Nintendo Switch 2 Slammed for Poor Display—120 Hz With 30 FPS Response Times

[TechLurker]

I'll wait until emulators are available based on the Switch 2 and a way to convert my purchased games into ROMs to play on PC or a more powerful handheld are available.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

What I read over the years is the low quality build quality of nintendo.

I had a few switch in my hands. Nothing which I really like or want. Some of these are just lying around unused by the owner.

I think nintendo is in the quality class like razer and some other companies. May work for two years when you use it carefully.

All my Nintendo stuff back to the original NES is still working. For Switch the first it's still in great condition and I only added a screen protector. The Switch Pro controllers have amazing build quality.

 

[R-T-B]

All my Nintendo stuff back to the original NES is still working. For Switch the first it's still in great condition and I only added a screen protector. The Switch Pro controllers have amazing build quality.

My original NES works too, despite me having hacked and modded it to oblivion. Those things were like Industrial consoles lol

 

[Squared]

Everyone in my family except me has a Switch. All of them are holding up great except for the joycon drift. I replaced the left joycon stick for one of my siblings twice, once with an iFixit stick and when that drifted recently I replaced it again with a hall effect stick from China (GuliKit).

 

[KingSaul]

Hope someone makes a kit to update the screen. Then I could buy a broken Switch 2 And get one cheaper and better.

 

[Dr. Dro]

As much as it pains the hardware geek in me to say that, the reality of the market is that the Switch 2 just needed to have good-enough hardware, for an exceptional game library.

At this point it's not even exceptional anymore. It's just Nintendo first-party games.

I'll wait until emulators are available based on the Switch 2 and a way to convert my purchased games into ROMs to play on PC or a more powerful handheld are available.

Don't want to be that guy, but I don't expect Switch 2 emulation to progress to a point where it's both relatively effortless and easy on the hardware for quite some time, I'd say NS2 emulation is years out. We will need significant advances on hardware and software to achieve that feat, especially on more affordable tiers of hardware. In other words, don't expect it to happen any time soon and don't expect to run it on a 9060 XT, if you want to play Switch 2 games, the only solution is to buy a Switch 2.

IMHO killer obstacle is that the NS2 uses the Ampere architecture. It'll be some time until the RTX 30 series GPUs are "rudimentary" enough to be simulated within a realistic hardware configuration. Doable? Sure... at full speed, with enough accuracy to boot and play commercial software? Another story entirely. Hell, in fact, cycle accurate Game Boy Advance emulators are just about beginning to appear and be wieldy enough to be used for actual playing.

Besides, the Nintendo emulation scene hasn't exactly recovered from the beatdown they took once the Big N went after Yuzu and Ryujinx, and fwiw, it may never recover from that.

Hope someone makes a kit to update the screen. Then I could buy a broken Switch 2 And get one cheaper and better.

Nintendo will happily sell you a NS2 OLED in a couple of years.

 

[THU31]

The switch 2 keeps on getting more disappointing as an overpriced and underpowered console.
It's interesting how the sw2 display has worse latency than the sw1 display.

2018 manufacturing node for the SoC, 2020 GPU architecture. It's ancient. Plus the shitty screen and sticks. The margins on this product must be insane. But they know people will buy anything they release.

I wonder if things would be different if the Ada-based Tegra SoC (Atlan) hadn't been cancelled. The console would probably be twice as powerful.

 

[EsaT]

I wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo isn’t using any overdrive on this panel, or going as far as to undervolt it in some way to save on power. No way should you be able to get a modern panel that’s 120Hz with VRR and supports HDR (barely) with response times this slow. If this is the case, then that could be fixable in firmware but at the cost of some battery life. If they can tweak this in firmware, then it could be an option you could turn on or off, so you can pick between more battery and a slower panel, or worse battery and a much quicker panel.

Response time compensation is feature of the LCD panel's controller chip itself and not GPU thing.
Though guess you could implement something similar in GPU level, if you know the precise pixel response behaviour of the connected LCD panel.
And it itself doesn't have real effect to panel's power draw, which is made by backlight power draw and pixels needing continuous active control signal to show image.

Here's technical document about how it works:

https://www.ti.com/lit/an/snla185/snla185.pdf

I think most people here have no clue and are just hating like total 10-year-olds. It's known that LCDs don't use/run overdrive at all. Calm down, and let's see if it gets fixed via a firmware update, since it has garnered significant attention. No matter how cheap the screen is, I don't believe someone (here InnoLux) is manufacturing screens slower than those from eight years ago. And the controllers are not using HAL effect for a reason (magnets around the console), but how you know. Hate is N1.

While corporate apologists always keep kissing those butts, eh?

It's OLEDs which don't use/need any response time compensation.
LCD panels pretty much always use some RTC as default if they're meant for gaming.
RTC is also what's behind one of the possible issues of LCDs especially with variable refresh rate: "inverse ghosting".
(too agressive RTC per refresh rate makes pixel overshoot the transition)

And even without RTC that's very slow panel:
For comparison modern tech IPS panels can actually do sub 10ms reponse times "natively".
Also such 33ms response time basically means it being not much more than 30Hz display in reality...
At 60Hz pixel has 16.7ms of time to change value if it doesn't want to be always lagging and chasing the actual value of that pixel image.

 

[freeagent]

Our Switch 1 is only used for Mario games, and the like.. nothing that you would use a high end console for..

We wont be getting one of these though. Too bad because I was actually kind of looking forward to it lol..

 

[Bigshrimp]

It works great in docked mode. Primarily where I use it so I can get 4K and better HDR and no frame pacing issues on an OLED.

 

[phints]

Steam Deck OLED is the only handheld I’d buy. 20+ years of Steam games all in one place don’t have to rebuy anything don’t have to deal with this crap LCD screen.

 

[Gman102]

Apart from poor performance there is also the fact that screen is quite fragile and without its screen "protectors" it becomes a safety hazard.

Well, you are half correct. Without the screen protectors they can shatter, but in Jerryrigeverthings video, it clearly was very durable, taking something like 24 hits with a pair of pliers to break it. Definitely more durable than most screens.

 

[akgis]

How come they can announce HDR on handheld when the screen dont even have dynamic brightness from some form of dimming? Even my old IPS that had "fake" HDR600 had 6 zones.

 

[dismuter]

At this point it's not even exceptional anymore. It's just Nintendo first-party games.

To many people, those Nintendo first-party games constitute by themselves an exceptional catalog, which is exclusive to that console. It's a matter of taste.

 

[Dr. Dro]

To many people, those Nintendo first-party games constitute by themselves an exceptional catalog, which is exclusive to that console. It's a matter of taste.

Many people are all-in with console exclusives due to personal biases, I wouldn't even say it's taste at that point, just a justification for spending money on proprietary, locked down hardware and on subscription fees. Mario Kart would be Mario Kart on a Nintendo console or on my PC, and I assure you that when it comes to the overall experience, maybe the Switch 6 is going to run games like it does today.

 

[THU31]

Hardware Unboxed did some screen testing on various handhelds. At least it's better than the PSP.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Hardware Unboxed did some screen testing on various handhelds. At least it's better than the PSP.

Haha damn when your benchmark is a 21 year old handheld