Turns out that there’s an oddly specific way to permanently improve your Nintendo Switch 2’s battery health hidden away in the system settings, although most people wouldn’t think to even activate the setting in the first place.
Over on the r/NintendoSwitch subreddit, user Joseki100 had a very simple piece of advice: switch the "Stop Charging Around 90%" setting on.
“Limiting the battery charging to 90% has a beneficial effect for its long term health”, writes Josei100.
“Constantly charging a lithium battery up to 100% reduces its capacity in the long run.”
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So, is that actually true? Yeah, pretty much.
In fact, I’d actually go one further than this. As well as turning on the setting that Josei100 mentions, I’d also advise that you should never let your Nintendo Switch 2 completely run out of battery.
There are a couple of reasons for this, but it’s essentially just a quirk of lithium batteries. It’s a bit of an odd thing to explain, but it’s better for the long-term health of a lithium battery if it holds somewhere around 30 to 70% of its charge.
It’s a bit of a myth that letting a battery charge up to 100% will damage it (unless of course the manufacturer did a shoddy job), but keeping the battery around 90% instead will ensure that your battery life hovers closer to the 50% mark more often, and will therefore last for longer down the line.
Also, as I said, don’t let it dip all the way down to 0%. In fact, I’d advise that you simply charge your products once they reach the 10% mark.
If a battery reaches 0%, this is often referred to as a “deep discharge”. This actually slightly limits the amount of full charge a battery can hold. So, even if a device says it’s at 100% after a deep charge, it’s actually somewhere between 99% and 100%.
Letting this happen enough times will cause more noticeable dips in overall battery life, so get into good practices now that you have a £400 Nintendo Switch 2 in your hands.
Topics: Nintendo, Nintendo Switch 2