Nintendo Switch Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

Downs

4. Battery Life In Portable Mode Can Be Tiny

There's no getting around it: Because the Switch is the world's first attempt to squeeze a home console experience onto a tiny tablet - even including a cooling fan to offset the heat if need be - it still can't handle something like Zelda for longer than around 2.5 hours un-docked.

Now, this battery life can be extended to twice and almost thrice the amount by playing games that don't ask the Switch to render anywhere near as much as Nintendo's new magnum opus. Zelda is clearly a gargantuan computational powerhouse, but the likes of the ace Snipperclips, Shovel Knight or Fast RMX are not.

As such, you can mitigate this downer by rationing out your portable time on Nintendo's finest game in years, but when that's probably why you bought the system anyway, it's not a great compromise.