Review: Nintendo Switch 2 Piranha Plant Camera - Shocking Image Quality, But Its Cuteness Will Snare You

While Nintendo itself put out the new console, it's Hori's officially licensed — and we have to say adorable — Piranha Plant camera which attracted the most attention.

A little USB-C webcam fashioned after the enemies from the Super Mario series, it's certainly a lot more fun-looking that Nintendo's old-school radio mic-looking one. However, the cuteness comes with caveats when it comes to image quality.

Let's fetch our gardening gloves and take a look, shall we?

What's in the box?

In the box you get the camera itself (with clip-on leaves to attach to the stem), the base 'pot' which the camera connects to via USB-C, a 1.5m USB-C cable, and a little right-angled headphone jack adaptor (to use, presumably, if you're plugging in wired headphones but the leaves are in the way).

You also get a large leaflet full of warnings in various languages with a QR code pointing to an instruction manual containing the same warnings alongside the necessary how-to-use info.

In of specs, the resolution is 640 × 480 pixels, so instantly you shouldn't be expecting iPhone-level quality here. Capture is 30 frames-per-second and it has a viewing angle of 85°. To compare, Nintendo's offering offers 1080p with a viewing angle of around 110°.

As with Nintendo's standard camera, the Piranha Plant is surprisingly petite — even smaller than Nintendo's. The plant detaches from the pot, too, immediately making it an attractive option if you play in handheld mode a lot and plan on engaging in regular GameChat sessions with friends and family.

First impressions

I've never been a massive fan of Piranha Plants, with the notable exception of the amiibo, which ranks in my top three, probably. There's something about the detailing on the head, with the glistening tongue and the teeth, that I just find ace. And this camera has a similar effect! It's incredibly cute.

There's a specific place at the bottom of the stem for the leaves to clip on (I had them in the wrong place for a while). The plant's big lips close around the camera itself, which covers the lens for privacy - a neat touch compared to Nintendo's twisty shutter and 'on' light. The bendy stem/cable even lets you pose the plant, adding to the personality, and while it's not useful for anything in particular (other than taking pics of your camera - oh the irony), you're able to open its mouth halfway, or thereabouts.

The camera itself plugs into the top of the Switch simple enough. It's just light enough (30g) for the port to grip it solidly enough, though I wouldn't go shaking it too hard. But that goes for your shiny new Switch 2, as well.

How does it work?

I tested handheld mode first. Once the camera is plugged into the top and you're in a GameChat group, simply share your camera in the settings and you're off (or you can 'Test USB-C Camera' in the system settings beforehand).

You can manually zoom in and choose whether you want your background visible, although anybody who's fiddled around during a Zoom call or Google Meet knows the patchiness caused by suboptimal lighting and other environmental factors on these filters. You can also choose to have just your face framed in a circle.

As the modest specs should make obvious, it's immediately apparent that the video quality here will be sured by practically any other camera-quipped device in your house. This device is extremely limited in of video capture ability.

However, for what it's designed to do — ie. work in conjunction with GameChat to inject your hilarious face into Nintendo games so that your pals can see (as well as hear) your moans, groans, and celebratory yelps while dealing and receiving green-shell punishment — it functions just fine.

As well as being a camera stand, the green plant pot doubles as a clip to attach to your TV — handy if you park your dock behind the telly. Clipping it to my thin-screened LG OLED, it felt a little precarious, but provided you bend the plant stem to balance everything, it stays put well enough. Don't go shaking your TV...but again, why would you want to violently shake your expensive electronics? Why do you keep doing that? Just leave them be!

Ahem. As with everything else with the Switch 2 hardware, the camera just works. The face-tracking follows you around the room well enough, although it definitely gets a little, erm, let's say 'impressionist' if you're feeling generous ('AI-style, feature-melting nightmare fuel' if not) when you move backwards out of its face-sensing range. Around three metres back it started getting choppy for me, and the camera failed to pick my face up after I moved three-and-a-half/four metres away in a decently-lit living room during the morning. It's not a high-tech gadget.

BUT! I'd argue that getting upset about the image quality here is missing the point somewhat. When you look at Nintendo's own offering, it's a sturdy little thing but it's only delivering 1080p and, crucially, if you're sitting across the room, the resolution of your face once it's been cropped out by the software will be an order of magnitude below HD.

Also, any video conferencing tool that automatically removes the background is patchy. With the official Nintendo one, there's all sorts of artefacting and flickering going on as the console struggles to filter out the non-human elements in suboptimal living room lighting conditions. The lower resolution of Hori's cam doesn't help, but it's not a massive step down from the alternative, either.

Simply put, whether you go with Nintendo or Hori, you aren't getting -level, full-resolution, Face Time-quality video with either option. However, it works well enough to get the job done (which at launch is essentially injecting a live profile pic into a box in we all had a great time GameChatting with that).

Naturally, the more pixels, the better, but the Piranha Plant camera will be sufficient for the vast majority of face-tracking use cases. It looks like the Mario Party Jamboree TV might demand more with its CameraPlay, and the resulting images will look commensurately worse with this 480p cam. But even with its lowest-of-low-tech qualities, this camera just makes me smile every time I see it. It's a fun little thing.

Compared to Nintendo's camera, it's a straight-up trade: resolution for cuteness. If you happen to have a compatible USB-C camera already, it's hard to recommend either, especially if you don't plan on making GameChat a regular thing. But given that this is cheaper than Nintendo's camera (outside the US at least - this is £33.99 / €39,99 / $59.99), and that the other one, while offering better resolution, is hardly a precision eyepiece, it's all much of a muchness to me.

Oh, and if you're wondering, it absolutely works just as a standard PC webcam. So if your laptop camera's borked and you want to give your video calls that blurry, late-'90s vibe, a Piranha Plant on your desk is an option.

Conclusion

If you're buying Piranha Plant Camera — or any of the Switch 2 cameras — expecting a crystal-clear, super-sharp image, you're going to be disappointed. These are rough-and-ready webcams meant to deliver knockabout, lo-fi fun in the vein of the Game Boy Camera or the 3DS' in-built lens. Approached from that angle, Hori delivers the functionality you want in an exceptionally cute package.

If you're planning on streaming or you absolutely need the best possible picture quality, this simply won't meet your needs. Otherwise, only grade-A grouches won't grin when they walk into the living room and see this clipped to the top of the telly.