The improvements it will bring at the hardware level will turn the Nintendo Switch 2 into a next-generation console and allow it to offer a very important increase in performance compared to the original model. However, we must be clear that it will be a portable console and as such You shouldn’t prioritize performance.

Imagine a portable console that is very powerful but only offers average autonomy of one hour per battery charge. Now think about a system that has lower performance but can offer up to 8 hours of autonomy. Which of these two portable consoles do you think would offer a better user experience? I think the question answers itself.

This is exactly what the big N is looking for with the Nintendo Switch 2, which offers a good balance between performance and autonomy and without having to make sacrifices in terms of design or mobility and ergonomics, ie. without having to mount a large battery which turns your new console into a heavy and bulky piece of junk. This allows you to maintain a slim and stylish design.

Nintendo Switch 2 and the importance of 5 watt mode

To maximize autonomy, Nintendo focused its efforts on achieving an SoC that was maintainable good performance when working in 5 watt mode. As I told you a few days ago, NVIDIA beat AMD in the design competition for the Nintendo Switch 2 chip, because its solution offered better performance when working with said mode.

AMD designed its SoC to offer more next-gen experiences, but in exchange it needed to work with 15-watt mode. That meant triple consumption set up by Nintendo and would obviously have a huge impact on autonomy. With this chip, the big N would have only two options, accept a shorter battery life or mount one with a higher capacity to compensate for this higher consumption, thus increasing the weight and thickness of the console.

If all the leaks we’ve seen are true, the Nintendo Switch 2 will have a 20 Wh battery, a slightly higher solution than the 16 Wh that the original model has, and thanks to a customized NVIDIA Tegra SoC with this 5 Watt mode, it could be able to offer 6 to 14 hours of play on a single battery chargedepending on the level of demand for individual titles.

I believe that NVIDIA DLSS technology will play a very important role in achieving this good performance with such a low TDP. This can reduce pixel rendering to 50% in performance mode or 33% in ultra-performance modeand then scale to the target resolution. Using this technique, it is possible to significantly reduce the GPU usage and thus the power consumption will also be significantly reduced.

Maximum performance in docking mode

Dock mode is a different story. Here we no longer have to worry about the battery and the Nintendo Switch 2 will be able to work at maximum performance. NVIDIA Tegra SoC that this console will connect can increase the TDP in this mode to 15 to 30 watts, Figures that represent a huge jump compared to 5 watts in portable mode, and should allow for a very large performance improvement.

In theory you wouldn’t have to worry about cooling because The Nintendo Switch 2 will have two fans which will operate at different rates depending on the TDP of the SoC. In portable mode, they could be turned off completely, and in docked mode, they would have to move at a considerable pace, if a maximum TDP of 30 watts is confirmed.