With gamers across the globe now settling in to put their Switch 2 consoles through their paces, we’ve been seeing a bunch of media outlets, alongside eager social media and Reddit users, report in on how they’re finding the battery life thus far.
For full transparency, we’ve yet to run a rigorous battery test here at Nintendo Life, but from this writer’s personal experience it’s taking around the two-hour mark roughly, to drain things right down whilst playing Mario Kart World or The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Our editor, Gavin, is getting about the same running Welcome Tour, too.
This may be disappointing, though it falls pretty much in-line with what we expected given Nintendo’s officially indicated 2-6 hours estimates and roughly the same as Switch 1 (before it saw a few model revisions).
Gamers online are reporting roughly the same figures in some cases. However, there seems to be a growing number of folk saying that they aren’t even managing to reach the magic 2-hour mark whilst playing bigger games.
Of course, with the fact Mario Kart World is such a big, beautiful, online sort of deal, we expect the battery to drain faster, but it’s not great news to see that, in some scenarios, people apparently aren’t getting two hours out of it.
What’s more (and we can confirm this one), the battery in standby mode — when you’ve set your Switch 2 down for the evening — seems to be draining seriously quickly in some cases. It seems it goes from a full charge to 59% on some consoles doing this, (as it has done with mine left overnight).
Judging from some of the responses to the post above, there are a whole bunch of players who are finding that the battery is draining too quickly for their liking. Obviously, there are a lot of factors at work here; screen brightness, downloads running in the background, whether you’re using GameChat, and so on, but there’s a pattern of complaints developing.
We’ll be carrying out some tests of our own and will return with our own official findings in due course. But, in the interim, we’d love to hear how you have found the battery so far. How’s it been for Mario Kart? What about ‘smaller’ games? And, if you’ve had time to take note, how does the battery do whilst in rest mode?
And make sure to let us know all about your experiences with the Switch 2 battery in the comments. Are some games giving you better results?
