Random: Watch What Happens When You Drop a Switch from 1,000 Feet

How in the hell did it survive... guess Zelda used her sealing power to save the Switch.

I mean if it can reduce aging it can do anything.

A thousand foot drop, wow.

It must be the works of stability update, the switch is so stable, it survive the drop

Impressive! My Switch's body is ready!

It's pretty cool seeing how durable the switch is and the lack of a glass screen probably helps. Although it kinda hurts seeing someone do this on purpose. Idk, my switch is just too precious to me! XD

This in other dumb news man literally throws $300 out the window! For a plane ride and the switch itself he has got to be feeling it in his wallet!

The only thing that got me was taping all of that tape to the switch...

The left Joycon is the unsung hero. It sacrificed itself to protect the main console and the right joycon.

At least replacing a joycon is more accessible than the whole console (Which should probably work in docked mode)

That is pretty impressive. Can't believe the screen didn't break (the actual LCD not the plastic/digitizer).

What's crazy is how the device impacts can affect its damage.I dropped my phone over 10 feet on to a concrete floor it bounced then cartwheeled a few feet and the only damage was a dented corner. I later lost that phone in the lake. the replacement phone (same phone) I knocked of a chair arm and it fell 2 feet to a tile floor and bam shattered screen.

@GameOtaku these people are rarely out money.

Let's be honest, a drop from 6 ft I'd consider a reasonable test. That is pure stupidity! It works now but how long will it last now? My guess that was its last hurrah.

@GameOtaku There was no plane ride, he dropped it remotely from a drone that he owns.

The Switch can survive a 1000 ft drop, but the dock bends it armirite!!!

@westman98 That's because the only thing that can bend Nintendium is Nintendium.

Well, now I'm a little less nervous about accidentally dropping my Switch in the future.

....This, and scalpers....are the reason Switches are sold out everywhere....T.T

@Destron it really does depend on point of impact. It's actually not surprising the Switch basicly survived. The left joycon took nearly all the hit, and the rest just skidded away at More tolerable forces. If it's been dropped sans joycons I'd be really surprised if would survive.

Switches are overpriced over here in my country. I really want one and this guy just drops one from over a 1000 feet just for the heck of it?!?!
Man... I hate this...

@Malpais
I can feel your pain to see that stupid guy dropped his Switch just for Drop Test.
We buy electronic devices to be treated nicely. We are not hoping something bad or accidentally dropped for our electronic devices.

That attitude was same worst with dropping / stomping very expensive foods to the ground in front of starving peoples.

Cool vid but 3 minutes longer then it needed to be

The left Joy-Con just shattered because it landed directly on it, but the rest of the console was totally alright. The benefit of compartmentalized product designs I suppose.

And of course this is a gross display of waste with weird music editing, and that stability update joke was sick.

Here's my Switch guys I just got it and I'm already addicted to it. I love it. So now I'm going to drop it from 1000ft!

What?

@Eric258 I know it's like a baby to me. Or a Mudkip. Or a baby Mudkip!

@BensonUii
Then if I remember the law the FAA passed you cannot fly drones above a certain height (500 ft if I recall correctly) so he could be opening up for trouble.

So this Is -again- another reason why others can't get Switches of their own. And people are so quick to point the finger at Nintendo themselves when we have people doing stuff like this...

That said, I do find that durability fascinating. Looks like you'd only need to replace the whole Joycon - not the unit itself. That's amazing as you'd only be paying 90 or around that instead of say, another 300. I imagine the Switch itself was mostly protected due to the way the Joycon basically hug the unit and the ridged edges and such "jutting" out for the shoulder buttons. Because of how it was designed, it looks like the joycon will usually be the main point of impact from a drop.

Ok, now do it without the joycons attached

So many gamers are desperately trying to get their hands on a Nintendo Switch, and here's this clown, dropping one from a thousand feet. Nintendo is lucky there's nothing on XBONE that appeals to me, or I'd buy another system before the Switch right now.

Whenever I world in game stores when I was younger, during N64, Gamecube days I always touted the insane durability of Nintendo console, a game could be rolled across the floor while running and it wouldn't skip a beat.

But a 1,000 ft drop for a tablet style console and survive!!!? That is ridiculous and deserves a trophy for all time

Yeah, regardless of these results, don't drop your Switch. He got lucky it landed on one of the Joy-Cons, absorbing all the impact damage. Had he dropped one without the Joy-Cons attached, or had it landed on a different angle, it wouldn't have survived the impact.

Bloody humans and their ridiculous endeavours.

left joycon deserved it anyway But damn Nintendo! I thought that screen would be toast. The WiiU fisher price pad was far less durable than this.

Well, I'm not sure I'd say that SWITCH survived this fall. It fell down right on the left joycon and it cushioned the impact. I guarantee that if they dropped it without controllers it would fall apart on hit.

Yikes. Awesome that the console mostly survives that (the mentioned irony may be less relevant if the unit landed on the left JC like I thought it did - chances are, the right JC would have looked as bad if it had taken the impact), but it's a frankly morbid sight nonetheless. At least tell me this guy went and bought one of those Irish Switches that reportedly still sit on shelves en masse - imagine if someone in less lucky regions was eager to play that Zelda or prepare a birthday gift for their children/siblings/friends, but missed out by a hair's width on the last stocked order that... ended up dropped from 1000 feet high FOR SCIENCE.

Stability upgrades DOES matter !!!

i think not reaching terminal velocity also helped it survive.
it was spinning around, but i think it spent most of the time with either the screen or the back towards the ground.
this increases surface area, increasing drag and lowering its dropping speed.
it would've fallen much faster if 1 of the joycons was facing the ground the whole time.

If their DS/3DS charger port were durable like that.😌

It's engineered that way, to fall like a sycamore seed.

Impressive for sure. I had a go at Nintendo for not Using gorilla glass screen but I can now understand why they used plastic. Plastic screen will be more durable when kids drop the switch.

There's only one explanation, Mipha's Grace.

I broke my Wii-U gamepad and had to buy a new one online awhile back....

So RIP Switch soon I think, if I couldn't take care of that

Remove the joy-cons and it's a different story.

@Malpais Agreed. Pointless and destructive for no reason.

Good to know, but that horrible crunch when it was dropped.... cringe

Incredible! Yes, the left JoyCon took the blow instead of the console, so this wasn't really a full test. Would also have to be dropped without JoyCons to protect it. Round two in the future?

And jeez, some of these comments... So humorless! It's their Switch, they can do whatever the hell they want with it. I don't have one, and I'm still left with a grin to see this!

I knew they'd designed it to withstand HD Rumble but this is unprecedented.

@Maxz This is how drone warfare of the future will be conducted. Instead of dropping bombs, they will drop Switches.

So, did the left Joy-Con desync?

The survival of the system is incredible, and given Nintendo's past focus, especially under Iwata, of demanding excessive durability standards (I believe an Iwata asks recounted that the hardware team was livid when he said he wanted 3DS to survive a fall from a bicycle onto concrete) I'm guessing it was very specifically designed to survive falls well in this design.

Everyone saying "well if the left Joycon wasn't on." But in "handheld mode" the Joycons are on. And it seems the bulk of the unit mass is in the Joycons so under nearly every drop test the unit rotates to fall on the Joycon. That's the mode the unit is likely to drop in. All the talk about "well if the Joycons aren't on" is a bit silly as that implies it's either in the dock, or in tabletop mode in which case it would likely fall over on the table. And if you're being reckless enough to whack it off a table onto the ground (without striking the screen on a chair first anyway) that's a whole different mess. But "drops" most of the time will be with Joycons on, and this shows how durable it is under excessive force with the Joycons almost always taking the brunt of impact. Pretty neat stuff!

Well if Nintendo gets out of video games they can make construction grade smart devices...or Tanks...either or. Also this made me pretty sick to my stomach to watch....

@kingc8 IF because here in my country there a lot of Switches. Yet almost nobody buys them because they are expensive as hell.
I have other things to buy or to spend money on since my life isn't entirely games you know. Seeing these kinds of videos just makes me angry.

Instead of being in the category "Random", this should have been posted in a new category called "Why?"...

If that's the work of stability updates my 3ds can fall from orbit and survive!

@kingc8 Yeah, sucks that my country has those kinds of prizes. You're right though. Got to look somewhere else.

Good thing Nintendo is in the business of making games and not weapons. I can only imagine how R.O.D (robotic operating destroyer) will preform, especially after a stability update.

Skip to the 2:00 mark; you're welcome.

I'd still like to see if it can operate normally (internals, like gyroscope, fan, etc,) or dropped 1000' in a vacuum (not a literal clean-your-house vacuum.)

Next up, will it blend?

The flat side provided a wind drag, lowering the terminal velocity. You can see it as it drops. Then it just happened to hit on the left JoyCon for the initial impact which shielded the rest of the device. Had the joycons not been attached, it wouldn't have survived.

@ThanosReXXX What about a "Why Not?" category?

Meanwhile my cat knocks my Galaxy S6 off a four foot table onto carpet last weekend and I have to get a whole new phone. Go figure. It probably hit a chair on the way down but still.

More things need to be built out of Nintendium. At least my phone was paid off and had insurance so the upgrade to the latest and greatest, Galaxy S8+, was free. Still working on recovering those pesky contacts, pics, videos, and calendar appointments from the old one though.

That'll teach me to take two week vacations and leave my cats alone thinking I'm gone forever, I guess.

The first thing I learned on physics class in high school: the weight itself doesn't matter, but the shape does. Here's an example: a regular, flat piece of paper falls down much slower than a crumpled piece of the same weight. You can see it didn't flip in the very least, but 'glides' down while holding a horizontal position, since the shape of the Switch resembles a paper. That's the reason I think it survived.

I hope this isn't true. Huge console-abuse!

At the moment the switch is so hard to get and this guy can afford to drop one........from 1000ft !!!!!, The horror......

I watched a video when the switch launched where they continued to drop it repeatedly until it bit the dust. It took several drops before the actual console took damage. The controllers absorbed most of the impact each time. It's a pretty good design. I like the idea that if I were to drop mine my console has a good chance of making it out alive. They sticks protect the screen from making contact on a flat surface and the humps on the backs of the controllers do a good job of protecting the rear.

Never dropped my Switch yet, after 6 months!