Nintendo Switch storage full? The best microSD card offers to buy and avoid download disappointment

You’ve got a shiny new Nintendo Switch but, wait, what’s that? Yep, just one game download can easily fill the console’s measly 32GB storage.

Fortunately the Switch has a microSD card slot for expansion to avoid this being a huge issue.

Furthermore cartridge games don’t need to install on the console unlike downloaded titles from the Nintendo eShop, which is another way to swerve filling up the on-board storage.

• Nintendo Switch: Price, release date and everything you need to know

Although Nintendo hasn’t released official specification to date about card size compatibility or speed requirements, we can confirm you’ll need a launch day one patch for things to work. Typically devices support up to 128GB XC (“extra capacity”) cards.

Here are some safe bets to ensure your day one Nintendo Switch has spare storage for dabbling in eShop download land. The 64GB option is our preferred choice.

SanDisk 16GB microSD HC card (Class 10): £5.99 on Amazon.co.uk

SanDisk Ultra 32GB microSD HC card (Class 10): £9.99 on Amazon.co.uk

SanDisk Ultra 64GB microSD XC card (Class 10): £17.99 on Amazon.co.uk

Toshiba Exceria 128GB microSD XC card (Class 10): £34.05 on Amazon.co.uk

Some advice: check the card speed, but don’t read too deeply into it. See that circle with a number in it? That’s the card class. Class 10 means 10MB/second minimum sustained write speed, Class 6 means 6MB/sec, and so forth.

Often you’ll see a “I” to the bottom corner of a card, too, in numeral style, which represents UHS-I, or ultra-high speed, assuring a decent buffer speed to keep data chugging along. UHS-II (“II” rather than “I” symbol) is a lot faster, but rarely supported – so best avoided on a cost basis here as it’ll bring no benefit, we suspect. If you see a 3 symbol in a bucket then, again, that’s the higher UHS speed class and not necessary.

A final word of caution: if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. A number of tampered cards are available to buy, many of which might say “128GB” on the outside buy be considerably less capacious in reality. Don’t get stung!