Nintendo Switch 2 First Impressions – Bigger, Brighter, Better (but Not Yet Essential)

The big day has finally come (well, it came yesterday, actually). The Nintendo Switch 2 has finally arrived. We’ve been so knee deep in the hardware, that gorgeous new 7.9in display and, of course, Mario Kart World, that we’ve only just come around to getting our early thoughts of Nintendo’s latest and greatest down on paper (you know what we mean) before we sink back into the goodness that is the Switch 2.

There’s no big surprises here. Not that we expected any. Nintendo has been staggeringly upfront about the Switch 2 in the build-up,  promising nothing short of an upgraded Switch. There’s a bigger display to gawp at, a newer, faster chipset at play, and those once pesky Joy-Cons connect magnetically now. It’s still everything you loved about the Nintendo Switch, just refined and enhanced.

Ergonomically speaking

The moment we first saw the Switch 2, it struck us just how big this thing was. Real effing big. It’s one thing to read about the 7.9 display, and another to feel Tears of the Kingdom’s rays warming your face. A bigger display meant those Joy-Cons were due for a similar upgrade, and again, Nintendo delivered.

The result? The Nintendo Switch 2 feels incredibly comfortable in-hand and offers massive improvements over all three iterations of the original Switch (Lite, OLED). There’s no extra grip tacked onto the Joy-Cons like you might have seen with copycat handheld PCs, but that’s less of an issue than expected. It’s a massive improvement, but if you weren’t a fan of the original Switch’s grip, that won’t change this time around.

Rather than sliding up and down a rail, the Joy-Con 2 controllers simply slot into the side of the console magnetically, and it’s just as slick as it sounds. A release mechanism is placed right behind the triggers (and out of easy reach). Just hold this and yoink, you’ve got two detached Joy-Cons. Pop them in the included grip in the same manner, and you’ll have a far more pleasant experience on your hands.

Yeah, well, I’m gonna get my own OLED! With VRR and Balatro!

A big screen isn’t much use without decent tech to its name. The 7.9in 1920 x 1080 LCD (we reckon an ‘OLED’ model is only a year or two away) does well for itself, with HDR10 and VRR support, with up to 120Hz depending on the game. It’s no OLED, but the HDR and VRR support almost make you forget about that. It’s plenty bright enough in a bright room, though how it’d fare outside…

As such, we’ve quickly become fond of playing games like The Legend of Zelda in handheld mode, something we typically reserved for the smaller, less graphically demanding games. It kept up with our demands, too, providing a stable framerate wherever our wandering attention span took us.

Stick it in the dock, and the console will immediately start paying dividends. It’ll push out an upscaled 4K res and holds that 120Hz promise (assuming you drop the resolution down to 2560 x 1440 or lower) but still delivers an excellent 60fps for those prettier games. HDR10 still pulls through as well, which pairs well with an OLED TV if you can get your hands on one. It’s missing VRR here, but we never found ourselves missing it.

I’m gonna rock your Mario Kart World

As with the Nintendo Switch 2, we’re working on a full review for Mario Kart World. But seeing as how this is the Nintendo Switch 2 game (not looking at you, Welcome Tour), we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least tell you if it was worth picking up as part of a bundle and saving yourself R1,000.

Mario Kart World, like the Switch 2 it’s running on, is more of the same. It’s grander, larger, and there’s an open-world mode. For fans of the Kart, the bundle is an easy purchase as the game has plenty of content to keep you busy until the next big thing drops. But for someone who’s not particularly interested in the franchise beyond the first few games at their mate’s house, World probably isn’t going to change your mind.

For a Mario Kart game, however, it’s pretty impressive. There are about 30 different tracks, all of which are interconnected and part of a larger ‘open-world’ that we just couldn’t see the value in. Until we hit the waiting room for an online match, which allowed us to warm up while the servers found 24 different players. It was all going smoothly until disaster struck: “A communication error has occurred.”

That was our experience for a good couple of hours, giving us plenty of time to polish our skillset against the bots and get a proper look at the maps on offer. While we’ve yet to visit them all, we do have a few Grand Prix wins under our belt, and it’s clear that Nintendo is cooking. Obstacles are smarter, and the maps are lively. A 3D map in the shape of the original DK game was probably the highlight for us.

Tears, Breath, Odyssey – in that order

The Switch 2’s tech specs, while impressive, aren’t the highlight here. That’s never been Nintendo’s thing, even if it did bow to the pressures to develop a console that feels definitively next-gen. The larger focus has always been on its first-party titles, and it’s these that benefit most from some new hardware. Mario Kart World might technically be the only ‘Switch 2 game’; Nintendo has updated several other games to get the same treatment.

We’ve spent most of our time (time not spent schooling the bots in Mario Kart, that is) inside of Nintendo’s crowning achievement: Tears of the Kingdom. This, and its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, require an R180 purchase (plus a copy of the game) before you can experience any sort of graphical or technical benefit. A Switch Online + Expansion Pack will also suffice, but the upgrades are only available while you have an active subscription.

That’s the route we went, and it was fairly simple enough to achieve. With an active subscription, visit the eShop – which is now blisteringly quick – hit the upgrade pack for whichever Zelda you’re saving, and voila. You’ve now got Tears of the Kingdom running at 60fps with significantly improved textures, lighting, and load times.

It’s honestly impressive. When Tears first landed in 2023, we were blown away by Nintendo’s ability to get something this epic running relatively smoothly on the original Switch hardware. Yes, it was 30fps, but for a world as complex and large as Zelda’s, it was an achievement. The Switch 2 upgrade feels like the natural progression, and makes us question how we ever got by without it in the first place.

Super Mario Odyssey was another to receive a similar update, except this one was free. That goes for a bunch of other titles – Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and Link’s Awakening, to name a few – but we haven’t had those thoroughly tested yet. We have spent some time inside Odyssey and walked away equally impressed. It still targets 60fps in both docked and handheld mode, but does so with an upscaled 4K res (up from 1440p natively).

Both Tears of the Kingdom and Odyssey stick to their intended 60fps framerates impressively while delivering on the upgraded resolution. We experienced no stuttering across several hours of playtime, though Tears did occasionally go a little blurry after a hard cut during an in-engine cutscene. It’s nothing hectic, lasting less than a second at a time, but it’s certainly worth noting and holding fingers for in a future patch.

Nintendo Switch 2 initial verdict

All that boils down to whether you should forego food this weekend to pick yourself up a Nintendo Switch 2 for R12,500 (R13,500 with Mario Kart included). Unless you’re a massive Nintendo fan with a backlog of games from the first Switch (preferably those with free Switch 2 upgrades) and a hankering to teach some kids how to play Mario Kart, the Switch 2 is just not an essential purchase right now.

As decent as that 7.9in display and the upgraded internals are, Nintendo’s strong suit is its huge library of amazing games, and the Switch 2 is surprisingly lacking in that department. Sure, there’s Mario Kart World, but the novelty wears off pretty quickly when we’re looking for the next Breath of the Wild or Odyssey title. Give Nintendo a few months and we’ll be singing a different tune.