A fresh view on the Nintendo Switch // Nintendo Switch Review

After desperately scouring every shop around my area for a Nintendo Switch praying that RNGesus would finally grace me I managed to get my hands on one with the red and blue joy-cons for £309.99(GBP) along with one of three games out of 'ARMS', '1-2-Switch!' and 'Super Mario Kart 8 Deluxe'. I decided while there to pick up a travel case and screen protectors for it, not realising how invaluable they would be later on.

The Red/Blue Nintendo Switch.

Getting home I tore straight into the box, the first thing I noticed was how the switch was considerably smaller than I expected. The Switch comes with a HDMI cable and an AC adapter to plug the dock into the mains these are connected through the back panel of the dock which tucks the cables away nicely.

The switch also came with a handy Joy-Con grip which is a controller-like mount for the controllers for a more comfortable handheld gaming experience however some games will still activate motion controls in this setting. There is an alternative version of this which can take a USB Type-C plug into it to charge your Joy-Cons while playing through the grip, however the Joy-Cons have around 20hrs of charge at 100% battery so personally I have no use for this but I can see how people could.

Finally my Switch was on, I chose to play it on my TV first through HDMI experiencing the switch on HD 1080p I dove into a very DS/Wii like interface to set up my switch unsurprisingly, I actually quite like how the user interface is designed for the switch displaying your games in a list with the extra options such as the store and settings located below giving a real focus on the games. It is also available in both a Light and a Dark option, I opted for Dark option as I felt the Light burned through my retinas as if I had approached the pearly gates of Heaven itself, just much more painful, like turning your phone on when you wake up at 4:00am and it's on full brightness.

The 'Dark' Theme.

The 'Light' Theme.

I leaped onto 'The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild', the first 'Zelda' I have ever owned myself and the first game I would see on the switch. After scampering around as Link in Hyrule searching for Fruits for meals like some kind of homeless blonde child in a blue tunic for what felt like a few minutes I realised it had been a few hours, naturally I realised I should turn this off, so I did. Until I picked the Switch up out of its dock and continued my homeless-like scavenge while now in bed for 2 more hours before settling the Switch back into its humble dock at a surprising 40% battery life.

The ability to simply pick up my game and carry on while on the move felt so natural but seeing the graphical quality my newfound handheld was delivering in this form was astounding. The switch-over from TV to handheld was instantaneous allowing me to continue playing, and so far I have only had the handheld die on me once after playing Zelda for just over 3 hours so I would say the battery life for the handheld is pretty good however its life is dependant on what games you are playing and how demanding they are.

There are some downsides to this fantastic handheld ability however, like putting the switch back into the dock and taking it out tends to cause it to scrape against the dock which can cause scratches to the screen, I got lucky on avoiding that thanks to buying a screen protector but this problem is avoided by Nintendo providing a 1-Year warranty on the Switch. There is also currently not a huge range of games featured on the switch which makes it difficult for a lot of people to pay such a high price for a console with so few titles.

Example of scratching due to using the dock.

Ultimately I'm more than happy with my purchase of the Switch despite its current lack of titles which for me personally is the biggest issue I have had with it. The Switch sets out to be both a console and a handheld and achieves that comfortably without sacrificing performance.

If you own a Nintendo Switch, do you agree with my review? Have you had issues with your console that you think should be heard?

If you don't own a switch are you thinking of buying one?

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