should i buy the nintendo switch lite ?

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imderfnz
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Joined: January 31st, 2016, 5:23 pm

should i buy the nintendo switch lite ?

Postby imderfnz » October 2nd, 2019, 5:11 pm

should i because i like to play portable consoles i dont care about rumble or any of the other missing features. or the tv feature or should i buy the original switch ?


Sonicx9
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Joined: April 27th, 2015, 6:37 pm

Re: should i buy the nintendo switch lite ?

Postby Sonicx9 » October 2nd, 2019, 8:43 pm

imderfnz wrote:should i because i like to play portable consoles i dont care about rumble or any of the other missing features. or the tv feature or should i buy the original switch ?


My advice is wait till this comes out.: https://www.techradar.com/news/nintendo ... fcc-filing

Buttermancan
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Re: should i buy the nintendo switch lite ?

Postby Buttermancan » October 4th, 2019, 2:52 pm

Here in England the Original Switch retails for £279.99 and the Lite for £199.99. Personally I would pay the extra 80 quid for the option to play on the TV with a proper controller.
I've also heard that a sizeable number of people have drifting issues with the joycons for the original switch and that the lite uses the exact same sticks and components(though they obviously cannot be detached from the handheld).

If you only like gaming handheld or if you want to save a bit of money at christmas spending on the kids, this could be a winner!

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Matchstick
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Re: should i buy the nintendo switch lite ?

Postby Matchstick » October 5th, 2019, 12:01 am

I wouldn't recommend buying either version of the Switch, myself. While the software and interface are great, the hardware and build quality of the system leaves a lot to be desired. Let's just say it does't get the "Nintendo Seal of Quality" from me.

My wife bought our Switch about a year after it came out, figuring that if we waited a bit we'd get a model where they had "worked out the kinks." She bough it brand new, and got the Walmart exclusive Splatoon 2 bundle, which came with hot pink and neon green Joycon controllers. We're both adults, and have handled the system well, never dropping the console, never throwing the controllers, etc.

Nearly every single nagging problem that you've heard about the Switch, we have experienced in some way or another:

The glass screen is scratched and scuffed from rubbing up against the dock.

The system has bowed / warped from the heat it generates from use and now barely fits into its dock.

The glass screen lens does not fit "flush" across the system anymore due to the warping, and now sticks out a bit at the top edge. Being glass, it's sharp, and has sliced us a bit on several occasions.

The small door covering the cartridge slot snapped off after being opened and shut, maybe, ten times total.

The cartridge slot only reads a game cartridge about half the time, forcing us to re-insert it several times to get the system to recognize it.

Every memory card we have used for extra storage, from several different brands, has suffered data loss and corruption at some point in time.

Both Joycons' joysticks drift. It's intermittent, but it's a problem we deal with every time we want to play.

Buttons on both Joycons fail to work at seemingly random times, mostly the "A" button and what amounts to the "R1" button on the right Joycon.

It's incredibly frustrating to deal with all these nagging issues every time we want to play, and it's gotten to the point that my wife doesn't even want to turn the system on anymore. She'll fire it up for a game of Tetris 99 or Fortnite, the Joycon drifting and button failure will act up, and she'll get frustrated and quit. It's heartbreaking to watch. I would expect some issues if we had bought the system secondhand, but after buying it new? No way. It's been such a letdown, from a hardware standpoint.

On the good side, games tend to be rather small in file size and don't have to update nearly as often as they seem to do on other systems. When they do update, it usually goes quickly. Games load up quickly, and being able to suspend a game at any point in time and come back to it later is a huge, huge plus.

When the system works, it's a joy to play. That being said, I haven't had any joy playing our Switch in almost a year now due to the controller and data corruption issues. Your mileage may vary, but speaking from my own personal experience, I wouldn't recommend the system to anyone in its current state. If a "new and improved" model ever comes out, great, go for it. But for now, I'd pass it up, imderfnz.

Voor
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Re: should i buy the nintendo switch lite ?

Postby Voor » October 5th, 2019, 10:36 am

Wow. I appreciate that post, but makes me wonder if you’re doing something fundamentally wrong, like not giving the unit proper ventilation or something. If not, I’m sorry to hear you’re having such a hard time. My brother has a switch, and hasn’t had any problems; but I know these issues are well documented.

I’ve heard that a Lite v2 is in the works.

Voor
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Re: should i buy the nintendo switch lite ?

Postby Voor » October 5th, 2019, 10:40 am

I almost picked up a switch last year but when I heard about the issues, held off and when the Lite was announced, I was very excited, since I figured I’d play it in handheld mode 90% of the time.

But drift issues on the Lite, and can’t replace joycon? That’s a dealbreaker.

I primarily just want something to play Mario Kart and smash Bros online for 30 minutes at at time, and as much as I enjoyed my 2DS when I had one, I may just go back to that, instead of investing $400 in a switch that I’ll worry about having issues. I was really interested in trying Splatoon though....

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Matchstick
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Re: should i buy the nintendo switch lite ?

Postby Matchstick » October 5th, 2019, 8:09 pm

Thanks for the kind reply, Voor.

Yes, the wife and I have been left wondering, at several points during our Switch ownership, whether or not we've been doing something wrong in regards to all the issues we've been having. We've done our best to keep it ventilated since day one. At first, we didn't even have an HDTV, and played the unit in tabletop / handheld mode exclusively for the first six months or so we owned it. During that time, we had no issues! Once we upgraded to an HD set, we bought a TV stand with five "cubbies" in it, each one completely open on all four sides around the shelves allowing for maximum ventilation. The Switch goes on one of the lower-level cubbies and has about a foot of ventilation space above it.

My wife did go on a few Zelda benders after we bought the system, and we have both put some considerable time into Splatoon. But we don't smoke (and never have) and while we have two cats, we've never had a dust / cat hair issue with any of our other systems. The Switch is not in direct sunlight, and we don't using it for streaming services such as Hulu or YouTube. I'm not sure when it started warping, but I feel like we didn't have any issues before we decided to dock it on a regular basis.

One thing that seems to help with Joycon drift is to keep the system away from any sort of electromagnetic interference. Sometimes, we pull the docked unit out of the TV stand and set it on a side table in the middle of the floor, keeping it away from the TV, speakers, and any sort of smartphone or tablet. When we do this, the Joycons seem to work better, but they still have issues from time to time. It bites that we more or less have to re-arrange the living room whenever we want to play a game on the Switch, but at least we seem to have better luck that way.

This is probably the last Nintendo hardware that I buy. Sony lost my business years ago after the PS1, PS2, and PS3 all coughed it up on me at various points in time. Particularly the PS3, as my then-girlfriend and I babied that system, yet still got the "yellow light of death" one day for no apparent reason. The last four Nintendo systems I've bought have had various issues, but the Switch has more problems than all of them combined. I bought an OG DS brand new that had eleven (!) stuck pixels on the screens. My GameCube, which I bought on launch day, stopped reading discs after three months. My Wii, also a launch-window system, started giving me strange "mini-blinds" effects on the screen within a month of use. In all three cases, I sent my systems back to Nintendo and received a replacement, but I'm definitely tired of that at this point.

is it so much to ask to just buy a system brand new and expect it to work properly? My 2600, NES, Genesis (two of 'em!), Saturn, N64, and Dreamcast are all working great, and are my original models that have been moved around and hooked up for very long stretches of time in various places over the years. I really don't think it's so much to ask for a responsible adult, such as myself, to buy a brand new piece of expensive technology and expect it to work properly under careful, proper use.

Hell, even my OG GameBoy, which was doused with Kool-Aid and dropped on the sidewalk over and over again back in the day, it still working great. And at the start of this year, I spent $75 on a "junker" Xbox One, one of the original launch models with a 500 GB hard drive. Despite being dusty and gross from its previous owner, it's been working perfectly since the day I bought it. I just wanted a cheap system so the wife could play Kingdom Hearts III, but it has completely surpassed my expectations from a build quality and functionality standpoint. No, I don't think I'll ever be an Xbox gamer, but I'm very surprised that it's the Xbox One that's holding up better in the long run than the Switch. Go figure!

One of these days, we'll get a perfected, refined Switch model which will "work out the kinks." Maybe it'll be that newer Lite model. Who knows. I hope Nintendo gets it right soon, though, for their own sake.

Voor
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Re: should i buy the nintendo switch lite ?

Postby Voor » October 6th, 2019, 8:44 am

Wow, what terrible luck! I’ve owned every Nintendo console (besides a switch) and most handhelds and never had an issue besides having to blow in the cartridge slot of my NES, which is just part of the deal. I’m glad to hear you got replacements, but with that history, I can understand your frustration.

Same with my brother. He’s owned everything (Sony and microsoft too) and only issue was the RROD. I’m currently playing on a decade old Wii that’s never had an issue and has been moved around more than any other system I’ve had.

I just guess ventilation because it sounded like your issues were heat related. So strange....

HawgWyld
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Joined: June 15th, 2017, 2:09 am

Re: should i buy the nintendo switch lite ?

Postby HawgWyld » October 6th, 2019, 7:13 pm

Voor wrote:Wow, what terrible luck! I’ve owned every Nintendo console (besides a switch) and most handhelds and never had an issue besides having to blow in the cartridge slot of my NES, which is just part of the deal. I’m glad to hear you got replacements, but with that history, I can understand your frustration.

Same with my brother. He’s owned everything (Sony and microsoft too) and only issue was the RROD. I’m currently playing on a decade old Wii that’s never had an issue and has been moved around more than any other system I’ve had.

I just guess ventilation because it sounded like your issues were heat related. So strange....


Terrible luck, indeed. My experience with Nintendo hardware has been very good over the years (my two-year-old Switch works very well and I still use my Wii U almost daily). Stories about repeat problems with Nintendo hardware make me worry about picking up another system from the Big N -- perhaps I've just been lucky so far, and how long will that last?


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