Nintendo has never competed on raw specs. Its consoles owe their devoted following to rethinking how people play, whether that was the NES breaking into living rooms with toy-like charm, the Wii turning motion controls into a global phenomenon, or the original Switch combining home and handheld gaming into a single device that became more than a console, offering a social lifeline in the midst of pandemic isolation.

The Switch 2 builds on that legacy. It’s faster, sharper, and clearly built for a generation that grew up with Mario and now expects performance along with nostalgia. The Switch 2 features a new Nvidia chip with faster LPDDR5X memory, upgraded from the original’s LPDDR4, and 256 GB of UFS 3.1 storage: eight times the capacity and many times the speed of the launch model’s 32 GB eMMC. The screen is larger at 8 inches, running at 120 Hz with HDR support.

Use the embedded Voyager window below to explore the full Switch 2 scan. Click and drag to rotate the view, and scroll or pinch to zoom in on details.

Our friends at iFixit have already done a thorough teardown of the Switch 2, using scans done on their Neptune to guide them. We decided to take a closer, non-destructive look at one of its most critical components: the redesigned Joy-Con controller.

Drift diagnosed

Nintendo says the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons have been “redesigned from the ground up.” That’s structurally true. The console has an updated look. The rail-and-clip system is gone, replaced with magnetic latching. There’s mouse-style input and integrated voice and video chat. But under the thumbstick, we find a familiar story.

Anyone who’s logged substantial hours on a first-gen Switch has encountered stick drift. You aren't touching the controls, but your character starts tip-toeing across the screen. That’s not a software glitch; it’s coming from physical degradation of the hardware itself. At the heart of the problem is a potentiometer: a mechanical component where metal contacts slide across a resistive surface. Over time, the surface wears down or accumulates dust, leading to false signals.

This is the most common pain point for the original Joy-Cons, and the new design does not fundamentally change it. Nintendo admits as much, already offering the same Joy-Con repair program for Switch 2 as they did when the issue first arose. The stick modules may be housed differently, but the sensing principle and failure mode remain the same.

Open the Switch 2 Joystick Scan

Potentiometers vs. Hall effect

Potentiometers are standard in most consumer game controllers because they are inexpensive and easy to integrate. But they are mechanical, and wear-induced failure is inevitable. Luckily, alternatives exist. Hall effect sensors detect position using a magnet and a magnetic field sensor. Because there’s no contact, there’s no wear, and thus no drift. Third-party controllers from 8BitDo and GuliKit already use this approach.

TMR (Tunneling Magnetoresistance) sensors also rely on magnetic fields but offer greater sensitivity and stronger resistance to external interference. They are more complex to implement but increasingly viable in compact electronics.

Nintendo couldn’t use Hall sensors without conflict. The Switch 2’s Joy-Cons attach magnetically, and those mounting magnets would interfere with Hall-based sensing. But TMR might have worked. However, it would’ve required firmware and processing changes, new suppliers, and likely a longer development cycle. In exchange, it could have eliminated the single most frustrating flaw in an otherwise excellent design.

In the scrub animation of a hall effect joystick below, you can see the sensors rooted in the PCB with the high-density magnets placed directly above (but not touching) them.

Open the Hall Effect Joystick scan

What CT makes clear

Joy-Cons are modular, detachable, and central to the Switch’s identity. That makes their durability more important, not less. Our industrial CT scan reveals an elegantly integrated magnetic latch mechanism, and a compact, efficient internal layout. But the scan also shows a controller built around a known failure mode. The result is a clearer picture of the tradeoffs.

CT scanning clues us into how and why these decisions are made. And while it’s easy to critique from the outside, the reality is that every hardware team has to weigh timelines, sourcing, user expectations, and technical constraints. Our scan doesn’t just highlight a design compromise; it speaks to the complexity of building consumer hardware in a world of real-world compromises.