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Consoles and handhelds · Nintendo Switch

Nintendo Switch 1

9owners with an opinion
50%of verdicts positive
3/3positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and portability; criticized for display and battery.

What owners wrote

Doesn’t like it
I love Nintendo and have since the NES was released. Taking a day or 2 to set up an Ayn Thor w/ every game I've ever played from my childhood, the instruction manuals, and whatever other conveniences modern emulation affords really does beat trying to find the old hardware and games at a ridiculous premium. Also buying most all of the old stuff doesn't help Nintendo in any way so the 'morality' goes out the window. The setup IS a bit tedious but once it's done you rarely have to change anything. I also own a Switch 1 w/ Breath of The Wild but I prefer to emulate it because you can increase the draw distance, get 60 FPS, add some HD textures [1], and fix some other issues that I had with the game because the Switch 1 was such terrible hardware. Even the Switch 2 version isn't nearly as good as the one you can get from emulating. [1] https://youtu.be/YK2lkGsaoaw
Neutral
I jailbroke my Switch 1 the day I bought it, was banned from Nintendo Online the next day. The only games I bought were physical. I was told this would happen, so it wasn’t an issue at all. I’ve told my friends if you plan on playing online on it, definitely don’t jailbreak.
Doesn’t like it
I recently changed the battery of my Switch 1, if for most of the process it was easy, and I really struggled on two points. 1) the plastic part into which the screws are screwed broke, and it is tough to remove them. 2) ungluing the battery with isopropyl alcohol without breaking anything was very long for me. I recently changed the USB port of my Fairphone 4 and it was just unscrewing and screwing. So for me it is a great change from Nintendo.
Likes it
It might kill the console gaming market, too. Typically consoles get cheaper over time post-release. Instead, all the latest gen consoles are getting price hikes and at least one company is potentially pushing back the next gen release (PS6). A PlayStation 5 for $900? I'll just wait and be happy with my perfectly usable Switch 1 (since the 2 is also more expensive than it should be).
Likes it
I've played BotW on Switch 1 and the Switch 2 upgraded edition. While some scenes are a bit choppy on Switch 1 it's never in the way of gameplay and even on Switch 1 one of the best video games of the last decade. Of course Switch 2 is faster and the better console (it should be), but if you're focussing on raw performance you're in the wrong crowd. Even on PS5 you have load times and performance tradeoffs. There will be a time when we're wondering how we put up with the 'impossibly slow' current generation of consoles like we're doing with the 8-bits machines now.
Neutral
Hah, I thought it was just me. Mine was the same, never online, and this key based card thing makes me think that my next, and probably final console purchase, will be a replacement Switch 1. Although I saw the prices just went up, and I didnt even know about the oled version. The main thing that holds me back is the dof blurr in Links Awakening. I imagine that Nintendo want a slice of this subscription based gaming scam. The HD versions already feel like a step in that greed direction. And I think I saw a collection of Mario 3D games that fell into that same repackage-and-sell-again category, with crazy pricing. You might like the DE10-nano Mister project. I manged to get some old arcade cabinates running on a big monitor, no frame drops or lag like most emulators suffer, and no stream of 10p coins required. FPGA feels closer in terms of preservation.
Likes it
We already have a good sense of what SoC Nintendo will likely be going with for the Switch 2. Being so dismissive of the Switch shows the disconnect between what most gamers care about, and what some tech enthusiasts think gamers care about. The Switch 1 used a crappy mobile chip, sure, but it was able to run tons of games that no other Tegra device could have dreamed of running, due to the power of having a stable target for optimization, with sufficiently powerful APIs available, and a huge target market. The Switch 1 can do 90% of what a Steam Deck can, while using a fraction of the power, thickness, and cooling. With the Switch 2 almost certainly gaining DLSS, I fully expect the Switch 2 to run circles around the Steam Deck, even without a “high end chip”. It will be weaker on paper, but that won’t matter. I say this as someone who owns a PS5, a Switch OLED, an ROG Ally, and a fairly decent gaming PC. I briefly had an original Steam Deck, but the screen was atrocious. Most people I see talking about Steam Deck’s awesomeness seem to either have very little experience with a Switch, or just have a lot of disdain for Nintendo. Yes, having access to Steam games is cool… but hauling around a massive device with short battery life is not cool to most gamers, and neither is spending forever tweaking settings just to get something that’s marginally better than the Switch 1 can do out of the box. The Switch 1 is at the end of its life right now, but Nintendo is certainly prepari…
Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it
I don't like the aesthetic as much as the Switch 1. Looks a little too sleek, too monochrome, not Nintendo-y enough. Other than the splash of color around the thumbsticks it looks like any number of those handheld Steam Deck-alikes that have been coming out. That said I always wait for the special Zelda editions of Nintendo's consoles, so I don't know that I have standing to complain.
Likes itHasn’t owned it
Bright-colored controllers were so much better. Also the way they were attached before is much better. Switch 1 was the work of art. This one looks like the work of A/B testing and “we are losing customers as they choose Steam Deck over us, so let’s make it look like Steam Deck”