At a glance, the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller may not appear to be a significant upgrade, but with all the subtle changes, Nintendo has delivered a substantial upgrade.

In the camp of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ Nintendo has done nothing to leave the battery life of the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller in bad comparison to its counterpart. This thing is advertised to last around forty hours, and without timing myself every second I used it, that sounds right, and maybe even an understatement. One improvement, however, is that it now takes around half the time to reach a full charge. It took me 3.5-4 hours to reach full charge, and after that much use, it’s really nothing to charge it up in that time. 

I’m surprised the battery hasn’t taken a slight bump, as HD Rumble 2 is more vibrant than and offers more intense and enhanced feedback than the previous rumble. It’s not exactly night and day, but it’s noticeable enough and would surely use a bit of battery power. But it doesn’t seem to be affecting it.

The black and white tone at the top of the controller might be an odd colour design for some, but I enjoy how different it is.

When I say I’ve been comfortably gaming with this controller for the past month, I’m not exaggerating. The Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller is extremely comfortable to use. I would compare the comfort of this to using the Xbox Elite Controller. This is, in part, I believe, due to some subtle and not-so-subtle changes. Firstly, the controller now has a grippy matte texture that makes holding it feel great. When picking up the original Pro Controller again for comparison, it feels like it’s made of cheaper plastic. The handles have also been slighlty tweak, they’re a bit thinner and I haven’t had issues with this, as my hands find the controlelr very comfterable, but I will note that if you had issues with the old controller being too small, then this isn’t going to be any better, and in fact, would be worse.

The buttons on the controller are all very comparable to the first Pro Controller, except for the analogue sticks themselves, which now feel significantly smoother. I was able to test out Apex Legends and Fortnite on the Nintendo Switch 2, and both felt great with this controller. I have always found the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller to lack full 360-degree motion, which I’m accustomed to on most other controllers; this limitation makes certain games, such as shooters, feel less enjoyable to play.

Nintendo hasn’t changed the front buttons here at all, which is one area they could have improved. The L/R and ZL/ZR buttons are all super-clicky and responsive, however since Nintendo has chosen not to chump onto the analogue trigger train, if you’re used to being able to do half-trigger presses, or have games respond to that more deep input response that they enable, you’ll be missing that on the Pro Controller 2. It would have been great to see, especially knowing games like Mario Kart World and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4 would have easily been able to make great use of them.

What Nintendo have chosen to add here is a welcome addition in the form of two buttons, named GL and GR, that sit at the back, high-end of the handles. You can map these buttons to any other button, and it works on a per-game basis. The best function I’ve found for this so far was being able to run and jump in Breath of the Wild without having to move my hand formation. It was also helpful to map the inventory button in Fortnite and the slide button in Apex Legends.

Anyone playing Fortnite, Apex Legends, or other online games like Mario Kart World with friends will also be happy to know that the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller 2 has a 3.5MM audio jack on the bottom, opening up a world of headset possibilities.

The last new button on the controller is the ‘C’ button, which stands for Chat. It opens the in-game menu to set up and invite friends to online gaming sessions or Discord-like hangout sessions. I wish you could remap this button if you didn’t care to play with friends, but alas, it’s not an option.

I’ve been using the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller for a month now. Although that’s still a small sample size for how it’ll perform over months and years, particularly in terms of stick drift, I don’t see any signs of things slowly creeping towards a particular direction or another. I also wanted to use the controller for a decent amount of time before writing my review, simply to see if the texture, which I was loving, would wear off after 40-50 hours of use, and that hasn’t happened either.

(A review unit was supplied for the purposes of this article.)