Tried to keep the FOV at 0 (default) on all of them, but it might have reverted back to +20 degrees on the Ally after a restart.

Also positioning is slightly different between the three versions.

sc94597, after spending time with the hardware and having a good level of insight into what choices Nintendo had available to them when designing the console, what would you rate the S2 out of 10? 

For 2025, I'd give it a 7 out of 10. In the upper-midrange for handhelds in terms of performance and great build quality for its price. 

Nintendo could've probably gone with a Lovelace chipset for not much more money if they intended to release this year from the start. That would've been +30% the performance and put it in Series S territory (although I am unsure how they'd resolve the memory bandwidth bottleneck without a $500 price-tag.) If they did that, that would probably put it at about 9 out of 10, making it roughly comparable to the Z2E/HX370 systems that are releasing currently.

For 2023/2024 (when it probably was originally planned to release) it would also get a 9 out of 10, since it is basically on par with the Z1E Rog Ally.

Add a point to all of this if Nintendo implements a plug-in handheld TDP mode, fixes HDR and fixes VRR on external displays. 

OLED would be unrealistic if VRR is a goal. 

Thanks, that's the same score I gave it on one of these threads, but that was based purely on the spec sheet as I haven't actually seen/played one in the wild.

7/10 is good but it would have been nice if they'd really went for it this time... 

It's the fact that they'll prob make us wait 7 or 8 years for the next one that makes it sting a little more.

Anyway, I'll buy one at some stage when it's back in stock & hopefully the software will be so good that I forget about the tech (just watched the DK trailer & it looks like good fun, even if the visuals don't look mind-blowing - not sure if that's a hardware limitation or the artstyle though...) 

Hoping Monster Hunter Rise gets a patch. That's a game I play a lot on my Rog Ally (and Steam Deck.)

I have the Switch version, but no reason to play it at a locked 30fps @540p when I can get better graphics (800p-1080p) at 40-60fps when plugged in and locked 40fps in 15W mode. 

Rog Ally screen and Switch 2 screen are almost identical in terms of quality too, although Switch 2's screen is bigger. 

DF hardware review up.

Main takeaways as far as I remember (watched it yesterday)

Good:

Overall good level of performance, setting Nintendo up well for the generation.

Amazing efficiency at 8nm/10nm, they were kinda blown away.
From the pretty poultry battery they were still clocking about 2.5 hours for the most demanding games.
They showed Cyberpunk drawing 10% of the power to run Cyberpunk compared to the PS5 slim, albeit at reduced frame rate & resolution (maybe someone with better maths skills than I can figure out the comparative wattage per pixel/second for both systems)
They're gonna release efficiency comparisons with Steam Deck & have hinted that it's expected to be a big win for S2.
A certain poster has a serious serving of humble pie coming his way.

Backwards compatibility very good & above expectations.

Switch 2 Pro controller amazing.

The chat feature better than expected & pretty miraculous in terms of noise cancellation/audio processing, minimal impact on game performance.

Ethernet and wifi downloads a big step up from S1, though Wifi still not great and significantly slower than Steam Deck.

Bad:

The screen got hammered.
It's essentially not HDR & it's more laggy than the OG Switch 1 panel (moving objects smear) to the point of being significantly distracting.
VRR is seemingly not working for frame-rates under 40fps, where it's needed most, though they think this is an implementation issue from devs as the screen should be technically capable.
It's colours lean quite cold.

The TV screen calibration tool is poorly implemented & unintelligible to the average gamer.

Games can load quite a bit slower from cartridges vs internal storage/SD Express

Joycons still have a bit of give when connected to the console.

Streaming games to S1 is quite poor.
It's reasonably responsive but the video stream is very low res with bad image quality & offers a far worse experience than playing native. This was only tested on Fast Fusion, which due to it's high speed nature shows these problems at their worst.

It's a long video but I think those are the main points, though feel free to add anything I've missed or misinterpreted.

Overall I think it's how I expected the review to go down, with the exception of the screen. It seems like Nintendo really dropped the ball there, they just seem prone to frustrating penny-pinching in certain areas... (give us a more semi-modern node, a decent sized battery and a good screen FFS).

Is there a chance the smearing can be fixed via an update or is it likely 100% baked into the hardware?

You can fix 'smearing' by lowering the pulse width, but that also reduces the brightness. Maybe lowering brightness already works that way. It does for PSVR2, the brightness setting lowers pulse width, thus longer black in between frames, less smearing. 

Text version with screenshots
https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2025-nintendo-switch-2-the-digital-foundry-hardware-review



Wattage per pixel per second would be 46,656,000 avg pixels per second on Switch 2, 2,221,714 pixels per watt
For PS5 Slim 159,805,440 avg pixels per second (3.42x as many), 714,693 pixels per watt (Switch 3.11x more efficient)

Crude math, just taking the average of the reported resolution 810p for Switch 2, 1224p for PS5 (ignoring the FSR 2.1 upscale to 1800p)

On a side note, the fan inside PS5 already uses more power than the Switch 2 ;) 25.8 watts.

A more detailed screen analysis. 

30 to 40 ms ??? That's 3 frames at 60 fps blurring into each other. 

Is that to save power? Or just a cheap screen? Fake HDR as well.

It would be nice if Nintendo would release a console edition of Switch 2. No dock, just a box like the Wii for under the tv. I've only used the Switch as a handheld a couple of times, never enjoyed it as a handheld. Then my kids misplaced the thing somewhere and that was the end of it lol. At least a console doesn't end up lost ugh.

Man, I must be blinder than a mole. I play very fast games on a regular basis (Taiko no Tatsujin for example) and I failed to notice this screen thing xD

For those of you who noticed, is it really that bad to you?