(upbeat music) - Yo, MKBHD here. Welcome to your first look and hands-on with the Nintendo Switch 2, and this is everything you need to know. It was obviously one of the hottest and most anticipated new consoles in a long time. So, when Nintendo invited me to this little hands-on in New York City with a few other YouTubers, obviously, I said yes. So, the first Switch, I dunno if you remember, came out in 2017. So, naturally, almost a decade later, there's a bunch of stuff that people, including myself, a mere casual, have been waiting for, for this to be updated. And spoiler alert, they basically, I think, hit every single one of those things. But there is one big asterisk kind of overhanging all of it. So, general form factor wise, the shape, very familiar. It looks like a Switch. You've probably already seen the images online, but it is noticeably bigger. So, it's the same thickness as the first generation, but it feels thinner because everything's kind of spread out more, it's bigger. The body's bigger, the Joy-Cons are bigger, and it's mostly driven by this big, new screen. So, it's now a 7.9-inch display upfront, up from 6.2. And this is still an LCD, but it's now a 1080p variable refresh rate LCD that gets up to 120 hertz and it just looks so much better than the original Switch. It looks plenty bright to me too. It supports HDR as well. Notably, it's not an OLED though, so it doesn't have the perfectly inky blacks or the battery life advantages that come with an OLED. I do kind of think that we're eventually also going to see a Switch 2 OLED. I think that makes sense. It'll probably be in a few years. There's probably also gonna be a Switch 2 Lite in a few years as well. It doesn't mean you have to wait for those, it's just something to keep in mind in the back of your head. But yeah, I'm definitely loving the variable refresh rate up to 120 hertz. Every game they're showing here takes advantage of it. You know how iPhone defenders always love to say, "Oh, people can't tell the difference between 60 and 120 hertz, it's no big deal?" But high refresh rate and gaming go hand in hand, so I think a lot of people will appreciate the smoother games and potentially also the smoother UI that comes with it. So, the screen is the biggest improvement. Now, there are some other nice quality of life improvements here, like the full width kickstand that lets you prop it up at a pretty wide variety of angles, including almost all the way down, similar to the Switch OLED, but they added another port up to the top as well. And that makes it easier to charge while the console's kind of sitting on a table or something, since that was a pain before. And it's also perfect for the additional USB type C accessories, which I'll get to in a second. But I think the other obvious biggest upgrade is the new Joy-Cons. So many things are better about these new Joy-Cons. First of all, they are bigger like everything else, which ergonomically is very welcome. The left and right sticks are larger too. There's a new C button down here for Game Chat, which I will also get to in a second. And then they connect to the main console with magnets in a really satisfying way. They basically just slap right onto the side and line up automatically. No slide necessary. Love a good magnet. You get them off by holding this release button here, which is literally just a lever that pushes the Joy-Con off the side of the Switch. And I think it's really nicely calibrated. If you just touch the release button but don't pull, the Joy-Con actually pushes off but then snaps right back on because the magnet is so strong. But if you release and pull, then it just pops off really easily and then you can snap it back on whenever you want with a nice click. Now, the neat thing is most of the Joy-Con is still made of plastic to be lightweight, but at the top here, these SR and SL buttons, first of all, they are way bigger than last gen, but they're also actually made of the metal that the magnets in the console are attracted to. They're steel buttons. So, that's why the connection between the Joy-Cons and the Switch are so strong, is that metal right there. My only worry here is actually just durability. So, you can see when you pull that Joy-Con off, you can see these pins on the Switch, and I kind of wonder how many little kids are gonna bend those pins. Like, there is a tiny bit of wiggle actually built in to hopefully make it not snap too easily. But yeah, there's no way to tell until they start shipping these to real people and we start seeing the stories rolling in, but I'm gonna keep an eye on that. Oh, and there's also stronger-feeling haptics, they're called HD Rumble 2. The Rumble pack is directly attached to the plastic in the back of the Joy-Cons. They feel nice and strong, a little bit more precise too, so that's really nice. And then lastly, each Joy-Con can also be used as a mouse in supporting games. I did not see this one coming. It's a kind of interesting idea, but basically, there's a small optical sensor on the side of the Joy-Con. So, if you turn that Joy-Con horizontally and place that sensor down on a table, you can move it around like a mouse, even rotate it, and that acts as yet another input method that apparently certain games will work pretty well with. I was doing this demo of a wheelchair basketball game, and so it ended up being pretty intuitive. You kind of hold the triggers and push forward and you would move forward in the game. Never would've thought it would work so well, but there's a good amount of sensitivity. Apparently you can do this while swiping forward on your jeans and your lap too if you wanted to. Other surfaces should work as well. In the Nintendo Direct livestream, they also showed this other golf game where you move the putter around and rotate it and then make a stroke using the mouse motion, all on a table like a mouse. So, yeah, I guess that makes sense. We'll see what other games end up using this control. Now, we didn't get a whole lot of other specifics, like the chip it's running, or even how much RAM it has, which admittedly, a lot of Switch buyers just don't care about. But one big spec that they did improve is they've gone from 32 gigs of storage on the original Switch to 256 gigs of storage, and the storage is faster. So, I definitely appreciate this. You can see my Switch home screen behind me. I could only fit three games on my Switch 'cause one of 'em is "Rocket League" and it was like 17 gigs. But I also think this will directly relate to how much larger Switch 2 games will probably be. So, 256 gigs will feel in line with the larger file sizes, bigger textures, higher resolution, and all that. Switch 2 games will probably also be bigger too. So, thankfully, there is still microSD card support. It lives right here under the hinge again, and you'll specifically have to get a microSD Express card to play games off it on the Switch 2. But I think, generally, they'll be pretty easy to find. I already saw Lexar is gonna be making a one terabyte microSD card just for the Switch 2, so that's awesome. Now, the Switch isn't a Switch without the dock, and the new dock supports 4K resolution out to a TV. Love to see that. There's actually also a fan in the Switch 2 dock that turns on while it's docked. So, while it's cranking out that extra resolution, it doesn't get too hot. But from there, I feel like all of the new software features have a bit of a theme. The Switch 2 feels like a much more social console. Like, I think Nintendo saw a ton of success with the original Switch and started thinking about more ways to make it a better experience, because now there are gonna be groups of people where several of them have a Switch. So, when you hit that new C button on the Joy-Con, it brings up this new menu called Game Chat. So, they didn't let us do this in the demos that I tried today, but in Nintendo Direct, you can see the idea is if you have some friends on other Switches gaming at the same time as you, you can all turn your mics on and talk to each other, or even turn screen sharing on to see each other's gameplay live, which is cool. I know a lot of people do FaceTime while gaming and kind of wanna combine the whole experience. So, I personally probably wouldn't do this, but I totally get it. And it's funny, it was actually refreshing seeing this in Nintendo's official footage. You can see the gameplay from other people as you're watching it, it's kind of laggy and it's kind of low resolution, but it's totally fine. This makes me believe more that what we're seeing here is exactly how it'll look. Nintendo didn't wanna make any fake promises, like, "Oh, it'll be 1080p when you watch other people game." But hey, at least you'll have an idea of what's going on on their screen. So, that's cool. But not only that, if you get this optional accessory here, which is called the Switch 2 Camera, this little thing plugs into that top port on the Switch when you're docked, or I think you can even plug it straight into the dock itself. And when you point it at yourself, it can automatically cut you out from the background and put your face next to your gameplay. So, it literally feels like a gaming version of a Zoom call or something, like, everyone can see their friends' faces and their friends' reactions to the games in real time. And some games will even integrate that feed a little more, like putting your face over where an avatar would normally be. It's like video chatting while playing a game. It's not gonna be the highest fidelity thing ever, but it'll be a sort of extra layer on top and makes it feel more social. So, Game Chat is cool when you're in multiple different places, but there's also gonna be situations where multiple people are all gaming in the same physical place with Switches. And so, they built a feature just for that, which is being able to share a game with other people who don't have it yet, up to three other people. So, one Switch 2 is the host, and then up to three other Switches, they don't have to have the game installed at all, it's just one guy goes, "All right, guys, I have this game. We're all gonna play it in the same room. And every one of you now temporarily has this game." And you can play your own perspective of the multiplayer or whatever without having to buy or install the whole thing at that moment. I'm not sure exactly how long it'll take to set up or exactly which games will support it, but a Switch 2 can host and then up to three other Switches can join. It's called GameShare. I like it a lot. And then actually, speaking of games, there's basically gonna be three types of games for the Switch 2. There will be Native Switch 2 games, and those are the ones that are the most optimized and should look the best with the best graphics, potentially taking the most advantage of the extra features and Game Chat and mouse controls. Then there will be Switch 1 games, some of which will be compatible with the Switch 2, it just might not look as good. And then there will be Switch 1 games that get kind of remastered or updated for the Switch 2, so like a Switch 2 version of the game. So, hopefully you don't have to pay a full price for a whole new game. You'll pay a smaller amount for an updated version of the game for the Switch 2. But I think that pretty conveniently brings us to the big asterisk hovering over all of this, which is pricing. See, the Switch 2 is gonna start off at $449 in the US. Now, I've seen mixed reactions to that price. Obviously, the Switch 1 was amazing, it was 300 bucks, but that was almost 10 years ago. So, now, new specs and updates and inflation and tariffs and all of that to me actually makes 449 feel like a pretty reasonable price. The Switch 2 Camera accessory is 50 bucks. Feels about right. There's also a new Switch 2 Pro Controller with new back buttons, plus a headphone jack, and of course the added C button. That'll be around $80. But then the game pricing is where they start to lose people a little bit. It's reported that Switch 2 games are gonna be around 80 bucks just for a digital download Switch 2 game. 90 bucks if you want the physical version. That definitely feels really high. There are so many great PC and console games, and even Switch 1 games in the store in the 50 to $60 range right now. "NBA 2K25" is my staple for an expensive game. That's 70 bucks on the PS5. So, pushing that up again, 80 to 90 bucks for a Switch 2 game does feel kind of like it's pushing it. And then they also announced this really smart-looking demo game called "Welcome Tour" that basically walks you through all of the features and lets you demo everything and really get to know the Switch 2 well. It kinda reminds me of "Astro's Playroom" on the PlayStation 5, which did the exact same thing. Helped you learn what the DualSense controller was capable of, and that was free. That actually came pre-installed on the PS5 at launch. And Nintendo has even done "Wii Sports" in the past, which was a free demo game that came on the Nintendo Wii and low key turned out to be one of the greatest games of all time. The Nintendo Switch 2 demo game though is paid. It's not included for free. It's gonna be like 10 or 20 bucks or something like that in the store. But even just having it paid at all to me seems like a huge miss. There's gonna be so many people that are not going to experience it, that are not going to be able to fully walk through it and understand and get to know their Switch 2 because no one's gonna go buy that demo game. I don't know what they were thinking there. Other than that though, the Switch 2 seems pretty sweet, not gonna lie. I really like it. There's a reason the original Switch was one of the best-selling consoles of all time. It was well-priced, great form factor, very versatile, for me, the perfect airplane game console. I would say the signs are pointing to Switch 2 also being really good again. But there are also definitely some things we still don't know. Like, for example, we obviously don't know the chip and the RAM. We do know it's confirmed that there is some amount of DLSS happening. I would assume that to do 4K on a TV, there's some amount of upscaling happening, we just don't know exactly how much yet. But then also battery life, how similar or different will battery life potentially be from the first Switch? Having a bigger, higher refresh rate, higher resolution screen tends to eat battery life, but it's also bigger, so the battery capacity can be bigger. So, maybe it just balances out and it's similar. TBD, I don't think fast charging is announced or anything crazy like that. But then also things like durability and whether they fix Joy-Con drift or no. These are all things that are TBD and that I think would be great to find out for a full review. So, maybe get subscribed if you're interested in seeing something like that to be among the first to see it. And lemme know in the comments down below what else you wanna see. Now, if you're one of those people who's just gonna pre-order no matter what, then I highly recommend checking out the Killswitch from channel sponsor Dbrand. See, originally the Killswitch line was developed for the Steam Deck and then ended up being one of the best possible Steam Deck cases. So, now they're taking this same formula and making it for the Switch 2, plus some cool extras. So, there's a travel cover. So, just like the Steam Deck version, it will be super protective so you can toss it in a bag or wherever else you want. But then for the Switch 2, they added a game card holder. So, you can hold up to 10 games with you, and you can even see them through the frosted finish. They've also added some ergonomic hand grips. And unlike other Switch cases, they also detach with the Joy-Cons. But the whole point of the Switch 2 is that when you take it with you on the go, you can dock it when you get home, right? Most cases aren't going to fit inside the dock, but Dbrand solved that one too with a dock adapter that they're including with every purchase. So, if you wanna check 'em out, hit 'em up at dbrand.com/switch2. Either way, thanks for watching this first look. Lemme know what you're thinking in the comments below, and I'll catch you the next one. Peace. (upbeat music)