I think I've put in enough time to give an impression now.noddy wrote: switch sounds great, look foward to your impressions once its up and running properly.
I really like the machine, even as its pretty obvious where they cut corners to make it as cheap as possible.
The plastic is cheap but much better than what came with the Wii U; the built in screen is plastic instead of glass; the dock doesn't have anything inside to actually prevent scratching the screen. I won't mention the custom chips because that's been hashed over a thousand times already and you aren't getting anywhere near top line power. I think the whole thing clocks in as more powerful as the Wii U but still well short of the PS4 and XboxOne.
Aesthetically, it is head and shoulders above the Wii U which looked like a Fisher-Price design. Games look great on the screen and the little kickstand it comes with has made it easy to set it down wherever and have people wander in and out of playing a game here or there.
As for controllers, I discussed this with my brother, as he has longer fingers than me while I have the wider hand. And we both came to pretty much the same conclusions though our problems were slightly different. The joycons are a bit too small for a grown man's hands, especially when you flip a single joycon on its side for on-the-go multiplayer but not enough to cause discomfort or cramping or a missed button or two.
We both really like the controllers- both the Pro-Controller and the joycons. We both found them comfortable once we figured out how to hold them to mitigate the size issue. It is really minor compared to, say, the original 3ds systems. And at no times have our hands cramped or become sore from use. They did a good job in finding a size-for-all, all these considered.
He hasn't been too impressed with the ballyhooed "HD rumble" while I've found it interesting but so far not very utilized.
The battery life is a good 20 hours, give or take, charges rather well.
The one problem has been the weak signal between the joycon controllers and the system, even after the last update which supposedly was meant to address this.
For example, if I sit on my family room couch or loveseat and put my feet up on the ottoman, I tend to lose any signal from the left joycon mid-game. Now, that makes no sense (because why would a foot interfere with a wi-fi signal) but its been my experience. What I've ended up doing is either moving the furniture a bit forward, or just sitting on the ottoman when I'm not using the pro-controller and it tends to clear up any trouble.
Again, my brother was having a similiar problem and according to him, it's due to the a combination of how everything was packed together to fit in the small joycons and something about the alkalinity of a person's hands near the area where the metal lock* is on the joycon holder being near to where it is broadcasting its signal.
there are two little strips of metal on the inside of the holder pictured above to securely lock the joycons in place.