These $27 Joy-Con sticks are drift-resistant and easy to install

I have two sets of Joy-Con controllers, both of which suffer from analog stick drifting. If you’re lucky enough to have avoided that (so far, at least — it comes for us all, I believe), it’s when your sticks lose accuracy and sometimes register movement even you’re not moving them. The drifting occurs when each of the sticks’ sensors are worn down from use to the point that not even recalibration within the Nintendo Switch’s system settings can save them.

Hall effect joysticks are the answer to this problem, and a company called GuliKit sells replacement Joy-Con sticks and a small set of tools for about $27 a pair at Amazon. They claim to be drift-resistant due to relying on magnets to send input signals, rather than needing the stick to physically rub on the sensor to register movement. It’s not new technology; Sega used them in the Dreamcast controller, and both GuliKit and 8BitDo make some fantastic Switch controllers featured here that have them, too.