I don't suffer from the big hands syndrome nor do I cramp after a while playing in handheld mode so appart from the drifting issues that can be fixed, my overall experience using only the Joy-Cons for the first two years I owned my Switch was positive.

Having the possibility to separate the two controllera together to play in more "un-gamey manners" was something I appreciated a lot.

But once I broke'em. I just shelved them to pay the price of the Pro Controller which was less than the JoyCons so it felt just fairer that way.
A bit sad cuz I always had a better experience with the HD rumble feature on the JoyCons than the Pro Con.

Handheld and docked.

I have my Pro controller with me always even when traveling - but the only time I use the joycons is when I am traveling/playing portable but even then its rare cause 99% of the time I'm docked and using my pro controller.

Can't agree

Too small and uncomfortable

And they drift

They're ingenious little devices, that's for sure. So ingenious, in fact, that it's hard to dock them for their one obvious flaw: the analog sticks. Those things really pale in comparison to the Pro Controller. But like I said, it's a trade off. Everything else is so well thought out, and so well executed.

Yeah true. I mean its completely absurd they didn't do anything to fix the issue, but yeah once you have electronic contact cleaner its just slightly annoying that you have to clean them out every once in a while. I dunno about 18 months, but you can definitely get numerous dozens of hours of drift free play with them after each cleaning.

In general, to the OP, yeah Joy cons are fantastic. I always think its weird when people say they don't like them. This was, as usual, brilliant design by Nintendo. We got motion controls, handheld controls, that you can slide into a controller holder so you can play like a normal gamepad, AND they work well for two player multiplayer. They are incredibly versatile. They aren't perfect, and hopefully Nintendo will make some small improvements next gen, but they are really incredible. Really if they were just slightly bigger for sideways 2 player use that would make them near perfect.

Agreed.  My kids have gone through 3 sets and to the persons who says cleaning them fixes the issue, that isn't true.  I tried like hell multiple times to fix joy cons, they are crap controllers.  Great idea, terrible execution.

Contact cleaner fixes the drift easily. Apart from that, they are awesome.

Drift is overblown.

Once in a while (when not used for a while) my launch day joy cons might drift. The fix is to rotate them for maybe 15 seconds and it goes away until the next time they are unused for more than a couple of weeks.

This is a typical problem that is way overblown on internet.

With some smart adjustments, I think the joycons could be the ultimate VR controller. It has two different grip buttons in addition to regular triggers on both controllers. Controllers can be used separately or together. Motion control, LRA haptics, all the buttons you'd need, analog sticks (unlike some VR controllers...).

Really it just needs to be a bit more comfortable to hold and iron out the kinks (e.g. stronger haptics, drift, poor analogue sticks, etc).

That said, it's really cool that the console basically comes with two controllers for a lot of different games. Really helps out with the party aspect of it.

No need to try like hell and definitely no reason to ever buy new sets of joycons. If you're cleaning them and its not fixing it you're doing something wrong.

Just get electronic contact cleaner. Lift up the little flap on the control stick and spray under there. Move the stick all around for a few seconds after that and then wait for it to dry. It's a little hard to hold the little flap up while you spray (though a second pair of hands would probably make it easy). Then your joycon is good to go drift-free for a good long while usually. Drift stopped being a problem for me several years ago, just gotta do this cleaning once or twice a year depending on how much I play.