Nintendo did some crazy optimization with the chip, at 8nm it performs more like a 5nm chip would in things like a Steam Deck. At 11 watts a ROG Ally can get no where near this kind of performance. 

Of course some people now want to fixate on the screen because they can't actually complain much about the chipset performance, enthusiasts are exhausting.

The screen to me is fine, much better than the Switch 1 non-OLED models, not quite OLED good but pleasant enough for me. Obviously there will inevitably be a even better screen model at some point but I have no problems enjoying games on the current screen. Really enjoying my Switch 2 and quite happy with the hardware. 

Err PS5 doesn't play 3D blu-ray ;) PSVR2 doesn't support any 3D video unlike PSVR1.

But yeah it's kinda funny people don't see the ghosting now, while scoffing at TVs that don't support low latency game modes... (Probably not the same people, the OLED evangelists won't be playing in handheld mode)

Also all the bitching about no true 4K has all but disappeared. 1080p is back!

Silver lining, if you bought the Switch 2 to play on TV, at least you know you didn't pay too much extra for a screen you're not using ;)
And I'm sure Switch 2's screen is better than our original Switch screen covered in stains and scratches lol. Handhelds suck, period.

Technically you're right but I guess I'd discount features that have become obsolete or are being permanently phased out - like the headphone jack on phones for instance.

Id' say a good comparison with the PSs & Xboxs would be if only the Pros came with an SSD & every non-Pro release reverted back to a mechanical drive - it would be weird...

It'll be interesting to see how Steam Deck 2 handles this. My Guess is that they'll either go solely with OLED or have both LCD & OLED off the bat. I think people will be pissed iff they go the Nintendo route.

And re. the silver lining, the other option would have been for Nintendo to eat the cost of a better/OLED display and either lose a bit more money per unit or profit slightly less (depending on the situ).

I was playing Cyberpunk yesterday again. I don't know much about specs, performance and all that gibberish. I kinda quit reading about that sort of stuff all the way back when the Geforce GTX 9800 was a thing, so about 17 years ago. But I was standing somewhere on a rooftop in night city and I was genuinely impressed by the graphics, even in performance mode. Of course I was playing in Dock on my beautiful OLED screen with HDR and all that. But still. I am quite confident that the performance of the Switch 2 is more than enough for the coming years, and that's coming from someone with a PS5 Pro standing right next to the Switch 2. So it's not like I wouldn't know what top-notch modern games look like.

Then again, I still consider RDR2 to be one of the most beautiful games until this very day, so what the hell do I know. I think generally specs don't mean too much these days. It is far more important how much work developers put in, how much they care about details and really bring a virtual world to life. I can't count how many Unreal Engine 5 games I have played that have extraordinary features on paper, but still look and feel boring and dull.

Yeah, anyway, that's how I think about all this performance stuff. =P

Now imagine they'd applied those same optimizations to 5nm...

The pressures on Nintendo in 2025 are not the same as the ones of the Wii to Switch era where you could understand the penny pinching as there was legitimate doubt over the success of those consoles. They're now making money hand over fist and Switch 2 was a guaranteed hit. I don't think there's any excuse for delivering a display that is worst-in-class in some important areas and even falls short of cheap displays nearly a decade old.

Nintendo at it's core is just money-driven like any corporation and they seem to be going down the same enshittification route as any other company that can get away with it.

They've taken an unnecessarily old process node, and yes optimized it, but part of that optimization has been to limit the power to the screen that could otherwise have been driven harder to achieve significantly less lag & higher brightness (to potentially achieve the HDR they're falsely advertising).

I'm glad those who've purchased S2s are enjoying them, as will I when I inevitably buy either this version or the OLED model down the road, but I think it's important we call balls and strikes & don't let Nintendo off when they at best cut corners & at worst deliberately release an inferior version of a product so that they can upsell a bunch of people a superior model in 2 or 3 years time.

Every year Apple takes the piss with the cost of their RAM & storage upgrades but that doesn't mean we shouldn't call them out just because they're consistent in their price-gouging.

Overall I think Nintendo have done an OK job with S2 but I think it's disingenuous to suggest people are offering criticisms in bad faith when there's legit reasons to hold Nintendo to account.

I actually think Nintendo are masters at knowing what matters to mass consumers and what they can cheap out on because only a select few tech obsessives will care about it. The screen is a massive none issue for majority of consumers. Even on gaming forums threads have been created where the clear majority haven't even noticed the Switch 2 screen is supposedly bad. And that is on gaming forums, where you will find a lot more spec knowledge than among general consumers.

Its Nintendo's mastery of knowing general gaming consumers that make them so competitive on the market. PC handhelds on the other hand are doomed as long as they cater to the small tech bubble and make ever more expensive handhelds with no understanding at all of how futile it is to cater to a small demographic of obsessives. And i think that is what makes the tech bubble so anti-Nintendo, because Nintendo always has the better view of the market and how general consumers think, and no matter how many youtube videos they make about how people should just put ever more money into a ROG Ally instead of a Switch 2, the sales for the Switch 2 will just keep on dominating.

Frequency times voltage squared and all. The chip is efficient because it's at the bottom of that curve, which is the same strategy we'll get industry-wide, even at HPC, once vertical circuitry becomes a thing.

If the Steam Deck ran at 500 MHz with twice the CUs it wouldn't consume the same power, it would be far more efficient (at the cost of extra die space due to the wider design). No mystery, really.

Digital Foundry's final verdict is the system is very good.

Some of the immediate comments from Digital Foundry's comments section on Youtube I think are more in tune with the reality here:

The console isn’t perfect, but im loving it! The crazy thing is that when it comes to the screen its probably the best LCD screen ive ever seen, these colors POP almost as good as my steam deck OLED display. Id probably think it was OLED if it wasn’t for the absent inky blacks lol. 1080p, 120fps, vrr, its pretty future proofed. I haven’t noticed any of the “ghosting” that DF pointed out, and I tried looking for it.

@LocrianDorian
1 hour ago
I love my Switch 2, I've mostly been playing Switch 1 games on it to be honest because I have about 500 of them and half of them are unplayed. I haven't really noticed the ghosting, I think people are blowing it out of proportion. Not saying it is not an issue, but it really isn't something the average layman would notice.

Regular gamers are just going to see a bright, colorful screen that is most importantly very big and be happy with it, the screen stuff is such a nothing burger but I guess after the Switch 2's launch broke sales record, the people who were clinging to "$80 Mario Kart!" and "8nm!!!" had to go cling to their last resort. 

DF also admits not only is there 4K DLSS, but it's relatively cheap as well. 

The bruhaha over 8nm doesn't seem to have had the same impact because Nintendo optimized really well and it's a very custom design (even evident from the die shot xrays, it seems to be influenced by Ada Lovelace design), so you're getting still reasonable battery life and good end performance. 

Nintendo made a good system here, their best hardware day 1 since probably the GameCube. The "normal" core gamer is going to have a blast with this system, it's very powerful for a slim form factor and the net end performance (no matter how you get there) on a screen is better than things like a Steam Deck and trades blows with things like a wired Series S home console and a $700 ROG Ally that almost no one owns. 

For $450 there's nothing on the market today that's going to give you significantly better performance in a still mobile form factor (not to mention this is way slimmer than a Steam Deck or ROG Ally could dream of being with a bigger screen to boot). 

If they decide to make a Pro version of this some day that's going to be a beast of a system too. And Mario Kart is a blast, loving it, so many epic tracks. 

My only gripe with the hardware, and it's not really even that big of a gripe is the system feels a bit heavy. It's not really a big deal for an adult, but it could be a bit hard for the kiddos, but it does go to show that Nintendo is willing to make hardware more tailored for adults. This thing definitely does not feel like a toy at all, fairly premium feeling all around. 

The issue with the screen is a problem, but the vast majority of people aren't going to notice it. I haven't noticed it at all in the time I've played handheld, though the only games I've really played in handheld are Mario Kart and Tears of the Kingdom and I prefer to play docked when I can regardless.

Nintendo has majorly misread the market in the past, as has pretty much every company, and they'll do so again in the future - deeming them 'masters at knowing what matters to mass consumers' & saying 'Nintendo always has the better view of the market and how general consumers think' sounds a bit kool-aidy to me & is provably wrong when looking at their history.

Switch 2 could have been half as performant & had an even worse screen and it'd likely still be sold out, such was the level of anticipation created by the success of Switch 1.

Also, the SWOLED being the best selling version of S1 since it's introduction doesn't really support your point that consumers don't care about the screen...

Some sub-£200 phones come with OLEDs now, I think Nintendo could have included one if they wanted to, but going with an inferior screen at launch then having folk double-dip mid-generation makes line go up more!