Short version: the microSD card from your old Switch will not hold Switch 2 games. The new console needs a microSD Express card, and if you mostly buy cartridges you may not need one for a good while.
Why the old card is not enough
Switch 2 loads games from fast internal flash, and Nintendo wanted expansion storage that keeps up. Standard microSD cards top out at around 100MB/s on the original Switch’s UHS-I interface. microSD Express uses a PCIe lane and is several times faster. Nintendo made it a hard requirement: games can only be stored on, and run from, Express cards. According to Nintendo’s support pages, a regular microSD card is only good for bringing screenshots and video captures across from an older console.
How to recognise the right card
- Look for the EX mark next to the microSD logo on the card and the packaging.
- Ignore speed badges such as U3, V30 or A2. They describe ordinary cards, including fast ones, and none of them means Express.
- “Works with Nintendo Switch” on older packaging refers to the first console. For the new one, the wording to look for is Switch 2 and Express.
The console supports cards up to 2TB. Large capacities have been slow to reach shops and the price per gigabyte is still well above ordinary microSD.
How much do cartridge buyers need?
The console has 256GB built in. What eats it depends on what is in your cases:
- Full cartridges run from the card. They use internal storage for save data, patches and DLC only.
- Game-Key Cards install the whole game, exactly like an eShop purchase. A few large third-party releases can take a meaningful bite out of 256GB on their own.
- Switch 1 cartridges behave as they always did, and their patches are small by comparison.
So a shelf of full cartridges can live on the internal storage for years. A shelf of key cards is a digital library with boxes, and should be budgeted like one.
What we would do
Start without a card. When the internal storage fills up, archive a game you have finished; saves stay on the console and the game can be downloaded again. Buy an Express card when archiving becomes a chore, and buy the capacity you need for the next year, not the largest on the shelf. Prices in this format are still falling.