What is the Switch Pro Controller polling rate on PC?

The original Switch Pro Controller polls at about 66 Hz over Bluetooth and 74 Hz over a cable on a PC. Gamepadla measured 65.89 Hz and 73.64 Hz on Windows 11, half the 120 Hz figure that circulates and about half the 125 Hz of an Xbox controller. The Switch 2 Pro Controller is a real step up: 248 to 250 Hz on a cable. But only when Windows sees it as an XInput or DirectInput pad. In its native Switch mode it measured 62.86 Hz, slower than the old pad.

Where 120 Hz comes from

The figure traces back to dekuNukem's reverse-engineering notes. They describe the controller's standard full input report as follows: "Pushes current state @60Hz, or @120Hz if Pro Controller." The same notes describe a second, simpler report that is "pushed to the host when a button is pressed or released", which is the plain controller interface the operating system sees.

So 120 Hz is a documented rate for one report mode, not a measured rate on a PC. What arrived at Windows in gamepadla's tests was 66 to 74 Hz. The published results do not say which report mode the driver had selected, so we cannot tell you why the measured rate is lower, only that it is.

Four pads, measured

Gamepadla times latency with its Prometheus 82 rig, which physically presses the buttons and moves the sticks, and measures polling with a separate software tool. The mean polling delay column is ours, from the half-interval rule on our mouse polling rate page.

Sources: Switch Pro Controller, Switch 2 Pro Controller, Joy-Con. The Joy-Con figure was measured with gamepadla's electrical GPDL tester rather than the Prometheus 82, so compare it with care.

Why the cable is not faster

On most pads the cable wins. On the original Pro Controller it did not: buttons averaged 21.81 ms on the cable against 16.81 ms over Bluetooth, 5.00 ms slower, despite a slightly higher polling rate. Sticks were close, 22.15 ms against 21.14 ms. What the cable did buy was consistency. Its stick jitter was 5.78 ms against 12.71 ms over Bluetooth, and its worst stick reading was 32.95 ms against 65.22 ms.

The DualSense shows the same inversion, for a different reason: its stock cable polls at 250 Hz while its Bluetooth link ran above 500 Hz. The Pro Controller's two links poll at nearly the same rate, so the difference sits in the controller and its Switch-mode protocol, which polling arithmetic cannot see.

The mode matters more than the link

The Switch 2 Pro Controller isolates the cause, because gamepadla tested the same cable in three modes. As XInput it measured 248.45 Hz and 7.97 ms on buttons. As DirectInput, 249.94 Hz and 7.37 ms. In Switch mode, 62.86 Hz and 19.4 ms, with 9.46 ms of jitter and a worst press of 49.93 ms. Leaving Switch mode saved 11.43 to 12.03 ms per button press on the same hardware.

A third-party pad repeats the pattern. On the 8BitDo Pro 2, tested by one person on one day, the cable in Switch mode was the slowest result:

Switch mode over a cable cost 16.72 ms against XInput over the same cable, and halved the polling rate. Source: 8BitDo Pro 2.

What to do on PC

For a Switch 2 Pro Controller, use the cable and have it reach the game as an XInput pad. Valve's Steam Client Beta of 25 November 2025 "Added support for Nintendo Switch 2 controllers connected over USB on Windows", and the Steamworks documentation says that when Steam is sending gamepad input "it will appear in your game as regular Xbox controller input, rather than the normal device". Gamepadla's XInput stick test lists the pad as "Controller (XBOX 360 For Windows)", which matches, though the site does not name the software it used.

For an original Pro Controller there is no fast mode on record. Every PC test we found ran in Switch mode, at 66 to 74 Hz. Use Bluetooth if you want the lower average button latency, the cable if you want steadier sticks. If you need more than either gives, the measured upgrade is a different pad: a wired Xbox Series controller averaged 6.50 ms on buttons at 125 Hz, under a third of the Pro Controller's cable figure.

One thing travels with every Pro Controller you buy: gamepadla found no inner deadzone on the original's sticks and a 3.9% centre error on the left stick. A stick that does not hide its own centre error needs a small deadzone set in the game.

Where this stops applying

Everything here is Windows 11 on PC. On a Switch console, the pad talks to Nintendo's own system, and a PC polling test says nothing about it. Each figure is one unit tested by one person, and the Switch 2 Pro's three modes were tested on different days by two testers. The 8BitDo and Joy-Con results used the electrical GPDL method, not the Prometheus 82 rig. We found no PC test of the Switch 2 Pro Controller over Bluetooth, and no measurement of the original Pro Controller through Steam Input, so neither is in the table. A firmware or Steam update could change any of these numbers; retest before you rely on one.