this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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I implore people to watch the teardown guide itself, which is way more nuanced than the clickbaity The Verge article.
I'm not a fan of the use of glue in the joycon sides and the fact that the color strips under the controllers are hiding screws. The bigger complaint is the battery glue, especially because you can imagine aftermarket parts with bigger capacity could be a thing here. I definitely wouldn't open this thing unless it has a problem.
Some components are still modular, which is nice. I can't imagine the sticks not having changed design is great, but it's entirely possible they're way more durable, which the teardown acknowledges. Keep in mind that, while all controllers can drift, most controllers don't fail that way. It's possible to build this type of stick without widespread issues. Time will tell, though.
The switch 2 gives out complete apple vibes. It's repairability is pretty horrid after watching the teardown guide.
Controllers will fail sooner or later and will have to be replaced. Here it will end up replacing the whole stick just due to glueing small parts of the controller.
Battery will also fail sooner than later. The whole thing yells planned absolesence...
It absolutely does not. Nintendo hardware is built like a freight truck. The teardown guide references the JerryRigEverything "durability test" and I am pretty sure unless you use it to bash someone's head in this thing will last (and even then).
What it reeks of is Nintendo wanting to make things cheap and sell you multiple of them. Which they do. My launch Switch 1 lasted until I got a Lite and then an Oled and I expect this one will do pretty much the same. That doesn't mean their joycon won't need fixing or replacing (and I did have to open and mod my Lite, which wasn't easy).
I think Nintendo hasn't adjusted its industrial design to modern repairability concerns yet, which is a very Nintendo thing (and definitely not the same as Apple artificially holding down the repair ecosystem to itself artificially). I like neither option, but I'd take Nintendo's approach over Apple's any day. They absolutely need to comply with modern right to repair regulations, though, and that will mean doing more than they're currently doing.
That's the "apple like" planned obsolesence part I was refering to. Think about airpods for example.
The teardown doesn't touch on part serialization, although the ability to brick your device if they "feel like it" is on PAR with Apple.
Although I'm not sure we should be arguing about which of the two is shittier when both are already deep in non compliance of "modern right to repair regulations (lmao)"
No, big differences at play here. Nintendo won't plan obsolescence, they will give you a base version at launch (multiple, if they can, since they're handheld devices and a single family may conceivably want a couple) and then they will iterate on the form factor with a cheaper, slimmer alternative and a bigger, premium alternative. None of those will stop working or break at any point, though. They don't care about them being replaced. In fact, they prefer if they aren't, given they make a cut of the software, too.
They are planned to stack on each other. Sell you multiples for multiple users. Apple can't do that trick, because everybody already owns a phone and the software is backwards compatible and interoperable, so they need to push you to replacement hardware. Nintendo's on a different business.
The remote bricking is not planned obsolescence, it's Nintendo's draconian opinion that they own every part of the hardware and the software fundamentally, so emulation, user modding and jailbreaking are crimes against humanity. They are wrong, but they will continue to enforce it aggressively even beyond what is legally established. This is because it goes fundamentally counter to their hardware design, which relies on cheap-but-robust devices you can give to kids that are built with imaginatively repurposed older tech. They see enthusiasts improving on their price-optimal design as a threat and will send ninjas to stab you if you disagree.
I disagree, but there are degrees of separation here. Nintendo still needs to be forced to provide replacement parts, specs and so forth, though.
I feel like you're biased in favor of Nintendo. "They make durable products" while also being infamous for the joysticks drifting. Those don't seem to gel together. Maybe they're hard to totally break, but they seem to be fine with selling products that degrade pretty quickly.
I don't think I am. They had a significant isue with joycon drift. I do think some of it was overreported, in that a big issue with joycons is that they have absolutely garbage-tier connectivity, which can also manifest as the stick being "stuck" as the receiver keeps the last direction held to mask intermittent connectivity. But even with that, the sticks were prone to physical issues, at least in the earlier runs. It's unclear how well newer sticks hold up in comparison.
But that is perhaps the biggest technical issue Nintendo has ever shipped, and their handhelds have been knwon for being insanely rugged since the original Game Boy. The Switch is perhaps the most prone to cosmetic issues, but it's still a remarkably solid little tablet. It breaks under extreme abuse, just like the DS ended up with torn hinges and scratched plastic screens, but it's nowhere near fragile. It's a toy built for kids, so it's built for more physical abuse than your average phone. That's not a defense of Nintendo, it's a very conscious decision they've made as an industrial design approach and a business model. It's not good or bad in itself.
If you design a product to be intentionally difficult to repair, using subpar parts, is it not planned obsolescence? I really don't get what you are about there. Unless you require some sort of an internal clock to force brick the device to be considered planned?
Everything else is correct and I agree.
It's not planned obsolescence if your device is meant to last for decades. You could argue about the joycon if they had done that on purpose, but given that they ended up having to replace a bunch of them it seems pretty likely that their business model is to sell you four pairs to play with friends, not to keep reselling you more as they break.
Nintendo's business is not based on the product becoming worse artificially to upsell you on a replacement. Their model is to keep making incremental replacements and then drop a generational upgrade every decade or so. That's not how planned obsolescence works. You don't get artificial performance degradation, deliberately fragile parts or artifical restrictions to repair via signed components. People can (and many do) repair Nintendo hardware on third party repair services with third party replacement parts, and from what iFixIt is saying that doesn't seem to have changed.
Which is not to say Nintendo put ANY thought into repairability here. They clearly expect you to buy a Switch 2 and keep it until you buy a Switch 2 Lite. This thing is very new and that may yet change in both directions. But so far all I see here is the same old "we built this to be cheap and durable", which is fundamentally not Apple's "you'll buy one of these every two years and if it breaks you will come to us for a replacement and like it" approach.
I mean, it's clearly not meant to last decades given the battery situation.
You'd think, but I have Nintendo handhelds from the 2000s that still hold a charge fine, and so does my launch Switch 1, which is about a decade old.
The Switch 2 is the first one of these they ship with a battery care charge mode, too, which is interesting. I think as they abandon their old single-threaded, no-multitasking design, for a more mobile-like architecture they're also having to make similar adjustments to their battery management, so it'll be interesting to see if the Switch 2 battery struggles with degradation more than older devices. It sure is more power hungry, and it does get hotter so you'd expect more charge cycles per year and less durability. It's going to be an open question for a while.
Still not the worst battery health in a Nintendo product, no matter what happens. That'll always be the WiiU controller. That sytem laster just a couple of years and I still had to replace the battery for an aftermarket one and ended up using it plugged in anyway.
The problem with the battery is that it's glued in and requires basically destroying the foam it sits on, with no available replacement for the foam or specifications given AFAIK.
Also, if we're just talking anecdotes here, I have at least two Nintendo devices from the 2000s that ended up with swollen batteries. This has actually reminded me that I might need to check again.
Fundamentally true of everything with a battery. For old Nintendo devices that just... hold on to that charge forever I also strongly recommend pulling them out of mothballs every year or six months and giving them a full charge cycle, just in case. Gives you a reason to revisit old games, while you're at it.
I wanna say they did the foam thing on Switch 1 (never needed to replace it, so I'm not positive, speaking from memory), but these things are typically popular enough you get aftermarket replacements specifically built to fit, so I'm not too worried about getting a replacement down the line, even with Nintendo not providing the requried documentation (but seriously, they have to for legal reasons, so they better get to it).
I'm more concerned about getting to the thing in the first place on this one. Plus the battery life is worse, so there's conceivable a market for larger capacity replacements.
This conversation reminds me I need to swap a suspicious battery on an old Samsung S10 I had in storage and I'm NOT looking forward to dealing with that, either. Maybe I'll just dunk it in alcohol and hope for the best...
I owned a Switch 1, and it certainly was the Nintendo console I touched up the most. I replaced the back panel once before I got a Lite and then an OLED.
I will say given how much I took that thing on the road and the beatings it took I never found the issues unreasonable and I only ever had to fix cosmetic damage (joycons aside). I've seen Switches get a TON of usage, too.
It's not Nintendo's most rugged console, but it's certainly not a "fragile little thing" as I would define it.
Let me put it this way, I'd much rather fix a broken Steam Deck, but I was way less worried about breaking a Switch.
It didn’t break and need repair, except for all the times it broke and needed repair.
Not to mention those things are expensive AF. If I had to replace a part on my car that cost 25% of the cost of the entire car EACH time, I would just not buy from that company any longer (which is what I’m doing). Not sure why this person is writing paragraphs and paragraphs of excuses for Nintendo.
I mean, it's not a car. The joycon are expensive, but not THAT expensive. Still, they absolutely had to provide replacements to stick issues (which they did, to their credit).
It's extra important on this run, because the new ones are even more expensive. They better last.
Also, I'm writing responses to things people say, not excuses. Companies aren't football teams, I don't need to root for or against any of them.
They only provided replacements after the a class action lawsuit and specifically only replaced them in North America for the longest time. That was on July 2020. Five years later and the flaw is still there on brand new devices. There is nothing to applaud or give credit for.
Edit: to say that $80 is not expensive is to be completely detached from reality. 28% of Americans have savings of less than $1,000.
Hi. Let's talk about how the sentence "the joycon are expensive" turns into "to say that $80 is not expensive".
I give you the floor to kickstart this roundtable on why online conversation sucks and everybody is a complete dick when you talk to them on the Internet.
No, the main unit didn't break and need repair beyond cosmetic scuffs. The joycons cycled through the console's lifetime, which is also true of my Xbox (had an Elite controller die on me, that one hurt) and the PS4 (I don't think I have a single DS4 left without a broken usb port).
Accessories are accessories, but the console still works to this day.