The Real Reason the Switch Is So Weak

hello there lovely P Alex from Nintendo live here now I mean you've clicked on this video you already know what I'm going to say by modern standards the Nintendo switch is considered a little bit on the weak side but come on that's just cuz it came out in 2017 it's it's old that's the reason right right wrong and why are you so confident all of a sudden some people through various irreversible means have discovered that the switch is in fact far more capable than Nintendo is letting it be that cozy even more so for the switch OLED and later models of the switch so why efficiency if that's enough for you you can just leave the video but if it's not or you just like the sound of my voice then stick around why not but anyway that's more than enough waffling let's Dive Right into things right so the original switch the one that was released in 2017 and before the battery upgrade model it's a neat little device isn't it it can play all the games that the later models can and in exactly the same way but it turns out that there's more going on under the hood than you might initially think yes it's true that the tx1 that resides within the switch that's its uh system on a chip It's s so but Nintendo the fiends they've been intentionally hobbling it they don't want us to play games at higher frame rates and things like that obviously that's not the case but things do get even more interesting with the OLED and the switch light and the later revision of the switch because they are actually using the Integra X1 plus which according to Nvidia can be up to 25% more performance than the standard X1 sorry I can't keep a straight face with that one whenever you hear any claim like that from a manufacturer always take it with a pinch of salt because it's probably 25% more performance in one extremely specific instance and that gets less and less you know depending on how many others you look at you only have to look at Apple's graphs whenever they announce a new processor to see what I mean but even if it was is only a little bit more powerful why is it the games run in exactly the same way on the OLED as they do on the standard switch and why would Nintendo make that decision you may already know the answer but not actually realize it so you know that revision of the switch that just looked exactly the same came in a different box and Nintendo was like hey it's got a better battery life and you sort of think oh it's got a bigger battery no it's all down to the Integra X1 plus amazingly the battery inside every single Nintendo window switch system with the exception of the light is exactly the same size 16 WS it it took me far too long to find that number out I I don't like milliamp hours I like what hours what that basically means is that the battery inside the Nintendo switch can deliver 16 watts of power for an hour or this is the clever bit it could deliver 8 watts for 2 hours 16 wat hours it's it's a unit of measurement and is anyone with a phone or tablet or anything like that will know when it comes to Portable devices battery life is king and the reason that the more modern switch consoles including the OLED and all the others use this Tegra x1+ is not because it is more performative but because it is significantly more efficient Nintendo has some information on their website detailing the power consumption of the OLED and the light and all that sort of thing um the only thing is is that it doesn't actually list anything for the original switch which was important for my comparison so I had to run my own [Music] tests now I don't personally have the skill set to confidently open up a Nintendo switch well I do it's putting it back together that's the difficult part and I don't have the equipment or knowledge in order to be able to see how much power is being drawn from the battery I I'm just I'm just not that clever so I had to get a little bit creative at the cost of accuracy and scientificness so what I did is I charged both switches to 100% until there was no draw coming from the power using using this honestly this was the most convenient thing for me so when the battery screen said that the consoles were drawing zero Watts then I knew that it was time to start my test so I started up Super Smash Bros ultimate got eight CPUs to fight at once to sort of I mean that's maybe not the best stress test but it was the easiest and then I could see how much the consoles were drawing from the battery in in order to power itself now of course it will be doing things like topping up the battery and little things like that that's why I said this isn't entirely scientific but it's as close as I can get and I'm curious go down to the comments now and predict how many watts you think the original Nintendo switch will draw according to this setup go on I'll wait for a moment actually pause the video I want to carry on so I ran the test a few times and the overall result was that the original Nintendo switch Drew between 5 and 9 Watts averaging at around about seven watts of current which I don't need to tell you that's not a lot of juice oh I forgot to mention it's at the lowest brightness setting as well cuz I thought that is the fairest comparison between the two I might be wrong a 7 watt draw means that the switch's battery will last for round about 2 hours give or take obviously it's not 7 Watts all the time it goes up it goes down it depends on what the switch is doing I'm using estimates so that's okay 2 hours of Smash not bad now let's have a look at the OLED so I ran the same test on the OLED you know eight CPUs brightness at the lowest setting and the end result was between three and six watts and realistically most of the time it was just at four four Watts that means that the OLED can run for 4 hours on exactly the same battery as the original switch realistically that's nearly double nearly that's why the OLED specifically is so weak it's so that can keep going for longer and yet still play fantastic games like Pikmin 4 breath of the wild tears of the Kingdom Super Mario RPG the thye door all of those games on four Watts that's ridiculous if that doesn't mean much to you let me give you some context a humble light bulb this is a very modern very efficient light bulb it is about 800 lumens which well let me just say it's I would describe it as above mood lighting but it's not bright I don't like bright lights in my house present company accept it this light bulb this not especially very efficient light bulb but still just a single light bulb uses nearly 6 watts of power 5.9 Watts so the switch OLED uses only 2/3 of the power of this light bulb and if you're curious these two lights can drop to 45 watts each they're uh they're pretty powerful you want more context you want something a bit more comparable okay what about the steam deck lovely bit of Kit more powerful than the switch by far and it's got a bigger battery how much does it draw this test was a lot easier because you can just ask the steam deck and it'll tell you makes life a lot easier load of information online says that the steam deck is 15 watts that's not entirely true that's what the S so control but there are other things like the screen I loaded up Doom Eternal I thought the super Gess would be a good example and I managed to actually go beyond its maximum draw I managed to get 26 Watts or 26 point something but realistically that was only for a bit it was between 20 and 25 watts I just made another discovery about the steam deck um it uses more power to idle then the switch doesn't full whack don't get me wrong I'm not poo pooing the steam deck this thing is still really efficient like really really efficient certainly compared to like modern PC gaming tower God you can tell I don't do a lot of PC gaming those things control 100 Watts at idle that's the same as a human at idle I Googled that but it's impossible to deny that the switch is what four maybe five times as efficient as the steam deck and already really efficient thing it Beggars belief honestly this actually brings me on to another point about the switch 2 and the rumored specs and things like that you know due to various shipping things and publicly available information people have built up what they believe to be a pretty good idea of how powerful the switch 2 will be and yeah that's a legitimate analysis and everything like that not trying to discredit it but I will say a pinch of salt needed because even the current switch doesn't utilize all the power available to it it doesn't mean that whatever system on a chip it will be in the switch 2 will be fully utilized it will no doubt be kind of downclocked a little bit you know sort of held at Bay rained in in order to make sure that that battery lasts as long as feasibly possible so there you have it the real reason the switch is so weak is not because it's old although obviously that's a factor it's because Nintendo want you to be able to game as long as possible and come on it's a portable device I've said it in the video before I'm going to say it again battery life is King thank you so much for watching if you like this video then why don't you see how efficiently you can get to that subscribe button click it and then you'll be subscribed and be sure to check out nintendolife.com for all sorts of lovely Nintendo related content thank you again for watching bye-bye [Music] I tried playing Starfield on the steam deck as well and I I found out that it it's no longer like actually supported it it just crashed oh

Channel: Nintendo Life

Views: 73,740

Keywords: Nintendo Life, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Switch, Nintendo UK, CREATOR

Id: iyznlnIfo78

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2024