Is the Nintendo Switch 2 Worth Buying? My 12-Year-Old Played Games for 20+ Hours to Help You Decide

If you’re a parent of a video-game-loving kid and not necessarily a gamer yourself, you may have had the same reaction as I did to the launch of the new Nintendo Switch 2: Oh, no. Do we have to? 

Of course, no one has to. But if this is how your kids enjoy their free time, this video game console is likely going to be at the top of their wish lists. (It’s so popular right now that it’s often out of stock. On the plus side, it’s being restocked frequently, so be sure to pick your favorite retailer and sign up for notifications.) To help you decide if this is worth dropping $450, my 12-year-old son, Nate, and I have been doing the hard work of investigating its pros and cons, and how it compares to the original Switch. (The PR folks at Nintendo gave me the console and some games to sample, but this did not sway my opinion—and Nate is also surprisingly hard to bribe.)

His TL;DR: “When I first heard of the prices for the Switch 2, I started thinking that it wasn’t going to be worth it—with, like, an $80 Mario Kart. But now that I have the Switch 2, I realize that it’s a huge improvement.”

If you’re looking for a gamer review, with all the specs and lingo, this ain’t it. This is for the rest of us parents whose kids kick our butts on Mario Kart and snatch the controllers away from us when we die for the 50th time in a co-op game. (I’m really proud of myself for even knowing the term co-op game, but please don’t ask me to define it for you.)

Is Bigger Better?

When we unboxed the Switch 2, Nate was unimpressed. Because he often likes to play it as a handheld in his room (sometimes without my permission, I might add), he was concerned by the fact that it’s significantly bigger than the original. With the Joy-Con controllers attached, the Switch 2 is 4.5 inches tall x 10.7 inches wide x .55 inches deep, while the original is 4 inches tall x 9.5 inches long x .55 inches deep. The screen size is the most noticeable increase, 7.9 inches (measured diagonally), up from 6.2 inches.

“My old Switch was really good to carry around and stuff,” Nate tells me. “And now this [Switch 2]—it’s big and it’s bulky, and it’s not as great for carrying around. It would add an extra 20 pounds to my bag!” Note: Nate’s not susceptible to bribery, but he is prone to hyperbole. It’s actually just .3 pounds heavier (1.18 pounds vs. .88 pounds) with the Joy-Cons attached.

An adult friend of ours who is one of the few people we know who has a Switch 2 was pretty happy about the slightly larger controllers, which better fit his hands. Now, after a few weeks, Nate is also starting to see the size as a good thing, too. 

Sharper and Faster

The screen isn’t just bigger. You can immediately tell that the visuals are sharper in handheld mode. Even to me, the least-sophisticated gamer in all the land, I could see major visual improvements to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild when Nate tried it on our TV. 

A more powerful hard drive means that the visuals aren’t just sharper, but the scene changes load faster, too. I think that makes the game feel more immersive, but as a parent, I might prefer when there’s an involuntary pause—that makes it less likely that Nate will play for hours without looking up. With everything rolling so smoothly, we did have a couple of marathon sessions that lasted much longer than I’d planned.

The two new games we’ve spent the most time playing on the Switch 2—Mario Kart World and Split Fiction—take advantage of the console’s faster hard drive with more elaborate visuals that you can take the time to explore. As a non-gamer, I’m easily impressed by them, though I suspect they’re a lot like what people have been used to on bigger consoles and gaming PCs.

“The games are much more high tech,” Nate says. “In Mario Kart World, they make this whole giant map of the world, and it’s really detailed.” 

Nintendo Switch 2 

Controller Improvements

Nate’s disappointed in the Joy-Cons’ matte-black color with orange and blue accents—he always wants things to be bright and bold—but both of us agree that they have a nice feel to them. I appreciate the way they connect magnetically rather than sliding into a groove the way the old ones do. That always felt like something that was easy to break or get stuck. 

The controllers also have enhanced vibration, which makes the feedback you get from crashes and explosions feel more real and less like a phone notification.

One big question I still have is whether Nintendo has solved the problem of “Joy-Con drift,” which is when a mechanism in the joystick wears down and makes your character literally drift off to the side on its own. This happened to us with a set of old Joy-Cons, but Nintendo has been soundly chastised enough by customers that you can send them in to be fixed for free. The company has not made any announcements about whether this will happen on Switch 2 controllers, but at least one YouTube video by a DIY expert showed that the stick mechanism is the same, which may mean we’re doomed to drift again eventually.

On the bright side, you can pair your old Joy-Cons with the Switch 2—which we did in my house so that three of us could play together. (And I suppose if we have to send any pair in for fixing, we’ll have backup to play with in the meantime.)

The new Joy-Cons have a funny feature that allows you to roll them on a flat surface and use them like a mouse. We played a few mini games this way in the Nintendo Switch 2 World Tour. Nate called this feature “pretty stupid.” Maybe because I’m actually better than he is at this one thing. I hear the mouse comes in handy in the more mature games Sid Meier’s Civilization VII and Cyberpunk 2077, which are out now, as well as the upcoming Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. 

GameChat

Another new bit of tech in the Joy-Con is a microphone, which you can use to talk with other gamers remotely. And don’t worry, parents, they can’t just start chatting with random strangers. Other users need to be set as “Friends” in the system, and you need to log in to Nintendo with a phone to approve who gets added to this list. You don’t need a Nintendo Online subscription ($35-$80 a year for families) to chat with others until March 2026, but you do need one to play games with others while talking. (For video chats, you can buy a separate camera for $55.)

We set up our friend Ricky (an adult) as our GameChat friend and had a few lively rounds of Mario Kart World with him. I sat out the race and watched my husband lose miserably to Ricky, which was wildly entertaining. We also stayed on while Ricky launched his Breath of the Wild game in progress and shared his screen, making a single-player game more of a communal experience. While adults can just call each other or use online services like Discord to talk to fellow gamers, this is a good option for kids without phones to talk safely to each other. Nate isn’t so into this feature, but I can see it being fun for him to connect with his cousins in Florida if they eventually get a Switch 2. Anything that turns gaming into a safe social activity seems like a good idea to me.

Nintendo Switch 2 

Parental Controls

I’m very excited to be able to use the Parental Controls app to restrict playing hours, set bedtime, or even block it altogether on school nights. I can see daily reports of how much time Nate’s been on the console. (I can also use this app for the old Switch, too, but I hadn’t bothered until now.) You can set up other restrictions so that children can’t play games meant for adults or teens, too. Any adult who wants to play those just has to enter a pin to access them.

Games!

The Nintendo Switch 2 is backward compatible, so we can play all our old games on it. When we set it up, we were able to transfer all of Nate’s game progress over from the old Switch, too. The only thing we can’t use is the MicroSD card from the old console, because the new one uses MicroSD Express cards. We’ll be using cards a lot less, though, because the Switch 2 has 256GB of memory, up from the original’s 32GB. 

We used our Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership to get the Switch 2 upgrades to our Zelda games. Here’s a quick rundown of the two new games we’ve enjoyed on the Switch 2: 

‘Mario Kart World’

If you’re a fan of Mario Kart 8 (isn’t everyone?), this is an even better version, with wild, competitive courses, new tricks, and fun modes like Free Roam, which lets players explore the whole world and collect prizes. It’s $80 on its own, but it’s also available as a bundle with the Switch 2 for $500 (so just $50 for the game).

‘Split Fiction’

This stunning game follows two writers who think they’re visiting a publishing house to publish their first books, but are instead going to be plugged into a virtual reality version of the stories they’ve penned. Characters Mio and Zoe get trapped together in a deadly combination of their fantasy and sci-fi creations. It’s up to the two players to cooperate to get through each scene and escape before the greedy corporation steals all their ideas. Nate and I are having a blast playing this together, even if he gets fed up with my lack of skills and has to get my character out of situations in order for us both to move forward. It’s rated T (teen), probably because there’s some mild cursing.

Our Verdict

The Nintendo Switch 2 is a definite upgrade from the original. If you don’t own a Switch at all, I’d recommend getting this one over the original Switch, which Nintendo is still selling (they’re typically $300). It’s about looking toward the future and the new games you’ll want to play in the years to come, as Nate explains to me. 

But if you already have a Switch, I would wait for a very special occasion to buy the new one, because most kids won’t be able to tell the difference in things like a screen’s frame rate and faster processing. 

You might not be shocked to hear Nate thinks I’m wrong. If he didn’t have the Switch 2, he says, “There’d be a voice in the back of my head [reminding me of] the people who get to play the new games, and I’d feel left out.”