After many months of rumours, the fabled “Nintendo Switch Pro” has finally been announced by Nintendo. Only, it’s not exactly a “pro” mode, but a “Nintendo Switch OLED Model” that offers a better experience.
The Nintendo Switch OLED Model boils down to the following improvements over the base Switch model:
- 7-inch OLED screen
- Wide, adjustable stand
- Built-in wired LAN port in the dock
- 64 GB of internal storage (double the amount of the base Switch model)
- Enhanced audio in handheld mode
As of now, there’s no word on a significant hardware upgrade. But the bright side is that it doesn’t appear to be a necessary upgrade for Nintendo Switch owners.
Nintendo has a Frequently Asked Questions page, alongside a comparison chart that details the difference between the new OLED model, the base Switch, and the Switch Lite.
While the rumours did correctly predict many features of the OLED model (such as the 7-inch screen, built-in ethernet port, new kickstand), the rumours were false in that it would allow 4k output.
Unfortunately it seems that in order to make room for the built in LAN port, one of the USB ports at the back of the dock had to be removed. It seems that there is a total of 2 USB ports. This is down compared to the 4 USB ports in the regular Switch dock.
The Switch OLED Model will have a maximum resolution of 1920×1080 and 60 fps when docked and the maximum resolution of 1280×720 in handheld mode, which matches the screen resolution.
The Nintendo Switch OLED Model will be selling for $349.99 USD and releases on October 8, 2021, on the same day Metroid Dread also releases.
