You want your games to play the smoothest they possibly can — but sometimes, screen technology gets in the way. That’s why some of the latest TVs and handhelds feature variable refresh rate (VRR) screens that can compensate when your graphics can’t deliver a consistent 60 or 120 frames per second.
The Nintendo Switch 2 has a VRR screen — and originally, Nintendo advertised that the Switch 2 would also work with your VRR-capable TV. But Nintendo soon scrubbed mentions of docked VRR from its website, and on May 16th, it apologized. “Nintendo Switch 2 supports VRR in handheld mode only,” the company told Nintendo Life, apologizing for “the incorrect information.”
But I’ve just confirmed that the official Nintendo Switch 2 dock does support VRR — by plugging the Steam Deck into it.
In fact, we found multiple rival handhelds can output 4K at 120Hz with both HDR and VRR if you plug them into the Nintendo Switch 2 dock. I saw the same with the Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS, and an Asus ROG Ally X with Bazzite. We got the idea from Reddit, where u/DynaMach and others have reported VRR working this way.
It’s not particularly practical to play a PC handheld via Nintendo’s dock, because you’ll need a female-to-male USB-C extension cable and you’ll need to continually hold it against Nintendo’s spring-loaded platform to keep it from getting ejected — but I just so happened to have one of those cables lying around.
And before you ask, yes, I did actually test that 4K VRR actually works at up to 120 frames per second — I didn’t just trust SteamOS’s flag that it was supported. I downloaded the open-source VRRTest tool and messed with framerates to see intermediate framerates between 48fps and 60fps and 90fps all stayed smooth on my TV, compared to the judder when VRR is disabled.
So if the Switch 2 supports VRR, and the dock supports VRR, why does Nintendo not offer VRR display output from the Nintendo Switch 2?
It would be a boon in many games, whether we’re talking about games like Cyberpunk 2077 that don’t run at 60fps on Switch to begin with, or even games that only occasionally dip below that threshold (say, 55fps) where that dip currently manifests as a big stutter in your gameplay.
Personally, I think it’s possible Nintendo just doesn’t think the Switch 2 is ready to put it on the big screen.
Last month, Digital Foundry found “clear problems” even in the Switch 2’s handheld VRR mode, including judder in Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky’s 40fps “performance” modes, and even in Hitman: World of Assassination’s unlocked-but-capped 60fps mode — even though Nintendo’s own Welcome Tour showed proper VRR support.
“Clearly the feature is in there and working, because the Welcome Tour proves it, but the actual implementation in other games so far is disappointing,” Digital Foundry’s Rich Leadbetter explained on a podcast.
But if you’re looking for technical reasons why Nintendo might not pass along VRR to the official dock, Leadbetter tells me he hasn’t yet heard a good theory. He does believe, however, that Nintendo probably made an honest mistake when it wrote, then apologized for writing, that the Switch 2 would support VRR in TV mode. He doubts that Nintendo axed the feature at the last minute.
This is just the latest technological weirdness around the Switch 2’s launch, like we saw when testing the Switch 2’s semi-locked-down USB-C video output and why the best webcams didn’t work.
But as before, Nintendo is staying silent: it didn’t have a comment for our story.
