The Nintendo Switch is awesome. The Nintendo Switch’s battery life isn’t… that great. Even with two revisions under their belt, the latest consoles usually only stretch for around five to seven hours of playtime on average, and if you’re in it for the long haul, that might not be enough. While you can invest in the best Nintendo Switch accessories to help keep your console looking its best, there are a few steps you can take right on your system to stay in the game longer.
You can improve the battery life of your Nintendo Switch by putting less strain on the system while you play. That means canceling background tasks that eat up valuable resources (like WiFi and updates) and keeping everything as efficient as possible. This means turning down the screen brightness and muting the sound. Getting as much power out of your console as possible comes down to making a few small tweaks to keep everything running as efficiently as possible.
There will of course be times when some of these options are not available. Some games won’t work without Wi-Fi, and your environment may require you to maintain screen brightness. That’s why we review a range of options below, having tested each step to see how much battery you save with each sacrifice. If you’re still short on battery life, we recommend investing in one of the best Nintendo Switch chargers so you can safely enjoy your sessions on the go.
How to Improve Your Nintendo Switch’s Battery Life
There are four main steps you can take to improve the battery life of your Nintendo Switch when gaming on the go. You will find them listed below in order of effectiveness.
Lower screen brightness
Your Nintendo Switch screen will drain your battery faster than anything else, especially if it’s running at its maximum. Luckily, you can easily dim the brightness to extend your Switch’s battery life during an on-the-go gaming session.
Turning that brightness down completely usually gives us an extra half hour of gameplay on something like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey when tested on an OLED model of the Nintendo Switch. This extends to an extra hour in less demanding games like Elli or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. If you’re using an OLED or standard console, also be sure to turn off auto-brightness to prevent your screen from reacting to changes in the lighting around you. Nintendo Switch Lite users do not need to do this, as the system does not offer this feature.
To change the screen brightness in the Settings menu, open the system settings, go to Screen brightness and drag the slider.
If you don’t want to quit your game, you can also press and hold the Home button to bring up the quick menu where you can drag the slider next to the brightness icon.
Switch to airplane mode
If you’re not playing online, it’s worth turning off your console’s WiFi capabilities by turning on airplane mode. Not only does this save battery bags while gaming, but keeping your console unplugged while it’s on standby will also help save power during periods of inactivity. This is because your console not only downloads update data and checks for leaderboards or other social features when WiFi is on, but also constantly communicates with your router and searches for other devices to connect to. That means a lot of wasted energy.
On top of all that, many games run better without Wi-Fi buzzing in the background. We’ve noticed titles that offer additional social features, such as Dragon Quest Builders 2, that load much faster when WiFi is turned off completely. Sure, some titles need a connection to run, and you’d be surprised how many single-player games still need internet, but if you’re looking to get the most out of your console, this is one. best steps to take. . You can take. If you’re a Nintendo Switch Online member, just make sure to back up your save files to the cloud regularly when you have power.
To enable airplane mode, go to system settings from the home screen. The first menu item is flight mode, just tap the option on the right to toggle it from ‘Off’ to ‘On’.
When you do this you will also be able to toggle individual settings for Bluetooth, WiFi and NFC. This means that you can disable your internet connection while allowing Bluetooth connections. You can also turn airplane mode on and off from the quick settings menu, which is activated by holding down the Home button in any software.
Mute
We were surprised at how much power we saved by muting the sound during our test period. We added half an hour of extra battery life on average when testing the battery of a Nintendo Switch OLED in Mario Party Superstars and Dragon Quest Builders 2. It’s easy to do, just turn the volume down with the two buttons on the back top left. You can also access the volume controls through the quick settings menu by holding down the Home button and dragging the volume slider.
Consider what you play
Our final tip will have the biggest effect on your overall experience, but it can get you out of low battery trouble if you’re looking to extend your hours of entertainment rather than spending more time on a specific title. If you’re stuck killing time and don’t want your console to give up on you halfway through, think about what you’re playing.
A title like Breath of the Wild, for example, will kill battery life, which typically lasts around five hours straight on our OLED device. Less graphics-intensive games can last up to ten or eleven hours if you followed the steps above.
Keeping Your Nintendo Switch Battery Healthy
Like all batteries, the juicers inside the Nintendo Switch will degrade over time. This means that as you use your console, the overall battery life will naturally get shorter and shorter. Although this is a slow process, it is inevitable, but there are steps you can take to keep everything as healthy as possible for as long as possible. The best thing to do is to keep it charged.
The Switch uses a lithium-ion battery, which can degrade quickly if left empty for too long. We’ve all gone back to an old device at one point or another, only to have it refuse to turn on. This can be disastrous for your console, so be sure to fully charge it once in a while, especially when you notice it’s been sitting in the closet for a while.
You can also take daily steps to keep your Nintendo Switch battery healthy. Temperature is an important factor. Avoid leaving your console in a particularly hot or cold environment for an extended period of time, even while charging. We’ve noticed many Nintendo Switch cases, for example, that offer a slot to run a charging cable through to keep your console plugged in while it’s safely housed. However, these cases trap the heat generated during charging, creating an environment that is too hot for the battery to safely support. It’s best to leave your Switch out in the open when charging it.