Phones, too, but why do that?

The namesake feature of Nintendo's hybrid console has been perhaps the key factor in its continued success. The Switch's ability to, well, switch means it fits neatly into any lifestyle whatever your situation, but that doesn't mean there aren't use cases it doesn't quite cater for. For our part — and especially in the pre-Switch OLED days — we've often wished we could use our laptop screen or even play via a tablet to get a boost in screen size over the Switch's screen in tabletop mode. We're surrounded by large screens in the office, but we can't play on as many of them as we'd like.

That's where the AURGA Viewer comes in. Described as a 5-in-1 wireless HDMI streaming transmitter, when coupled with the requisite app it turns your phone, tablet, or laptop screen into a wireless display for whatever content you wish to throw on it via Bluetooth 4.1. Transmitting a 1080p/60Hz signal, you can use it to turn your iPad into a second monitor, for example, but for our purposes, it's the ability to output your docked Switch to those screens which is the attraction. Devices such as the Genki Shadowcast offer similar functionality for Switch gamers, but with Aurga quickly blowing through its initial Kickstarter goal, we were keen to see how this option faired.

Aurga — the Hong Kong-based firm behind the device — cites various use cases for its eponymous Viewer that Switch owners might find attractive, but playing on a phone simply isn't worth the effort given the Switch's perfectly useable 720p screen, not to mention the Switch OLED's beautiful panel.

Aurga kindly sent us an early sample unit with a non-final power convertor for testing. As you can see from the photos on this page, the dongle itself is powered via an adaptor which sits in between the Switch's power slot and supply. We weren't able to close the rear flap on our Switch dock with this setup installed, although a planned redesign will switch USB-A for USB-C. Likewise, the current setup isn't physically compatible with the Switch OLED dock (at least not comfortably so).

Once installed and powered, the dongle becomes a wireless hotspot and you simply connect your device before firing up Aurga's iOS or Android app (we'll come to Windows in a moment). You can connect via a router if you prefer, although the hotspot option will give the best results in terms of latency. The interface of the app itself is clean and intuitive, with various gestures to navigate the menu when you're in fullscreen mode.

Once everything was hooked up and running, we fired up Sonic Origins for a blast through Sonic 1. As with any streaming solution, most gamers savvy enough to be interested in the tech will have one question: What's the lag like? We weren't able to take exact measurements but the results with the sample unit we tested were...mixed.

initial results were perfectly playable, with gameplay and audio in sync and a relatively smooth and steady frame rate...However, an issue flared up within a couple of minutes

While we could tell things weren't quite as snappy on iPad as we ran through Green Hill Zone, initial results were perfectly playable, with gameplay and audio in sync and a relatively smooth and steady frame rate. Image-wise, it looked absolutely excellent on the tablet; crisp and bright with no visible artefacts or blurring.

However, an issue flared up within a couple of minutes. The frame rate got progressively worse and a buzzing audio bug — which sounded like electronic 'static' — steadily grew until the app crashed. Opening the app immediately, things would look fine until the same one or two-minute cycle began again. This affected tests both on mobile (a second-generation iPhone SE running iOS 16) and tablet (a fourth-gen iPad Pro running iOS 14.6). After speaking with the developer, they acknowledged iOS issues and said an update was due very soon. We weren't able to test Android, unfortunately.

Not the best of first impressions, then! We persevered with our iPad, resetting and reconnecting everything several times. We moved on to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe next, which ranged from passable at best to totally unplayable due to the same issue. You are able to connect multiple devices to the Aurga's hotspot (which we did to capture a couple of images), but it isn't recommended for actual gameplay unless your WiFi environment is stellar — ours is simply robust.

After troubleshooting, we gave up and opened our laptop. Although not publicly available at the time of writing, we were able to test an early version of the Windows app. Happily, after some teething troubles, we were pleased to see things begin to function as advertised.

Given the convenience of Switch in its vanilla form, any device that adds to its functionality has to be similarly plug-and-play if it wants to succeed

Connecting once again to the Aurga's hotspot, we returned to Green Hill Zone and, this time, the game was perfectly playable with only the occasional hiccup. We were very much aware of some latency, but that's part and parcel of using streaming tech for gaming. We returned to Mario Kart 8 and, lo and behold, our Waluigi zoomed to first place with a very smooth and solid performance. Not perfect — that slight hitch here and there still has the power to irk — but perfectly playable, with the streamed video crucially being no impediment to our enjoyment of the game.

Not wanting to go easy on the device with slower-paced games, we threw something faster at it. Cuphead — which we expected the Aurga to struggle with — worked surprisingly well. The Aurga Viewer was functioning and had turned our laptop into a Switch screen outputting the full 1080p of the dock very respectably. Praise be!

We slowed things down with Breath of the Wild, which was similarly impressive, barring a couple of instances of the image slowing down and then speeding up. The desktop version coped admirably during our tests, feeling smooth and responsive for the most part. We also spent several hours playing Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova for review with the device and had little or no trouble.

At least during that session. The following day, we ran into problems getting the PC program to run, and when it did we saw frame rate jitters which rendered the game pretty much unplayable. Evidently, the Windows app is in a beta state, so issues like this are hardly unexpected, but coupled with our iOS experience, it left a sour taste in our mouth. If we persevered, we're pretty sure we could replicate the perfect conditions once again and get to that good experience, but this brings us to the crux of the matter.

Given the convenience of Switch in its vanilla form, any device that adds to its functionality has to be similarly plug-and-play if it wants to succeed. Having players abandoning it with a frustrated, "oh nuts to it, I'll just play in handheld" would be all too easy. Given our time with this early sample, we'd say that Aurga is fortunate that the applications for this device go beyond gaming. In between disappointments, we glimpsed the Aurga Viewer's potential and got a good few hours of solid performance from it. The iOS mobile and tablet versions were non-starters and will need addressing before launch, however. Given the right conditions, there is potential here.

So then, 'patchy' is how we'd describe our time with the Aurga Viewer. Assuming the considerable iOS wrinkles we experienced can be ironed out, we saw enough glimpses of redemption courtesy of the Windows app to still be interested, although our patience wore thin. The effectiveness of this device — and your satisfaction — will ultimately depend on the types of games you play and your personal tolerance for latency, even if we generously assume the issues we experienced can be solved. As with any streaming solution, locally or via the cloud, you'll want to avoid twitch-reflex titles or anything being played online. A minor delay is perfectly acceptable in many games, though — not optimal, but acceptable.

The real question, then, is if Aurga can set things right before launch when it comes to iOS and make the Aurga Viewer plug-and-play enough to appeal to Switch owners accustomed to the most convenient console there is. While it might be perfectly useable in other fields, the jury's still out on its gaming usefulness.

AURGA's Kickstarter still has a couple of weeks to run at the time of writing. Thanks to them for providing the sample for this feature.

Gavin loves a bit of couch co-op, especially when he gets to delegate roles, bark instructions and give much-appreciated performance feedback at the end. He lives in Spain (the plain-y bit where the rain mainly falls) and his love for Banjo-Kazooie borders on the unhealthy.

First! - I'd find this pretty useful if they can sort the kinks.

Feels counterintuitive to me to stream a fully portable device to a less portable one (even if you lug the latter around anyway - personally, I prefer to dedicate some time to both respective backlogs instead), but then again, the reasoning the article gives does align with my occasional idle fantasies about what Nintendo might put into the successor without changing its hybrid nature (namely, the built-in projector which could enable many benevolent environments to turn the tabletop mode into a borderline "TV" one).

This entire article never once mentioned how the game was being controlled. Not once. Were you using keyboard and mouse, touchscreen, or the Joy Con or Pro controller, meaning you were still using the Joy Con close to the Switch, in the dock, which was probably hooked up to a TV, making this whole endeavor kind of pointless.🤷

This seems backwards. I'd rather have a dongle hooked to the Switch that could cast to any smart tv in a hotel, friends house, or another room in my house, rather than having a docked Switch cast to another screen but still being close enough to the Switch for a controller to connect to it.

Maybe Switch 2 will work over wireless HDMI.

....the point of streaming is to make something with more power portable or if you need to use the big screen for something else (ie kids watching tv) you can still play it on your phone.

What would be the use for this on iPads/phones? On a Windows PC, i could see having everything in one spot. But with the nature of the app being in beta, it's clear that that wasn't their focus anyway. Are they trying to make something portable... portable???

Doesn't the Genki shadowcast adapter do this already from the Dock to Laptop? As for smartphone gameplay that isn't the best use of the Smartphone. I do know ShadowCast and the 1.2 version app works very good on my Gaming Laptop. So I think that is the difference. It has to be Gaming Specs laptop with dedicate GPU to work on demanding games with the ShadowCast setup.

This doesn't get my money until it can stream to the screen in my refrigerator.

@nhSnork I had the same thought while reading, but then it did kinda hit me between the eyes while I had the thought that these people are (I'd imagine due to their jobs) pretty damn good at some Mario Kart and Cuphead. So at what we could call an at least "moderate expert"? (lol) level, they'd definitely be noticing just how sharp these occasional hiccups were.

Then that image of that many people playing. Switch is also marketed as kind of a "back to the fun old days" of friends getting together for couch co-op. During this the ability to use multiple joycons and hook it up to sharper, larger screens. That is until your admittedly better idea, Nintendo ends up (fingers crossed) implementing this into the Switch successor.

Speaking of...all this talk of it as if it's gonna be basically a Switch but on steroids...Nintendo seems to do a "two console cycle" then reinvent themselves, like Madonna, usually to great success, ....also like Madonna, or at least high quality gems missed only due to their business ends moreso than console quality. So who says the successor will even use the portable concept/gimmick? The OLED may be their version of saying "That's good enough to last a console cycle or two; what can we invent next?"

I have a nice Razer Laptop and wish something like this would just work through the USB C port.

I could understand someone using this if they got bored at work and wanted to play a few rounds of Mario Kart, but it's just so much easier playing directly from the Switch.

Before I started working from home, I would sometimes sneak my Switch into the office and prop it inside my open backpack so only I would be able to see the screen under my desk. I hid the joycons in my sleeves.

I think I had more fun coming up with ways to sneakily play games at work than I did actually playing the games themselves.

@Dizavid OLED is an upgraded model of the same console, though - kinda sorta DS Lite (and marginally DSi) of this generation. As for expectations of portability, the main reasoning behind them is usually: a) Nintendo having merged their home and handheld production departments prior and b) the resulting package printing money for almost six years and counting. Like I've said before, Nintendo's previous money printers like motion and touch controls still persist to this day. And after what they tried with stuff like Labo and Home Circuit, one would be excused for the impression that the current hardware format arguably lends itself to new fancy twists even more.

One thing that annoys me is the way this site keeps mentioning the OLED switch as if it's some kind of game changer. "we used to wish for a bigger screen, at least before the OLED model came along". Guys, the OLED screen is like 2mm bigger than the OG model and everyone knows it. It's literally the same size machine with a slightly smaller bezel. Blatantly made-up statements like this make it clear that you're under some weird instruction to try to manufacture status for this thing. Half of the reviews say "looks fantastic on OLED" which is completely irrelevant. Just leave it alone, stop trying to make OLED-pride happen, it's the most minor hardware iteration in the history of Nintendo.

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