The Nintendo Switch is an incredible portable gaming machine that blurs the lines between home consoles and handhelds. It’s a truly innovative piece of hardware.
But we can make it better; we have the technology.
As a fervent Switch enthusiast who’s spent uncountable hours with my eyes glued to its screen, there are some things about Nintendo’s handheld that frankly aren’t that great out of the box. These Nintendo Switch accessories target some of the Switch’s most grievous quirks and flaws to give you the optimum Switch experience, both at home and on the go.
The Nintendo Joy-Cons are a great proof of concept, but they’re an ergonomic nightmare for playing anything for more than an hour at a time. A full controller is an absolute must, and none is as feature-complete as Nintendo’s own Switch Pro Controller. Only the Pro Controller has HD Rumble, gyroscopic motion tracking, and an NFC reader all together in one comfortable controller—the competition is always missing at least one (and sometimes all) of those features.
Nintendo is the king of portable gaming, but for some reason, they never give us proper cases for their handhelds. The Orzly Nintendo Switch Carry Case lets you carry all your Switch essentials in one compact case. There’s room for your Switch, eight cartridges, your charger, and a Pro Controller in a case that’s only barely larger than your Switch.
If the Switch Pro Controller isn’t your thing, the 8bitdo Wireless Adapter 2 lets you connect your favorite wireless controller to your Switch. This adorable little dongle provides support for virtually any Bluetooth gaming device, whether it’s your Xbox controller or DualSense.
The adapter doesn’t just work on your Switch. You can slot it into your laptop or PC to enjoy your favorite PC games with your preferred console gamepads.
The Nitro Deck+ is a clever little add-on that gives the Switch some chunk, heft, and curves for a more ergonomic handheld gaming experience.
It’s more than a simple replacement for your Joy-Cons. It comes with Hall Kit thumbsticks (no more stick drift—hooray!) and Hall Effect triggers for adjustable sensitivity, remappable side buttons, and a USB-C output port for docked gaming. The Nitro Deck+ also steals one of my favorite things about the Steam Deck: programmable back buttons. Get one and feel the joy of being able to hold run and spin the camera at the same time.
If you play online games like Splatoon 2 or Monster Hunter Rise, you know what dropped packets and iffy signal strength can do to you. It’s just simple fact that a wired connection is better than wireless, so it’s a headscratcher that Nintendo didn’t add an ethernet port to the original Switch’s dock.
The Hori Switch LAN Adapter rights this wrong. Just plug it into one of the USB ports on your dock and hook it up to a LAN cable for a stronger, more stable internet experience on Switch.
Of course, Nintendo did fix eventually fix this problem by adding an ethernet port to the OLED Switch Dock, but if you’re rocking the OG Switch and Dock, the Hori Switch LAN Adapter is a must-buy.
Once I got my Switch Pro Controller, I never wanted to go back to the Joy-Cons. Unfortunately, playing with your Switch sitting up on a desk is uncomfortable, unless you enjoy constantly staring down at that tiny screen.
The Fixture S2 lets you enjoy a true handheld Switch experience with your favorite controller. This adjustable monitor stand wraps around your controller, keeping the screen at just the right height and distance for comfortable handheld gaming. It’s also foldable and fits into a carry case.
The Mumba Blade Dockable Case provides a protective cover for your Switch in case you drop it (and you will drop it). It’s made from a shock-resistant TPU with a scratch-resistant transparent back panel that has special cutouts for the Switch’s fan exhausts.
The Blade adds some thickness to the sides and back of the Joy-Cons for more comfortable gripping and is designed to allow your Joy-Cons to ease slide in and out of the case. Most importantly, it slots right into the official Switch dock, so you never have to remove the Mumba at all.
The official Switch Dock is too bulky for travel, which is an issue if you want to play in Docked Mode while traveling. The Genki Covert Dock Mini is both a charger and a dock inside a form factor small enough to toss into a fanny pack. Just plug your Switch into the Covert Dock via the included USB-C cable and hook it up to a TV—perfect for gaming in hotel rooms or if you travel with a portable monitor.
Speaking of portable monitors…
That Switch ad where people are at a party happily playing on a Switch is a lie because they should all be squinting. The Switch’s 6.2-inch screen is enough when played in your hands, but it’s way too small and dark to be comfortable at any farther than 3 feet away.
The UPERFECT 2K 120Hz Portable Gaming Monitor is a travel-ready 16-inch screen you can hook your Switch up to for when you’re away from a TV. It supports up to 1600p resolution and comes with mini-HDMI and USB-C ports, stereo speakers, and a 3.5-mm audio jack. Crucially, the screen has an advertised brightness of 500 nits, which makes it great even under sunlight.
Your average Switch game ranges between 3–7 GB each, but your Switch only comes with a piddling 32 GB of internal storage. Even if you’re like me and prefer owning physical versions of your games, with all the patches and updates that come out, that 32 GB runs out fast.
The SanDisk microSDXC 512GB provides enough memory for dozens of games, is UHS-I compatible, and supports transfer speeds up to 150 MB/s. We’ve chosen one with specs that take full advantage of the capabilities of your Switch’s microSD slot. Don’t spend more for “Extreme” cards or anything higher than UHS-1; the Switch doesn’t support transfer speeds above 100 MBps.
If you need even more space, SanDisk has models that go up to 1.5TB.
1080p was the standard resolution when the Switch was first released. As more and more people upgrade to 1440p and 4K screens, the Switch’s 1080p output resolution (when docked) is starting to look and feel outdated.
The Marseille mClassic is a nifty dongle that upscales your console’s video output up to 1440p. While not quite 4K, that’s more than 1.6 million extra pixels being thrown to your screen, making for a crisper, clearer image. The mClassic also works for anything with an HDMI output, so you can use it with your older consoles.
Ring Fit Adventure is a fitness JRPG that sets you off on a massive campaign spanning hundreds of stages to defeat a wayward fitness demon. Along the way, you battle the demon’s minions by engaging in turn-based combat where your spells are different exercises using the Ring Fit accessory and leg strap.
Unlike other fitness games, which are largely cardio-based, the bundled Ring Fit accessory also allows for some very light muscle work. There are arm and leg exercises that involve squeezing or pulling on the Ring Fit, and for someone who barely moves (like I was when first starting), it’s enough to give you a decent burn.
I can’t recommend the Ring Fit (with Ring Fit Adventure) enough. I’ve dabbled in fitness games before, but none has kept me engaged for as long or as consistently as Ring Fit Adventure. Just speaking from my own results, as every individual is different, I lost 12 pounds in my first two months into Ring Fit Adventure and have stayed around my target weight since 2021 playing twice a week.
How We Came Up with This List
Too many of my waking hours are spent with my Switch in hand. All that time has allowed me to understand exactly what I like and don’t like about Nintendo’s handheld console—the screen being too small and dark, only 1080p video output, how bulky the official dock is, and so on (I love my Switch, I swear!). In my search to find solutions for the things I thought could be improved about the Switch, I found a ton of existing products designed to tackle exactly those issues.
The next step was picking the best of the bunch based on user reviews and community posts. Some of the picks came down to personal preference, like favoring the Switch Pro Controller over the 8bitdo Ultimate or Gulikit Kingkong 2 Pro due to more complete support of the Switch’s features.
