Coming into this console generation with the spectre of Switch 1's Joy-Con drift debacle in our minds, reviewers approached the Switch 2's Joy-Con with extreme caution. The controllers seemed much improved, but problems take time to manifest, and even when things do go wrong, knowing whether you've got a one-off dud or a widespread issue is difficult.
With that in mind, we invited Gal Silver of GameTraderZero to share his thoughts, having disassembled and worked on hundreds of Joy-Con 2s in the 15 months since we first got our hands on them...
Most controller reviews are written after a few days of use and excitement. They tend to miss things that simply haven’t had time to show up yet. A brand-new Joy-Con hasn’t seen enough playtime for its quirks to reveal themselves, and early reviews are often focused on something else entirely—like comparing it to the previous generation.
This isn’t one of those reviews. This is a collection of observations based on my own experience working on, modifying, repairing, and testing more than 1,000 Switch 2 Joy-Con.
As a technician, I can tell you that when you open the first controller of a new generation, it’s never quite what you expect. Your familiarity with the previous generation is quickly replaced by the dreadful thought: “Oh, this isn’t what I expected at all. This is going to be a nightmare.” But by the 100th set, you’ve forgotten that moment completely. It’s kind of the antithesis of “I remember where I was when…”
And while a single Joy-Con can tell you whether you like it or not, a thousand Joy-Con begin to reveal patterns in how the hardware is actually evolving.
Over the past year, I’ve opened, modified, repaired, upgraded, and tested more than 1,000 Nintendo Switch 2 Joy-Con. I’ve worked on launch units, later production runs, customer returns, and controllers that have accumulated months of real-world use. And after working at this scale, I thought I’d share my perspective.
Some of the patterns confirmed what I expected. Others surprised me, and a few only became obvious after seeing the same hardware hundreds of times. These are the observations that stood out the most.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.nintendolife.com/features/what-i-learned-after-working-on-over-1000-switch-2-joy-con
