Gadgetory

- With the Nintendo Switch Lite being officially revealed, there's a question I think a lot of people are asking themselves and that's, "Should I change over from a regular Switch to the Switch Lite?" Sure, it's aimed at trying to bring in more demographics and it's a more affordable option for people that don't already own Switches, but there are people out there where the idea of a smaller, more portable focused Switch is really appealing. And if you are thinking of changing over from your current Switch to the Switch Lite when it releases in just over two months, should you try to get rid of your Switch right now rather than wait to get the most money possible? First let's just talk about whether or not you should even be changing in the first place. Now something that makes this revision a little different from other times we've talked about console changes like going from a regular Xbox One to a One X, PlayStation, PlayStation 4 Pro, is that the Switch Lite is not a direct upgrade of the regular Switch. It's meant to be much more of an alternative side option and something that's much more accessible for some people than a regular Switch would be and so as a result it does have some very unique benefits but comes with a lot of trade offs as well. The biggest of these is of course the inability to hook it up to a TV to play in dock mode. In other words it's a Switch that doesn't actually Switch at all. It's a purely dedicated handheld and I can say from personal experience that for me at least that's not that huge of a deal. My Switch is basically 90% always in handheld mode and there are definitely situations where I like having it docked and I appreciate it but if it was gone it wouldn't be that huge of a deal to me. There are some other trade offs as well like the smaller screen size, the lack of HD Rumble, but those also come at the kind of improvements of having a more portable system and joy-cons that are locked into it making it an overall much sturdier design. So in this situation the decision of whether or not you should switch over really comes down a lot to, well personal preference and it's especially weirder in the situation to change over between systems because you're not really just straight up gaining things you lose a lot in the process as well. So you have to really analyze how you've been using your Switch personally and whether or not what you're losing actually matters to you in the first place or not and it's worth those improvements like better battery life and portability. Now of course right now this argument is entirely working around how the Switch Lite is being advertised and assuming that is going to be 100% accurate to what they're talking about right now. That it's gonna have the better batter life. That it's going to be a sturdier design. That stuffs all cool but these opinions can change once it's actually released and we get a real hands-on to compare it to the Switch. Now if you are thinking of getting rid of your current Switch in order to get a Switch Lite once it releases, an important question you have to ask yourself is do you want to get rid of it right now? Because just by the Switch Lite existing the resale value of your regular Switch is going to change even though it isn't a full blown revision or replacement. In fact if you look on Ebay right now and compare prices of what they were before the Switch Lite was announced, the average price has already gone down by about $25 and that's gonna change. And if you're gonna take the easier way out of say going to a store and trading your Switch in, well right now GameStop lists their trade-in value of a Switch at $200 which is the MSRP of a Switch Lite. Which is cool but as more people decide to trade-in and do that they're more likely to bring down that trade value so you're gonna get less the longer you wait. Now of course there are some reasons to hold of and think about this as well. First off we don't actually know how the Switch Lite itself is going to for sure perform at launch. We can always assume based on how they've talked about it but who knows it could be something that releases, we discover something about it that's flawed or broken in some way that's really annoying and guess what you already got rid of your Switch to switch over and that's not a good position to be in. Of course another reason why you might want to wait on reselling or trading in your Switch is that sure if you do it sooner you're gonna get a higher value, but that also means you're not gonna have a Switch until late September and you're gonna miss out on the chance to play some major games as they're being released. Sure it's not the holiday season, we're seeing a bunch of stuff back-to-back but there's some individual big titles that're coming out like Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Astral Chain, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3. If you don't get the chance to play those right away, you're kind of missing out on the initial hype and conversation which can suck really bad. But if you're willing to be patient and wait for it it can be worth it. There's one other weird bit of news that's started going around recently that can also affect whether or not you want to try and sell your Switch right now to get a higher value and that's the fact that we actually might be seeing another new Switch, a regular one, kind of. Shortly after the announcement of the Switch Lite another bit of news that's been circling the internet is that people found filings suggesting that Nintendo's going to be doing a model refresh of the standard Switch featuring a new processor. Likely the one that's going to be in the Switch Lite. However, there are a lot of people hoping that this could mean that there's some kind of significant benefit that the regular Switch could have if you bought one of these newer models. Specifically having better battery life like the Switch Lite has, having more stabilized frame rates for certain games that sometimes have dipping issues, and maybe even speeding up loading times. Now to be clear I'm not saying that none of those things are going to happen, I just don't think they're going to be significant enough to actually really matter. But if they did it could mean that for people that actually pay attention to these numbers the value of a regular Switch that was released before this refresh would go down in comparison to these newer slightly more powerful ones. Compared to reselling or trading in Switch now to get ready for Switch Lite this is a much riskier thing to bank on because again I really don't think it's likely goin to be something that's going to have a significantly noticeable change in performance and even if it has a slight increase, you're still gonna end up having to spend money out of pocket because a regular Switch is still gonna go for 300 bucks not the 200 price point that the Lites are selling at. Really the more important impact of this news is just based on the fact that there could be a quiet refresh of Switch models does mean that there's more reasons why a current Switch can sell for less in the coming months. By the way if you are thinking of reselling or trading in your current Switch to get a Switch Lite or maybe even the quiet refresh regular Switches please make sure that you take the necessary precautions. Make sure you have a Nintendo Switch Online account and backup all of your cloud saves and keep in mind that not all games actually support cloud saves yet. So there are some titles like Splatoon 2 where if you move over to a new system you're not gonna be able to currently move that information over. Nintendo has had rumors and talked lightly about improving the system and making it work a different way so that you can more easily move from one system to another but for the time being some games simply will not do that. So really think about whether or not you want to lose progress for those specific titles and make sure that you back up any games that do support cloud saves. I know some of you guys watching this right now might be thinking who would be crazy enough to trade in a Switch they already have just to buy a new model, but it happens there are people that are always excited for new models to come out and on top of that there is of course the issue that some Switches have simply not been aging super great. Mine in particular has already begun to crack and all apart in a lot of sections and it can be really tempting to get a new version that comes out with hopes that it's not going to have that same aging issue. So let me know down below in the comments that if you guys already have a Switch are you planning to get a Switch Lite? Do you want to hold on to both of them? Are you going to trade one in to get the other? Let me know and I'll see you guys later.