While OLED screens are the hot ticket these days, LCD panels have evolved considerably since the days of the original Switch—as was stated by Nintendo's Tetsuya Sasaki during the recent Nintendo Switch 2 hands-on event in New York.
Rumours that the new console would use LCD over OLED had been circulating for a while before it was officially confirmed, but, having had some hands-on time with the Switch 2, we can report that the "downgrade" isn't anywhere near as bad as some armchair experts would have you believe.
Nintendo Life editor Gavin Lane got to fondle the new console during the Paris hands-on event and revealed that the screen is really impressive, despite it not being OLED:
The screen is a looker. We didn't have access to brightness controls on any of the demo models (all menu-related buttons were non-responsive for nearly all of the demos), but the panel looked bright and crisp. As someone who was really worried that a non-OLED display would feel like a massive downgrade, it doesn't feel like that.
Meanwhile, our deputy editor, Alana Hagues, who was on the other side of the Atlantic trying out the Switch 2 in New York, had this to report:
We've come a long way from the LCD screens of 2017. Essentially, the new screen is fantastic — the colours are so much brighter than the standard Switch, and they might even rival an OLED thanks to that bigger screen. It turns out that .9 inches makes a huge difference. I also didn't really notice the bezel around the screen; it wasn't intrusive and because of how bright the screen actually is, my eyes were never drawn to the black outline.
As our esteemed editor says, though, you can bet your bottom dollar that Nintendo will release an OLED model of Switch 2 at some point—but for now, the LCD panel represents a huge step forward when compared to the one seen in the OG Switch, and we personally think you'll be suitably impressed when you see it for yourselves.