I got a Switch in December 2017. The joycons started to drift roughtly 9 months later. I sent them in for repair and to be fair, Nintendo's repair service (and warranty, at least in the EU) is...
I got a Switch in December 2017. The joycons started to drift roughtly 9 months later. I sent them in for repair and to be fair, Nintendo's repair service (and warranty, at least in the EU) is excellent, all was fixed with no issues. While my old joycon was sent in for repair, I thought it might be a good time to invest into a second pair. That started to drift 6 months later, had it repaired. Now the old pair is drifting again, this time the right joycon joystick (which makes sense if it's wear and tear, I'm using the right joycon less in most games). Also the left joystick click no longer registers and the small L/R buttons no longer work (together with the little lights that blink when connecting), which means the left joycon can no longer be used as an individual controller.
My personal problems might be anecdotal but /r/NintendoSwitch has a big, yearly survey with ~900 participants and they had a question about joycon drift. It affected 45% of participants. This wasn't a survey built around joycon drift, it's a fairly neutral "subreddit demographics" survey so that should be good data. I think it's pretty safe to say this isn't some "loud minority" situation where 1% of people were unlucky, there seems to be a real build quality issue with joycons and I consider it the Switch's biggest flaw. Warranty will run out, so at least every 2 years, you'd have to replace your joycons. You could also let them be repaired or learn how to replace them yourself but all of these seem like temporary fixes, which also cost money and time.
Nintendo is aware of this since at least 2017 and they apparently haven't done anything to fix the issue (or even acknowledge it until now). It's a real head-in-the-sand tactic on Nintendo's part and I'm kinda glad it's starting to turn into a mainstream story they can no longer hide from.
I got a Switch in December 2017. The joycons started to drift roughtly 9 months later. I sent them in for repair and to be fair, Nintendo's repair service (and warranty, at least in the EU) is excellent, all was fixed with no issues. While my old joycon was sent in for repair, I thought it might be a good time to invest into a second pair. That started to drift 6 months later, had it repaired. Now the old pair is drifting again, this time the right joycon joystick (which makes sense if it's wear and tear, I'm using the right joycon less in most games). Also the left joystick click no longer registers and the small L/R buttons no longer work (together with the little lights that blink when connecting), which means the left joycon can no longer be used as an individual controller.
My personal problems might be anecdotal but /r/NintendoSwitch has a big, yearly survey with ~900 participants and they had a question about joycon drift. It affected 45% of participants. This wasn't a survey built around joycon drift, it's a fairly neutral "subreddit demographics" survey so that should be good data. I think it's pretty safe to say this isn't some "loud minority" situation where 1% of people were unlucky, there seems to be a real build quality issue with joycons and I consider it the Switch's biggest flaw. Warranty will run out, so at least every 2 years, you'd have to replace your joycons. You could also let them be repaired or learn how to replace them yourself but all of these seem like temporary fixes, which also cost money and time.
Nintendo is aware of this since at least 2017 and they apparently haven't done anything to fix the issue (or even acknowledge it until now). It's a real head-in-the-sand tactic on Nintendo's part and I'm kinda glad it's starting to turn into a mainstream story they can no longer hide from.