Nintendo confirms new Switch has up to 1080p 60FPS output, no 4K

The rumors were way off the mark. Nintendo has announced a new Switch model with a 7-inch OLED panel and a few upgrades, but there's no mention of 4K output whatsoever.

It's official: Nintendo is releasing a new Switch OLED model on October 8, 2021 for $349. The new Switch mostly has quality-of-life improvements like a 6.9-inch 720p OLED panel with more vibrant colors, better sound quality, a wider kickstand for tabletop use, double the internal storage memory, and a new dock with a dedicated ethernet port. The main selling point isn't 4K gaming, and apparently there's no DLSS-enabled NVIDIA Tegra chip. It's highly likely the Switch OLED uses the same 16nm Tegra X1 refresh as the Switch Lite and the 2019 base model.

Switch OLED's official specs chart confirms the new model will hit up to 1920 x 1080 output at 60FPS, which is the same performance target as the base 2017 and 2019 models. Remember that the Switch's GPU is halved to 302MHz while in handheld mode and can only be fully unlocked when it's connected to a TV via docked play.

The existing Switch can technically play on 4K UHDTVs but the visual quality is sacrificed as the image is stretched a fair bit. This should be the case with the Switch OLED too.

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