I was so very delighted, and a little bit confused, when I saw the Hori Piranha Plant camera announced for the Nintendo Switch 2. Delighted because, well, just look at the thing – it’s adorable! And confused because… shouldn’t Nintendo have made this thing? Unfortunately, the camera has one big flaw: a 480p sensor. Even though I knew that going in, I’m still profoundly disappointed, because this is an otherwise brilliant little camera.
Before we get to why I’m so bummed out about this camera, there is actually a lot to like. First off, forgetting the webcam part, the Hori Piranha Plant Camera is a fine bauble, modeled after the piranha plants that have popped out of pipes to bite or spit fire at Mario for decades now, and would fit in seamlessly on a shelf of video game ephemera. The polka-dotted head holds the camera sensor, and you can close its mouth to cover the lens, which is just immediately and obviously a great idea. You can tilt the head on its stalk, which is bendy to let you aim the camera, and at the bottom is a USB-C plug you can either plug straight into a Switch or into its green pipe base. The whole kit and caboodle comes with a USB-C cable that’s long-ish, but no more than the one that comes with the first-party Nintendo Switch 2 Camera.
Hori did some clever things with the base. I love that it’s a separate piece, letting you use the camera without it, sticking out of the Switch 2 like a Game Boy Advance Worm Light. You have other options, though. When the camera is plugged into the base, it can stand upright on a table like Nintendo’s camera, although the included cable is so stiff and the Piranha Plant Camera so lightweight that I had to be really careful while placing it or the cable would move, dragging the camera and turning it or threatening to make it fall over. The other option is mounting it – the bottom of the base folds away from a lip on the front you can hook on the front of your TV, in much the same way you’d attach a webcam to a computer monitor.
Unfortunately, this is where things get rocky for the Hori’s cute Switch 2 camera. If you thought it was too good to be true when you saw Hori only charging $39.99, well, that was a good instinct. All of this is absolutely ruined by its 480p sensor and cramped 85-degree field-of-view (FOV). It’s out of touch and out of time, a camera that would have looked dated and cheap 20 years ago. If you’re sitting on a couch several feet away from your Switch 2 and this camera, it’ll look to your friends like you’ve FaceTimed them on a Nintendo DSi.
It’s a night and day difference when you compare it to Nintendo’s first-party camera. In every instance, the Piranha Plant camera produces muddy, dim pictures with so little detail that from my usual comfy gaming couch, my face is the smeary visage of a spooky ghost. The piled up blankets and pillows on my basement couch are unrecognizable white blobs, and the art over my shoulder is barely recognizable as Galactus. And thanks to its super-narrow FOV, it only captures a fragment of the scene that the first-party camera grabs. (Excuse the mess in that shot – my basement entertainment area doubles as my child’s play room.)
This isn’t just an aesthetic issue – the Switch 2 has a really hard time cutting me out properly when I use the background filtering features. Sitting on my couch, the Switch 2 couldn’t separate me from the background at all, leaving a question mark where my face should be. If I leaned way forward, it might show a cut out of that near-featureless horror show version of my face. To get it to consistently show me in the filtering modes, I had to sit in a chair about three feet in front of my TV and the camera, but that’s not practical for me.
Ultimately, it is handheld mode – with the Piranha Plant camera plugged directly into the USB-C port on top of the Switch 2 – that saves Hori’s camera from being simply a novelty, and not just because it’s delightful to have a toothy plant monster sprouting from the top of the Switch 2. It’s compact enough to fit into a slim Switch 2 carrying case, and 480p is totally fine when the camera is inches from your face, allowing the person on the other end of a GameChat session to tell they’re looking at a standard-issue human face and not that of, I don’t know, the Toxic Avenger. It really feels like Hori conceived of this as a handheld-only camera at first – a niche I think ought to be filled, so good on them! – and creating the pipe base as a might-as-well addition to the package.
Still, even if you only want this for handheld mode, it’s got issues. The bendy stalk isn’t bendy enough, and with such a narrow field of view, it’s hard to get it pointed at your face just right. Also, I wish it had a way to brace against the body of the Switch 2 when it’s plugged in, because when I’m making those bending adjustments, I end up feeling like I need to be careful to support the base of the stalk so I’m not adding strain to the USB-C port. Perhaps that’s me being overly cautious, but I’ve broken USB-C ports before by dropping a device that had something plugged into one, and that’s much harder to fix.
Even with these problems, the Hori Piranha Plant Camera might be the best and only viable option if you’re the sort of person who loves kitsch and has a strong desire for an on-the-go GameChat camera. Or if you, like me, have a kid who’s getting a Switch 2 for Christmas and you’re trying to save money and delight them at the same time. There’s the $59.99 Hori alternative, which is still 480p, pricier than even Nintendo’s $55 first-party camera, and isn’t cute. Or you can buy one of several cheaper Amazon options that all look nearly identical to one another and feature nonsense brand names like “TPGSING” and “Sioenl” and could look even worse than the Piranha Plant Camera.
Most people who don’t fall into these two camps shouldn’t buy any of those options, including the Hori Piranha Plant camera, for their Switch 2. The whole novelty Nintendo character aspect just isn’t enough to make up for its ancient-looking camera. That’s a shame, because at $39.99, this camera only needs to clear the low bar of looking about as good as Nintendo’s first-party Switch 2 camera to be worth buying. Oh well.
Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they call him) who has covered technology, gaming, and entertainment steadily since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently, The Verge. Inside of him there are two wolves: one that thinks it wouldn't be so bad to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who also thinks this, but more strongly.
