LAN connection with your Nintendo Switch [Tip of the day #3]

How can I use LAN with my Nintendo Switch?

Using a LAN adapter with your Nintendo Switch is as easy as plug-and-plan. You connect it with one of the USB ports of your dock and you get going. But what adapter should you use?

The LAN Adapter for Nintendo Switch by HORI is an officially licensed adapter. It will work with up to 100 MBit/s using USB 2.0.

But there are also other adapters using USB 3.0 for up to 1 GBit/s. One example is the Ugreen USB 3.0 to RJ45. Though I can not confirm that using 1 GBit/s instead of 100 MBit/s will make your downloads any faster.

Why is it important?

Having a direct connection to the internet can improve the response time in games and downloads. It is usually recommended to have a LAN connection. Especially when you have a bigger house. More distance to the WiFi Hotspot or many wireless devices competing for bandwidth may decrease the signal quality.

Is there more?

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has an article on their blog showing the difference of using WiFi, a direct connection using LAN or a Raspberry Pi Hack. It allows you to connect the console to the Raspberry Pi and use its WiFi – increasing your wireless speed. The results show that the download of Pokémon Sword needed less time. Using WiFi took 1 hour and 9 minutes while the download over the Pi hack took only 46 minutes and the direct LAN connection 43 minutes.

My opinion is to still try to distribute LAN connections over the house or apartment to make use of a stable connection that is not depending on wireless factors. Buildings with many flats tend to have wireless interferences decreasing speed.

By the way: You can use LAN also on a Nintendo Switch Lite. Use a USB-C to USB-A adapter and connect the LAN adapter. Connecting an adapter to another adapter may not look fancy but it improves your online gaming and download speeds nonetheless.