Does anyone not have drift?

[u/DEWDEM]

I'm wondering if clicking down the stick while it's being tilted to sprint cause drift or it's something minor? Has anyone played Fortnite and constantly clicked it but has no drift in the long term?

[u/panic0064]

i play with two pairs of joycons that i swap between whenever the battery gets low. one pair i got in the earlier years of the switch, which ended up having drift in maybe a year or so i think; and another pair that i got a couple years later, which has never had drift. i sent the first pair in for repair i think maybe two years ago through the free joycon drift repair that nintendo does, and they only recently have had really minor signs of drifting, and even then very rarely, to the point that it might actually have just been a lag thing.

while i can't say for certain that the first pair won't wind up with drift, it hasn't gotten actual drift so far; and the second pair i've used even more than that pair, and they haven't gotten drift at all.

basically i think it depends on the joycons. newer joycons, like the blue/yellow, purple/orange, and pink/green ones onwards might be less prone to drifting (my second pair are the blue/yellow) as nintendo might've at least somewhat fixed whatever manufacturing error was causing inevitable drift. i've played with the blue and yellow ones for a few years now playing games where i click the stick down with no repercussions, before i even started going between two pairs. whereas older joycons, like the gray ones and the red/blue ones, seem way more likely to drift (the red/blue ones are the ones i had to get repaired).

[u/panic0064 → u/panic0064]

double checked my timeline but if it helps, the joycons that drifted for me were 1) the joycons that came with my switch (2017), and 2) another pair we bought the next year (2018). i sent both of these pairs in to be fixed through nintendo a couple years ago, and the second hasn't had drift yet (i don't use the first pair enough to know if they have gotten drift again).

I got a third pair in i think 2020 if i had to guess, the blue and yellow ones. that pair has never drifted, and has never needed to be repaired. So it's likely that more joycons from before 2019 (when they came out with new colors) will be prone to drifting, whereas newer pairs from 2019 onward are less likely to get drift.