This one’s a touch delayed – we didn’t attend either the New York or Paris reveal events – but Nintendo arrived in London on April 11 to showcase Switch 2 and Digital Foundry was invited. And by and large, we like what we see. Yes, there’s a certain degree of continuity and familiarity moving from the original Switch to its successor, but from our perspective, the hardware hits the spot: bigger, brighter, better. And as for the games, well, it’s early days of course, so there is an expected quality divide between first and third-party efforts, but Mario Kart World? That looks like a system seller, right there.
Going into the experience, perhaps the biggest question mark for us concerned the size and heft of Switch 2 – and equally as important, the quality of the LCD panel. On the former point, comparisons against Steam Deck may reveal a similarly large device, but the fact that the new machine is essentially as thin as the old one gives it a far less cumbersome feel in the hand. It may sound obvious, but it just feels like a larger Switch, while the bigger display feels like a big upgrade over the original model – and especially useful for those of us of a certain age with long-sighted issues!
We don’t see much evidence of a mini-LED display with individual dimming zones, so the odds are that we’re looking at an edge-lit LCD – far from OLED quality. That said, the screen is honestly beautiful, and while it struggles to match the contrast of the Switch OLED, it’s very bright and vibrant. Viewing angles are also excellent at even the extremes. For HDR content, such as Cyberpunk’s dark areas with vibrant neon signs, HDR is noticeable – but for those hoping for an experience akin to the Steam Deck OLED, Switch 2 does fall short. Also, it was unclear which games shown were benefitting from the VRR technology in the display – for certain titles that struggled, not even VRR with low frame-rate compensation can smooth out the experience.
We did take a look at doing a screen comparison, packing OG and OLED Switches with Zelda: Breath of the Wild installed. Unfortunately, the nature of Nintendo’s filming guidelines and conditions on site made a proper filmed comparison challenging. What we saw from the front-on view of all three was pretty clear-cut: Switch 2 is a huge leap in quality as an LCD panel compared to the original Switch’s LCD, but can’t come close to the Switch OLED model. Still, our overall takeaway from the event is that the screen quality is not an issue – Nintendo has picked a high quality panel, and we might get that OLED model some three to four years down the line.