All indications are that the Nintendo Switch 2 will use a screen with 1080p resolution, a significant improvement over the original model’s screen, which is limited to 720p. This may seem like good news, but Digital Foundry believes that it could actually cause problems in terms of both performance and backwards compatibility.

Regarding backwards compatibility, they mention that moving Nintendo Switch games designed for a 720p screen to a 1080p screen could lead to image quality issues because In theory, they would look blurry. That’s half true, because ultimately playing games at that resolution on a 7- or 8-inch screen usually doesn’t make as much of a difference as it would on a larger one.

In any case, it would be very easy for Nintendo to overcome this issue as they could use a 1080p output configuration that is activated with docking mode. They also believe that a 1080p screen could be counterproductive on the Nintendo Switch 2, and that a 7- or 8-inch 720p screen would be the best choice in terms of performance, This means that it would allow for better movement of the most demanding games.

Digital Foundry cares more performance and autonomy Nintendo Switch 2 and therefore believe that Nintendo should opt for a 720p screen on their new console as this resolution is more than sufficient for such a small screen size. They also emphasize that it should be OLED and not IPS.

What resolution should the Nintendo Switch 2 have?

Personally I think the screen should be 1080p for a very simple reason, NVIDIA DLSS and bottleneck. If the Nintendo Switch 2 ends up using a DLSS Super Resolution compatible Ampere GPU, developers could turn to this technology upscale from 540p to 1080p, using said technology in performance mode.

DLSS Super Resolution in performance mode from 1080p provides good image quality on a 7 or 8 inch screensomething that Digital Foundry itself comments on quite accurately in the video, although despite everything they continue to recommend a 720p screen for Nintendo’s new console.

I imagine they do this to prioritize performance and autonomy, but I have serious doubts about this, especially since using DLSS Super Resolution in performance mode on a 720p screen would lead us to rescale from 360p, which would reduce the sharpness of the image too much due to the low pixel count, and since it’s such a limited resolution, I believe the performance gain would not be optimal, i.e. would not compensate for the large loss of image quality that would occur.

On the other hand, we have to remember that when we move in such low resolutions it is very easy to end up with a bottleneck generated CPU and the Nintendo Switch 2 won’t have a very powerful processor. Your SoC will prioritize the GPU and repeat the ARM configuration with modifications to allow a higher TDP for the graphics core. The Nintendo Switch 2 is expected to arrive in the first quarter of 2025.