Why We're Nerfing the Nintendo Switch's Repairability Score

When we first tore down the Nintendo Switch in 2017, it earned a solid 8 out of 10 on our repairability scale. That was then. Today, as Nintendo gears up to release the long-awaited Switch 2, we’re revisiting the original—and we’re cutting its score in half.

No, the hardware hasn’t changed. But we have. We’ve scored a lot more handheld gaming consoles and developed a more comprehensive grasp of what’s possible in this hardware space. Plus, our understanding of what makes a product repairable has grown a lot in eight years, and the Switch didn’t age as gracefully as we’d hoped.

Before you line up for the Switch 2, let’s talk about what the original got right, where it fell short, and what we’re hoping Nintendo does better this time around.

Eight years later, the Switch’s glued-in battery hasn’t gotten any easier to replace.

Why Look Back?

Ordinarily, we wouldn’t have much reason to look backward and re-score older devices using updated criteria. We’ve occasionally updated more recent scores, like when we retroactively dropped the iPhone 14’s score based on feedback from the repair community, and when we reconsidered some old smartwatches in light of more complete information. But when we score the new Switch 2 later this week, we want you to be able to compare with the original. 

Most new tech ages out of the market pretty fast. But the Switch has enjoyed a much longer life than most consumer electronics; eight years after launch, it’s still flying off shelves and fueling Mario Kart marathons. Nintendo sold over 15 million Switches in 2024—almost three times the annual sales of the GameCube in its peak year. Last year, it actually became Nintendo’s longest-running console. So before the Switch 2 lands, it felt important to turn our attention to the old score and if necessary, update it. 

Eight years ago, the original Switch was devilishly tricky to score. Do you score it as a console—or is it a handheld? How do you account for the detachable controls, or the dock? Back then we didn’t have very well developed answers to those questions, so we improvised. The Switch brought a completely novel approach to gaming hardware that shifted the center of gravity for the entire industry, and we had to learn to shift with it.

Joy-Con stick drift sucks, but it’s one of the Switch’s easier repairs.

No Parts, No Manuals, and a Glued-In Battery

With the benefit of hindsight, and as our repairability scoring criteria have evolved and improved, the Switch’s flaws have become more obvious. And we’re not just talking about drifty Joy-Cons. Lots of internal Switch components are modular and theoretically replaceable, but Nintendo has never made any replacement parts publicly available, nor have they provided official instructions for any repairs. These are crucial repair criteria in which the eight-year-old Switch is now far, far behind the curve. Meanwhile the glued-in battery still takes too much work to extract, and the only charge port is soldered directly to the main board. Many repairs require separating and replacing two different types of thermal compound, one of which has proven inconvenient to source. Believe it or not, compared with the rest of the internals, a drifty joystick is actually one of the easier things to fix.

A Link to the Parts? Nintendo doesn’t have it.

And those drifty Joy Cons have been no picnic. Our repairability scorecard doesn’t attempt to capture durability—that’s a whole separate science—so the Switch’s disastrous track record with stick drift doesn’t directly tank its repairability score. But the drifty Joy Con saga has certainly helped put joystick repair procedures front-and-center in our scoring calculation in recent years, right alongside batteries and screens. (The Switch is not the only offender here, but it seems to be the most prolific.)

We’ve also learned a lot as other hardware makers have entered the handheld gaming space in the wake of the Switch’s massive sales success. It’s been an eventful few years:

• The Steam Deck showed us that powerful PC gaming could go truly portable
• The ASUS ROG Ally brought Windows gaming to a Switch-like form factor
• The Lenovo Legion Go supersized it with an 8.8″ display and helped mainstream drift-resistant Hall effect sticks
• The PlayStation Portal reimagined remote play
• The ModRetro Chromatic modernized the Game Boy Color
• The Panic Playdate had the most fun with the category we’ve seen in a while

These devices didn’t just grow the market; a lot of them also raised the bar for handheld repairability. Many of these newer systems offer more modular designs, replaceable SSDs, and better documentation and spare parts availability than we’d seen previously.

And as for how to categorize and score a hybrid console like the Switch, Nintendo themselves provided a helpful clue: More players use the Switch in handheld mode. And given the engineering constraints that go into making a gaming system fully functional on the go, it wouldn’t make sense to compare it against more conventional console-style hardware from Sony or Microsoft. 

The original Switch still has bright spots: its modular design philosophy for the joysticks, replaceable (and expandable) storage, and mostly straightforward internal layout all remain commendable. But when compared to newer devices that also offer standardized M.2 slots, socketed components, and widely available parts and repair documentation, the Switch shows its age.

Our repairability scoring rubric has gotten a lot better. The Switch’s repairability hasn’t.

Taking all this into account and scoring the Switch purely against its handheld peers, the new score of 4/10 does a much better job of reflecting its current repair reality. And in so doing, it’s helped us recalibrate our entire scorecard so that we’re ready for whatever the Switch 2 brings.

Will Nintendo Comply with New York Right to Repair?

Hopefully, this won’t be the final word on the original Switch’s repairability; Nintendo can reclaim up to two lost points by providing official repair manuals and replacement parts. 

If that happens while the original Switch still has some life left in it, we’ll be happy to update the score one more time. And of course, Nintendo has a golden opportunity to improve with the Switch 2.

The Right to Repair law that passed in New York State in 2022 requires Nintendo to do exactly that for the Switch 2: it says that manufacturers of consumer electronics must offer end users the same parts, tools, and documentation that they provide their authorized repair centers, for devices first manufactured and sold after July 1, 2023. If you’ve been following closely, you might know that most Right to Repair laws passed in the US have exemptions for video game consoles. But New York did not exempt consoles broadly; it just exempted game console repair materials for which sharing would be “inconsistent with or in violation of any federal law.” To our understanding, that only exempts parts that handle copyright-protected media, not joysticks and batteries and displays. 

We’ll be expecting Nintendo to comply with Right to Repair and release parts, tools, and documentation for the Switch 2. If they don’t, and you’re unable to get official parts or manuals from Nintendo, our friends at Repair.org would love to pass along your complaint to the New York attorney general. You might help prod Nintendo into making repair materials accessible the way they should’ve been all along.

More to Come

Lastly, we’ve also taken this moment to reassess the Switch Lite and Switch OLED, along with a handful of other key handheld gaming devices that benefit from updated scores or that have never previously been scored. We’ll be rolling out a whole new repairability index for gaming handhelds in the coming weeks—stay tuned.