Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life
It’s now well over a month since Switch 2‘s June launch, and it seems the majority of owners are happy with their new console. Gripes about the screen, battery life, and how quickly the internal memory fills up are all valid, but the general consensus indicates that the joys outweigh the cons; it’s a neat system and we’re having a brilliant time with it.
Slow download speeds is another area that has been frustrating some people, although it appears to be far from a universal problem. Asking around the Nintendo Life team, our Switch 2 internet speeds across the board either equal our old Switches or they’re faster, significantly faster in some cases. But some Switch 2 users online — and on our forums — have been encountering connection issues, with eShop downloads sometimes taking multiple hours.
Now, one of the many problems with diagnosing and solving download issues is the number of variables involved. I could quote you my WiFi down/upload speeds standing across the room from my router (81.5 Mbps down, 46.6 Mbps up – you can run a test yourself via your Switch 2’s System Settings>Internet>Test Connection), but that’s not much help when you have a different ISP package with different limits and a router with different capabilities and settings.
Physically connecting your dock to your router via the Ethernet port is an obvious thing to try. Looking around online, people have recommended changing your connection settings by upping the MTU value from the default 1400 to 1500 (which increases the packet size and potentially boosts download speeds). Try System Settings>Internet>Internet Settings>[your network]>Change Settings>MTU for that one.
Image: Zion Grassl / Nintendo Life
Over on Reddit, Shonryu79 suggested disabling ‘IPv6 Connection’ via the same settings menu, and several people apparently saw their download speeds leap after that.
Elsewhere, people have fiddled with manual DNS settings and tried power cycling — which, for the non-technically minded, is the posh term for turning it off and on again — to mixed results. Again, with so many factors potentially influencing your connection speeds, a one-fix-for-all solution isn’t likely.
Nintendo has its own Troubleshooting Slow Download Speeds page, which I’ll paraphrase thusly:
- ‘Move closer to the router’
- ‘Move other metal and electronic things away from your console’
- ‘Connect to a different wireless band’
- ‘Turn your router off and on again’
- ‘Update your router’s firmware’
- ‘Still nothing? Contact your Internet Service Provider’
Hmm. The first four are definitely worth a shot, but Nintendo doesn’t offer any Switch 2 settings tweaks to potentially solve the problem. And, personally, I’d rather eat my own foot than initiate any contact whatsoever with my ISP.
Have you had any download speed issues with Switch 2? We’re keen to get an idea of how widespread the issue is and try to narrow down whether there is an issue with the console itself that Nintendo could potentially address, or if it’s the many and various other internet factors causing upset. Let us know in the poll below, and feel free to share with the community any solutions you’ve found to Switch 2 connection woes.
Are you experiencing slower-than-expected download/upload speeds on Switch 2? (1,406 votes)
- Yes! It’s like taking me multiple hours to download games9%
- It’s not the worst, but it’s fairly slow, yeah16%
- It’s the same as Switch 1 for me10%
- No, it’s faster than Switch 1 for me28%
- Not at all, it’s been super zippy27%
- I don’t have a Switch 2, but I DO have a poll option 10%
Gavin first wrote for Nintendo Life in 2018 before joining the site full-time the following year, rising through the ranks to become Editor. He can currently be found squashed beneath a Switch backlog the size of Normandy.