Nintendo Switch Lite - Turquoise

Product overview

Nintendo Switch Lite: What to Know

This is the only device on this page where the games are bought rather than preloaded, and for a lot of parents that settles it. Every title is a current licensed release, the system receives updates, there is online and local wireless multiplayer so a child can play with friends who also have a Switch, and if the hardware fails there is a manufacturer to deal with. None of those things is true of the emulator handhelds below.

The design decision that defines it is the absence of a dock. Nintendo describes it as a compact, lightweight handheld system, and unlike the standard Switch it does not connect to a television and the controllers do not detach. That makes it smaller, lighter and cheaper, and it makes it a genuinely handheld device rather than a hybrid, which for a child who will mostly play in a car or a bedroom is the right trade. It is the wrong choice if family television play was part of the appeal.

The practical consequence of being in the Switch family is the library: Nintendo's framing, the home of Mario and friends, is the actual argument, since the first-party catalogue is the reason most people buy the hardware.

Two honest notes. This listing is remarkably thin for a major console: four short bullets with no screen size, no battery life, no internal storage figure and no weight published anywhere, which is less information than the forty-five dollar handhelds below provide. And the Switch Lite is an older model in Nintendo's line, with newer hardware now available, so it is worth checking current pricing and what else Nintendo sells before ordering rather than assuming this is the current entry point.

Key Listed Features