iFixit Says Switch 2 Is Probably Still Drift Prone

The long-awaited Nintendo Switch 2 yet dropped this week, and while it makes a number of large improvements connected its predecessor—things for illustration a amended screen, beefier soul specs, and much accessible controls—there is 1 point it's worse at. According to nan repairability advocates and gleeful disassemblers astatine iFixit, it's moreover harder to hole than nan original Switch.

Perhaps astir worrying for caller owners is that, contempt a caller “from nan crushed up” redesign for nan Switch’s Joy-Con controllers, nan guidelines origin of instrumentality drift—something that many owners of nan original person agelong complained of—doesn't look to person been genuinely addressed successful nan Switch 2.

Stick drift is thing that tin hap to joysticks, usually complete clip aliases nether dense usage, wherever activity is registered without personification input. iFixit points retired that less-drifty joystick tech that relies connected magnets alternatively of potentiometers, for illustration Hall effect aliases tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) sensors, tin thief forestall this, but it recovered neither of those coming successful nan Switch 2.

“From what we tin tell, nan redesign didn’t see a revision to nan halfway tech that causes joystick drift,” iFixit writes successful its blog post. “Unless Nintendo is utilizing immoderate occurrence caller worldly connected those resistive tracks, aliases nan alteration successful size magically solves it, nan champion hole is going to travel from third-party replacements again.”

Even worse, iFixit recovered that replacing nan Joy-Con controllers is really much difficult this clip round. “Whatever tech they usage … joysticks are a high-wear component. They tin still break successful a drop, moreover if they ne'er suffer from drift. Being capable to switch these things is simply a precocious privilege for crippled console repairability.”

Overall, iFixit has fixed nan Switch 2 a repairability people of 3 retired of 10. That’s 1 constituent little than nan 4 retired of 10 it recently retroactively gave nan first Switch, and lags down nan likes of nan PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, some of which sewage 7 retired of 10.