Switch OLED Review: Strong but Not Perfect
Our full Switch OLED review after two weeks of testing: measured performance, battery figures, and whether it is worth £309.
Priya Raghunathan
The verdict, briefly
The Switch OLED is Nintendo's 2021 entry in a crowded gaming Hardware market, and at £309 it is competing against some of the strongest hardware we have tested. After a fortnight of daily use, the headline is straightforward: it delivers the lightest console here by a clear margin.
The one-line answer: Buy it for the lightest console here by a clear margin. Think twice if this would bother you daily: the 2015 silicon shows badly in any third-party port.
In the hand
There is nothing experimental here, which is mostly to the Switch OLED's credit. The detail worth calling out is that it is the only handheld here a child can comfortably hold for an hour. Against the rest of the gaming Hardware category it feels considered rather than novel.
What it can do
Our testing runs the same suite on every device so figures stay comparable across years. The figure worth quoting is Play time: 5h 30m in demanding titles. That places it comfortably above average for its price bracket.
| Specification | Switch OLED |
|---|---|
| Display | 7in OLED, 60Hz, 400 nits |
| Chip | Nvidia Tegra X1+ |
| RAM | 4GB |
| Storage | 64GB + microSD |
| Weight | 420g |
| Battery | 4310mAh |
| Play time | 5h 30m in demanding titles |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent two weeks as the reviewer’s only games machine, across a fixed set of twelve titles. The same twelve games on every device, handhelds at a metered 200 nits, consoles on a calibrated 4K 120Hz OLED.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Play time | Battery life in three demanding titles at default settings, averaged, from full to shutdown. |
| Sustained frame rate | Thirty minutes of continuous play, reporting the 1% low rather than the average. |
| Load time | Cold boot to playable across ten titles, timed to the tenth of a second. |
| Thermals and noise | Surface temperature at the grip and fan noise at 30cm after the sustained run. |
| Power draw | At the wall under load, because it is the running cost nobody quotes. |
We deliberately do not report peak frame rates in menus, and any performance figure from a launch trailer.
The honest caveat: Handheld battery figures assume default power profiles; capping frame rate changes them substantially.
The strengths
- The lightest console here by a clear margin
- An exclusive library nothing else can offer
- The dock makes TV play genuinely effortless
Taken together, those strengths make it a natural fit for families, and anyone who wants Nintendo games.
What we did not like
- The 2015 silicon shows badly in any third-party port
- 720p handheld and 1080p docked
- Joy-Con drift remains unresolved
None of these are dealbreakers on their own. Whether they matter depends entirely on how you intend to use it, which is why the section below matters more than the score.
How it compares
The closest alternatives on price are Xbox Series S and Steam Deck OLED. All three have been through the same tests, so the figures below are directly comparable rather than collected from different reviews.
| Model | Price | Our score | Standout | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Switch OLED (this review) | £309 | 4 / 5 | The lightest console here by a clear margin | The 2015 silicon shows badly in any third-party port |
| Xbox Series S | £249 | 4 / 5 | The cheapest route into current-generation gaming by a wide margin | 10GB of shared memory is the reason some ports run poorly |
| Steam Deck OLED | £479 | 5 / 5 | SteamOS is the only handheld software that does not feel like a desktop in disguise | Raw performance now trails the Windows handhelds |
The Steam Deck OLED scores higher at £479, so the Switch OLED has to win on the lightest console here by a clear margin rather than on the total.
Is it worth the money?
At £309 the Switch OLED undercuts the category average of £495 by £186, against an average score of 3.9 out of 5 across the gaming Hardware we have tested. Its own 4 works out at roughly £77 per point. That is the straightforward case: above-average result, below-average price.
If the budget is the binding constraint, the Xbox Series S at £249 is the floor we would still recommend — below that the compromises stop being ones you can live with.
Living with it
Two weeks in, the figure that stopped mattering was display — 7in OLED, 60Hz, 400 nits is more than adequate and you forget about it by the third day. What kept surfacing instead was that the 2015 silicon shows badly in any third-party port, which is easy to shrug off in a spec comparison and harder to ignore at 6pm on a Friday. On the other side, it is the only handheld here a child can comfortably hold for an hour turns out to be the sort of detail you only appreciate after living with the alternative.
Who this is for
Buy the Switch OLED if you are families, and anyone who wants Nintendo games. Skip it if this is something you would notice every day: the 2015 silicon shows badly in any third-party port.
Buy it if:
- Families, and anyone who wants Nintendo games
- You want the lightest console here by a clear margin
- You value an exclusive library nothing else can offer
Skip it if:
- You need 2015 silicon shows badly in any third-party port to be a solved problem
- The Xbox Series S at £249 already covers what you need
- You upgraded within the last two years — the gap is not worth the outlay
Verdict
Buy it for the lightest console here by a clear margin. Think twice if this would bother you daily: the 2015 silicon shows badly in any third-party port.
Score: 4 / 5 · £309 at the time of writing.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the gaming we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Switch OLED vs Ayaneo Air 1S: Is the 2023 Model Worth the Change? and Switch OLED vs Legion Go: Is the 2023 Model Worth the Change?.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
