After the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, many gamers were in for some unpleasant surprises: short battery life, locks, “bricks” on the secondary market… Added to this was a screen that was not the best quality.
Screen testing blogger Monitors Unboxed measured the Switch 2’s display, and it’s pretty bad. The response time was a whopping 33ms, which is almost twice as bad as the slowest monitor (19ms) the channel tested. On average, it’s about 6-7x worse than the average gaming monitor (5-6ms), and about 100x worse than OLED panels (0.3ms).
What is particularly surprising is the LCD display of the original Switch with a response time of 21 ms, which is superior to the second version. The reason, most likely, is the lack of overdrive (matrix acceleration) in the Switch 2. Nintendo did not do this in order to increase the already low battery life of the device. As a result, when playing dynamic titles, trails are clearly visible on the screen – the picture is blurred.
It is noted that overdrive can be enabled remotely using a software update – many gamers really want to be able to turn it on and off at will, for example, to play with a more responsive screen from home.