Nintendo Switch 2 Owner Warns Against Using Third-Party Chargers

A Redditor has come out to warn Nintendo Switch 2 owners of using third-party chargers to charge their console.

The Redditor performed some measurements of the power going into the Nintendo Switch 2 Dock, as well as various official and third-party chargers. The tests showed that the power going into the console from the dock does not change significantly even though there’s more power entering the dock, and some of the power is wasted as heat.

Based on their findings, assuming that the dock uses no power, the Nintendo Switch 2 dock as well as some third-party charges have 86% conversion efficiency, while one of the third-party chargers that was tested had a 73% conversion efficiency.

It was suggested that if a third-party charger shows different conversation efficiency (voltage and wattage readings) from the Nintendo Switch 2 dock, the voltage regulator could end up failing and damaging the Nintendo Switch 2. It’s also currently known that the Nintendo Switch 2 SOC (system on chip) consumes about 15W of power, and a significant difference in power could cause problems.

The Redditor recommended measuring voltage and wattage readings from third-party chargers and ensuring that they are consistently close to the readings from the Nintendo Switch 2 dock (19.5V, 20.27W into dock and 14.93V, 17.46W into console). Otherwise, it’s best to use the official charger and dock that comes with the system.

It should also be noted that during the early phase of the Nintendo Switch lifecycle, some users complained of brick consoles after using poorly-designed third-party chargers that didn’t conform with standards or had different power consumption from the official charger.

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