The Switch 2 is a big boy. This is what I mainly remember about the Nintendo game long awaited revelation of his next cell phone. How were you able to watch this trailer and come away with a different impression? It’s not like Nintendo showed much else. Sure, there was a slide on backwards compatibility, but the size difference between the two systems stood out even there. This got me thinking: how big is too big? And did Nintendo prioritize poor design choices?
If you had been following all the early leaks, you knew this was coming. That’s certainly the case, but I was still hoping the rumors about an 8-inch screen were false. I’m new to Switch. My girlfriend and I split the cost of one during Black Friday 2024. Since then, it’s become one of my favorite ways to play games, largely because of its portability.
The Switch OLED isn’t as powerful as my gaming PC, but I can snuggle up to it to play games on the couch. It’s also small enough to fit in my 15L backpack, making it ideal for traveling. I also like the OLED screen. This makes every game better, to the point where I can forgive some poor performance on the system.
On paper, the Switch 2 should retain at least some of the portability of the OLED model, but I wonder how easy it will be to carry around. Consider that if the Switch 2 comes with an 8-inch screen, it will feature a larger screen than the OLED Steam Bridge. The Steam Deck is, like the Switch, a handheld, but I would argue that it is not portable in the true sense of the word.
I once tried to take the Steam Deck for a trip, but gave up after finding it impossible to fit it in my bag with everything else I needed to take with me. I haven’t tried traveling with the Steam Deck since. It’s too early to tell if the Switch 2 will suffer from the same problem and it looks relatively thin, but based on its weight, I suspect many people will use it almost exclusively at home.
That’s not a bad thing in itself, but the genius of the Switch is how it promotes cooperative play. I’m almost certainly in the minority here, but tablet mode is one of my favorite ways to play the Switch. On a recent flight my girlfriend and I took to Europe, the Switch was a godsend on a plane with no in-flight entertainment.
I know the Switch 2 will feature a tablet mode, just like its predecessor, but I wonder how many people will take advantage of this capability with a larger, heavier device? I can see this going two ways. Either the larger screen makes this feature more appealing, or more people are leaving their Switch 2 at home because it’s bulky to carry around.
The other big unknown here is battery life. If the Switch 2 has an 8nm chip paired with a 1080p LCD screen, as rumored, it’s very likely that its battery won’t last as long as the Switch OLED. Before Nintendo released the “” review of the original model and later the Switch OLED, battery life was not the console’s strong point, and I suspect it won’t be that of the Switch 2 either.
There is still so many unknowns about the Switch 2, but what struck me about the console’s recent reveal was that I wasn’t entirely convinced that it would be a clear upgrade over the OLED switch. Obviously, the Switch 2 will offer much better performance and what appears to be a much more solid set of Joy-Cons, but I’m not too excited about a system that could be larger and feature a screen and battery life of battery worse. If these predictions prove true, I’ll probably stick with my Switch OLED until Nintendo announces a Switch 2 Lite or Switch 2 OLED.
