me, were extremely positive. The new HDR screen
absolutely dwarfs the original Switch and even the Switch OLED. And the whole
device feels significantly more premium with a much better magnetic detachment
mechanism for the Joy-Cons, soft touch plastics, more tactile buttons, bigger
joysticks, and an ergonomic situation that, okay, is still far from ideal, but
is worlds ahead of the original. DBR, who sponsored this video, has you
covered there, by the way, with their Kill Switch protective ergonomic case
and screen protectors. We'll be showing those in more detail at the end of this
video. But from what I've heard from them, you might not want to wait that
long to get an order in because Switch 2 accessories are moving very quickly at
my hands are very small.com. And I can
see why. The screen on the Switch 2 is not tough, as our friend Zach from
JerryRrier Everything discovered. But to Nintendo's credit, even though they
maintained the same thickness as the original, once you throw on a screen
protector, it seems like they've delivered a pretty rugged, albeit
difficult to repair console here. I just wish I could say the same about the
Joy-Con controllers, which appear to still be susceptible to drifting. More
on that later. First, I want to talk a bit more about the console itself. The
OG Switch was obsolete before it even launched 8 years ago, but still, I'm
really impressed with how much more powerful the new one is. With double the
CPU core count, triple the amount of usable RAM, and 10 times the graphics
processing, assuming none of it is fake frames, we ended up with a generational
performance leap, the likes of which we haven't seen in a very long time. All
those miracle ports that barely clung to
playable frame rates at sub540p resolution run effortlessly here with
some more than doubling their performance while also managing to
appear much sharper because they no longer require dynamic resolution
scaling. And I haven't even talked about the games that got one of Nintendo's
Switch to upgrade patches, which so far seem to look and run great, which does
matter to me. To the utter dismay of all the Zelda fans in my life, I've tried
multiple times to get into either of Link's most recent openw world
adventures, but every time I've abandoned them, feeling like the
experience on the original Switch's hardware was holding it back. I could
have emulated, but as you guys know, it's not my favorite way to experience a
game, especially not for the first time. So, I decided to wait for the better
Nintendo approved way to explore Hyrule. And now that it's here, I am pleased to
report that wow, I'm in. Finally, the
Switch 2 has got me stoked about Nintendo gaming again. You and a lot of
people, like everyone else, we lean on awesome channels like Digital Foundry
and GVG to really get into the fine details of visual upgrades like these.
But to our PC gaming eyes, both from a cross-platform and firstp party
perspective, we feel like Nintendo has struck an outstanding balance with the
Switch 2's performance. both maintaining a power envelope that keeps it handheld
while upgrading the performance to the point where both docked and even on the
smaller handheld screen. It's hard not to see the improvements. Guys, this
ain't no PS5 to PS5 Pro. Oh yeah, I
think that Pixel looks a little better shaded. This is more like going from the
PS3 to the PS4, which coincidentally is
about where I would place the visuals overall, except that thanks to more
modern rendering paradigms like gray trace lighting, not to mention
Nintendo's do more with less visual style, I think it's fair to say that if
Mario Kart World, which I remind you is a launch title and surely hasn't
unlocked its full potential yet, is anything to go by, especially the first
party games are going to end up looking better. And that's not the end of the
good news. The increase in processing power and the faster flash storage, both
in terms of the internal 256 gigs and the expandable micro SD Express slot,
both make noticeable improvements to load times and the UI snappiness, which
is fortunate because the game acquisition experience can be a bit
unoptimized. I immediately bought a year of Nintendo Online Plus expansion pack
so I could get access to the Zelda upgrade packs without an additional fee
and found out that I could still download the game without the upgrade,
but could also download the upgrade without the game. Whoops. And while
we're on the negatives, I got to talk about the joysticks on the Joy-Con.
Obviously, Joy-Cons aren't meant to be the world's best controller. I mean,
these shoulder buttons are what passes for an upgrade. But as much as I'm
willing to accept smaller face buttons, these joysticks kind of suck. And I
think that's partially due to the rubber skirt that's meant to prevent dust and
debris from finding a way into the mechanism. It seems to fold over
occasionally, making them feel kind of off. So, if you're a handheld hero, you
might find yourself eagerly awaiting third party options from the likes of
Hori. However, if you're the type to throw out the kickstand and grab a Pro
Controller, it might not bother you as much. Your old Pro Controller is forward
compatible, which is super nice. But the even better news is that the new Pro
Controller is actually really good. And I found myself enjoying the Switch 2
most from my couch with one of those in my hands. It's the first Nintendo
console that looks great on a modern 4K
HDR display, which makes it all the more frustrating that Nintendo couldn't quite
find the 96 Exit. While the built-in screen supports variable refresh rate,
which reduces tearing artifacts and enhances animation smoothness during
frame rate dips, this feature is not
supported via the DAW, seemingly because HDMI output relies on DisplayPort alt
mode, and NVIDIA G-Sync doesn't play nice with this conversion. It's possible
that Nintendo will address this at some point in the future. They did eventually
add Bluetooth support to the Switch One after all, but I wouldn't expect it to
happen overnight, which is a bit of a downer. The question is though, does
that get in the way of fun? Well, that
depends on your perspective. I mean, it's Nintendo, so obviously there's fun
to be had. I mean, they're one of the only developers that is still pumping
out phenomenal single player and couch co-op game after another across a
multitude of genres and generally without ongoing monetization. So, I
think the small stuff like a sometimes locked refresh rate shouldn't make
anybody that mad at them. But what about
charging $20 more per game? H, that
might do it. Each like for a single game? That's right. If, like my son,
you've somehow missed the online discourse, Nintendo is now asking $80 US
for their marquee titles, which has left a lot of gamers feeling left out. And
that's a perspective that's super easy to understand. Nintendo has been
extremely profitable at just $60 per
game. So, for them to act like, "Oh, wo is me. Inflation has suddenly forced our
hand." I get why that feels like the kind of outofouch move that big
corporations make when they're getting a little too comfy on their throne. Adding
insult to injury, many switch to game boxes are just that, decorative boxes
with either a download code or a hardware license key inside rather than
a full physical copy of the game. Something that harms resale and
therefore affordability for many gamers. It also contributes to the game
preservation issues that purely digital consoles introduce. With that said, I
definitely prefer paying upfront for a good game instead of getting the
microtransaction written slop we've been subjected to in recent years. So, while
it definitely sucks paying $20 more for Nintendo games that will likely never go
on sale, if my only options are pay what
Nintendo demands to keep creating unique gaming experiences or accept a future
where everything is a live service game with tons of microtransactions, the
choice becomes pretty clear. For me personally, I'm going to be paying that
Nintendo tax for now, but I'll be doing it very selectively for expensive
flagship titles and allocating more of my gaming budget to those smaller team
AA titles that I've been getting a ton of enjoyment out of lately. Coming back
to the hardware, we've got, you guessed it, another Nintendo choice that has
divided the community. The bad news is you're getting an LCD screen on a
console that costs more than the Switch OLED, leaving room for Nintendo to
introduce a higherpriced Switch to down the road. The good news is that the LCD
screen you get is pretty darn good for an LCD. It's 7.9 in, exhibits almost no
distracting motion blur, and actually looks better in real world usage than
its raw brightness measurements would seem to indicate. We measured it in SDR
at only about 380 nits. And while we
don't have a test for HDR for this device yet, it seems to my eyes that
between Nintendo's art design for Switch 2 and remastered titles and or the HDR
capability of the display, it seems to get a bit of extra punch in HDR. One
area where it clearly falls behind a well-tuned OLED display, though, is in
minimum brightness. And there's just no other way to put this. The Steam Deck
OLED clobers this thing when it comes to late night gaming if you don't want to
sear your retinas along with pretty much everything else. The last big spec is
the 120 Hz refresh rate which was both a surprise for me personally given
Nintendo's allergy to high performance and also pretty exciting for me
personally. I mean there's the obvious stuff like it's going to be cool that
some games are going to use it for spectacularly smooth gameplay. But what
I'm secretly hoping for is that we're going to see NVIDIA's advanced video
transcoding engine, which we know is in here, turned on, enabling some kind of
remote gameplay on the Switch, too. That could potentially unlock a whole world
of non- Nintendo games. To be clear, I'm not holding my breath for that. I'm just
saying that because they made this hardware choice, technically it would be
possible to play Game Pass games on Xbox Cloud Gaming or something like that. And
high refresh rates in those cases really cut down on the latency, turning it from
this is quite playable to this is quite enjoyable, at least for me. And that
would be especially cool because of what it would do for battery life. Streaming
is way less energy intensive than rendering locally. And at the moment,
the Switch 2 uh is going to have you selecting your gaming seat based on
proximity to an outlet rather than based on comfort. It's not bad. It's certainly
not worse than a typical handheld gaming PC and is even a little better than the
OG from our quick and dirty early testing, but it falls well short of the
Switch OLED, which is going to feel like a major step back if you're coming from
that. Oh, I couldn't finally find a spot to talk about this before, so I'll also
discuss the regression in portability here. It is still slim, which is really
nice, but I was down in LA for the ROG Xbox Lax announcement, and I was like,
"Oh, well, whatever. It's only 20 minutes. I'll just walk to the IHOP for
my midnight waffles. Oh, I should bring the Switch, too. And then I realized
it's really late at night and I'm on this random street in LA with the
hottest launch hardware of the year and no pocket large enough to accommodate
it. Not even on my cargo pants from ltstore.com. So, I quickly looked around
and I tucked it into my framework hoodie, also from ltstore.com.
Smooth, right? But not as smooth as it'll eventually be to tuck it into our
upcoming cross body bag from ltstore.com. Bottom line, if you want a
Switch only to play the big Nintendo games, this is the best way to play
them. But it's probably okay to wait for a few more of them to come out. Maybe
next month Donkey Kong will push you over the edge, or maybe it'll be Metroid
Prime 4 next, something, but like
there's no hurry in my opinion. And I personally want to see if Nintendo is
going to action some of those questionable policy changes before giving them any more money. like
breaking consoles for stepping out of line, even if that stepping out of line
is just trying to fix it yourself. And I'd also keep an eye on Nintendo's
behavior around subscriptions. They might not have microtransactions in the
games, but they sure as heck have them. And it seems like Nintendo is Nintendo
Switch Online to be an integral part of Switch ownership this time around. So,
you're going to have to add that to your bill along with their iconically never
on sale library of $80 games and ludicrously priced probably going to
drift accessories. All of which means that if I hadn't needed to buy this like
to make this video, I wouldn't be stoked on the value I'm getting right now. Not
only is the library of exclusive launch titles extremely small, and I got to
say, personally, as a nonsweaty online gamer, not enjoying Mario Kart World
that much, like many of you, I have a deep library of other not Switch 2 games
that I haven't played. And like many of you, I probably got most of them on sale
from one of the many other storefronts on other platforms, platforms that don't
charge a subscription to back up your save games to the cloud. So, I agree
that the Switch 2 is probably going to be a wait for most people at the moment.
But even if I wasn't stoked on the value, I'd still be stoked on the
hardware. It's a Switch. Except it is
better than my old one in just about every meaningful way. I mean, the
haptics, even the speakers, they sound so much better to the point where just
holding this thing and looking at it, it's enough to make me want to jump
right back into Hyrule to finally play that game on hardware that does it
justice. Agreed. The Switch One had arguably the worst ratio of library
greatness to hardware greatness of all time. It was bad enough that I passed
over some pretty incredible games, even though I owned a Switch. I just didn't
want to tolerate Nintendo's cheaped out hardware. So, I guess this is a classic
case of careful what you wish for. I
wanted more expensive hardware and I got it. Which means now you're going to need
a way to protect it like with this kill switch from our sponsor Dbrand. As
usual, they showed up with a big bag of money. And as usual, that's the only way
that they can keep a piece of ass this fine in their life. Speaking of fine
pieces of, got to say, kill switch case for the Switch 2 honestly pretty nice.
It's kind of like the Kill Switch case that they made for the Steam Deck and ROG Allay, but with a bunch of smart
modifications that enhance the Switch's whole hybrid gaming console concept. So,
you know, imagine you're on a flight. You want to play your Switch, too. I mean, right, that's a thing. Those
JoyCons not super comfortable to hold for a long time. Well, Dbrand added
these ergonomic handles to their case that make it way more comfortable to use
for long stretches of time. But wait, there's more. See that seat tray in
front of you? Well, hey, maybe you want to put your Switch down on it. Well,
unlike many Switch 2 cases right now, Dbrand designed their case with
detachable JoyCons in mind. So, you can still reach the kickstand even when
you've got the case applied. So, you just pop that down, detach your JoyCons,
and boom, you are off to the races. Then, all of a sudden, you're landing,
they're like, "Put your damn away." And I'm like, "Ah, wait one sec. I just got
to get my crush proof travel cover." It's got a built-in game card tray and
secures to the Switch 2 with this cool bungee latch. And boom, once that's
done, you can throw it in your bag with whatever else you've got in there. No
worries. Honestly, there's too many features of the Kill Switch to cover in
a single sponsor segment. So, if you want to go take a look at what Dbrand's cooked up for the Switch 2 and save $35
while you're at it, just visit Oh. Oh,
that is a new vanity URL, isn't it? My hands are very small.com. If you guys
enjoyed this video, why not check out Microsoft's desperate effort to gain a
foothold in the handheld space with the ROG Xbox Ally X. To be clear, I'm not
saying it's bad. I'm legitimately extremely excited about the gaming tuned
Windows that's launching alongside it. But I will say this, if you thought the
Switch 2 was expensive,