Subscribe to Nintendo Life on

The stamina of the Nintendo Switch has been something of a talking point ever since it was revealed that the console would last between three to six hours on a single charge. However, it's easy to forget that the days of a handheld running for weeks on a single set of AA batteries are well and truly over; the 3DS was hardly a stayer when it came to juice and the same can be said of other mobile devices, such as tablets and phones.

Having said that, a recent battery test by our friends over at Family Gamer TV has given some interesting results, with the Switch proving to be longer-lasting than the DSi, 3DS, 2DS, GBA SP and New 3DS, clocking a lifespan of 5 hours, 12 minutes under these particular test conditions: screen on, full brightness, no software running, all wireless connections (if any) enabled. Older handhelds like the Game Boy and GBA which don't have an operating system were left running a game.

Naturally there are some provisos here; games which really push the hardware are going to drain the battery faster, so don't expect to get the same kind of stamina when you're playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Here are the full results:

DSi - 2.41hrs

3DS - 3.25hrs

iPod Touch 2 - 3.39hrs

2DS - 3.55hrs

Game Boy Advance SP - 3.59hrs

iPad 2 - 4.00hrs

iPad Air - 4.04hrs

New 3DS - 4.04hrs

iPod Touch 3 - 4.13hrs

DS Lite - 4.51hrs

PSP - 4.56hrs

GBA Micro - 4.57hrs

Vita - 5.01hrs

Nintendo Switch - 5.12hrs



iPad Mini 2 - 5.39hrs

DS - 6.51hrs

New 3DS (XL Mugen Battery) - 15.02hrs

GBA - 29.32hrs

Game Boy - 31.12hrs

Game Boy Colour - 35.45hrs

What do you make of these results? Did you expect the Switch to perform worse, or better than these systems? Let us know by posting a comment below.