10 Things You Didn't Know Your Nintendo Switch Could Do

1. Get Faster Load Times By Swapping Storage Methods

The Legend Of Zelda Breath Of The Wild Artwork
Nintendo

The Switch's pitiful 32GB of internal storage is disappointingly small by today's standards, but the option to increase this space with additional SD cards - which are dirt cheap - makes up for the issue.

Alternatively, you can play games directly off the cartridge to save as much storage as possible. But with three different sources (cartridge, internal, SD card) from which to play your games, which will most improve load times and the overall speed of the game itself?

And yes - there is a noticeable difference in load times depending on which option you take. Last year, the folks over at Digital Foundry tested Breath of the Wild by running it from the cartridge, from internal storage and from an SD card, and the results were quite conclusive.

For their first test, they loaded up an identical Great Plateau game save across each storage method. The Switch's internal storage came out on top with a 30-second wait time - not very impressive, but still four seconds faster than an SD card and five seconds faster than the game cartridge.

Their second test, loading Kakariko Village, produced a similar result, as did using the game's fast-travel feature.

So if you're someone who values every single second of extra playtime, internal storage seems like your best bet. 32GB isn't a lot, but only using it to store your most-played titles - and whacking the rest on an SD card - is a great compromise.

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Got any other cool Nintendo Switch tricks to share? Leave them in the comments below!

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!