Well, I managed to get my hands on a Switch 2 on launch day. I've played it for a few hours, and as is tech blogging tradition, wanted to share my first impressions.

Random stuff

The sound design in the UI is top notch. Nintendo did an amazing job here with the first Switch as well, and the new OS (which is very, very similar to the old one) has managed the perfect mix of fresh and familiar. It may be the only UI I've ever used that I prefer with sounds on.

The kickstand is excellent, even down to the fact that the speaker grills (or air intakes…or both?) have slight cut outs that make it easy to get your finger under the stand and pull it out. It wasn't hard to do on the Switch OLED, but this is immediately easier. Also shout out to kickstands on devices. The kickstand makes my Switch more convenient than my Steam Deck, and the kickstand on my Surface makes it more convenient than my iPad.

The new Joy Cons are so much better for me than the original Switch's. The increased size makes them fit in my hands way better, the magnetic attachment is better in every way than the slide mechanism, the buttons feel a million times better to press, the joysticks are still too small but are more usable for me, and the only downside so far is that they're not as fun as the bright blue and red of the original Switch. I'm sure they'll get plenty of color variants in the future, but the nearly $100 price point is going to make getting those a pretty significant hit to the budget.

The new Pro Controller is outstanding. I was a little peeved that it was so much more than the last Pro Controller, but to its credit it is noticeably nicer in every way. The thing feels more premium, the analogue sticks are the smoothest I think I've ever experienced with any controller, and it looks really good. I'm a "buy the best controller you can and never buy another one" sort of guy, so I have the premium controllers for the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles as well, and this is right up there with those in my opinion. It lacks some of the modularity of those controllers, but it's also cheaper and feels outstanding.

I love that there are USB-C ports on the top and bottom of the unit. For me, I preferred the top-mounted port on the Steam Deck since it made charging as I played easier for the way I use a handheld unit, but I know other people found the Switch's bottom-mounted port better. Now, everyone should be happy as they have a solution for all of us.

The screen

Alright, the display on this thing sounded better than I was expecting when it was announced a couple months ago, but now that I have it in hand, my feelings are definitely a bit more mixed. First, the 1080p resolution is great for a display this size. For comparison, the Steam Deck OLED that I also have is an 800p display, which I am perfectly happy with. The Switch 2 display is a bit larger, but the added pixels make it feel more crisp, which I always appreciate.

Then there's the 120Hz variable refresh rate, which surprised and delighted me. Sadly, as of day one, I haven't been able to find any way to enjoy this. No games I can find support it, and the system UI is locked at 60Hz, so I don't even get smooth scrolling on the home screen. Presumably this benefit will reveal itself in time. As we already know, Metroid Prime 4 will support 120Hz output, and surely more games will support 40fps, which is a great compromise between 30 and 60.

Then there's HDR and the fact this is LCD and not OLED, and both of those are mild disappointments for me. I haven't seen this confirmed 100% yet, but I've heard that the display maxes out at 400 nits in HDR content, which is pretty darn low. If you've ever made fun of TV manufacturers claiming their TV support "HDR" but it's actually that "VESA DisplayHDR 400" spec that's not really HDR, this seems very similar to that. Compared to the HDR I get on my Switch OLED, Steam Deck, computer monitor, and iPhone, this is nothing of note.

On the "only LCD" front, I also think this is a bit of a bummer. The screen looks pretty good on the whole, and this is a much better LCD than the one in the 2017 Switch, but it wasn't exactly an easy compare when I was sitting this next to my Switch OLED to do the system transfer and that older display looked way nicer in terms of contrast and vivid colors.

The games

I've played a decent number of games so far, so let's just rapid-fire through them.

Mario Kart World looks good and runs perfectly smooth (60fps) in 1 and 2 player modes. The game itself is quite fun, and having 24 karts on track for races is a surprising thrill. I do think this game has the relatively impossible task of exceeding the experience of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, though. I'll go on record saying MK8D is the best, most full featured Mario Kart game ever, and there was just no way this new game was going to match that on day one. I hope there's a long roadmap for updates to this game so we can get more tracks and unlocks in time, but what we have right now is quite good anyway. I think the Grand Prix thing is kind of interesting, where you drive from one track to another and then do a single lap of the new track. Honestly I'd love a mode where I could still do a grand pix, but I'd just do the tracks like a traditional game. The roads from one track to the next just aren't as interesting as the main tracks themselves.

The Legend of Zelda: Echos of Wisdom was a game I was eager to check out because it's a rare game I bounced off of entirely because of technical issues. That game just did not run well on the original Switch, and it degraded the experience enough for me that I decided to just wait for the new Switch and pray that it ran better there. Well, that day has come and I'm happy to report that this game runs at a silky smooth 60fps and I'm delighted to finally give it a full playthrough.

Speaking of games so technically bad I bounced off them: Pokémon Violet. This game was famously horrendous, and I'm still shocked it released in the state it was. Obviously, some people are less sensitive to performance issues and they manage to enjoy it, but I think it's safe to say that a lot of people had issues with the performance. I've only played a few minutes of this, but I have to say, playing it on the Switch 2 is revelatory. They've improved the frame rate to a pretty clean 60fps, and a lot of the object draw-in has been improved, so things further away from you actually appear rather than fading in about 10 feet in front of your character as you approach them. I might finally give this game a real shot as well!

I put a few minutes into a new save of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and this is very similar to the last couple games: it's now a locked 60fps experience. This one's a bit different, as it was a pretty good locked 900p and 30fps game previously, and the Switch 2 upgrade brings it up to 1440p and 60fps. It also has faster load times.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons doesn't seem to have gotten any updates for Switch 2, and it runs exactly the same as it does on the normal Switch.

Then I jumped into The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (this guy and the Zelda games!) in the NSO GameCube app, and it's fine. It's nice to be able to play Wind Waker on Nintendo hardware again, although I would have vastly preferred the Wii U version of the game get ported to the console instead. This is still a really good game, but the Wii U version had improved visuals (assuming they were to your taste) and a few modern niceties that made it a little smoother to play in the modern era. Also, as with all of Nintendo's emulation, this is a straight representation of what the game was like on old hardware, and they don't do anything to improve the frame rate.

Final (initial) thoughts

Overall, I think the Switch 2 is about as good as I expected it to be and I’m happy that I have it. My general buying advice is that you really only need to rush out to find one right now if you are looking to play Mario Kart World. The Switch game upgrades are nice, but the actual launch library is pretty small so I wouldn’t stress too much if you can’t get one in the next couple weeks. Hopefully inventory will be reasonable by the time more new games come out.