We confirmed Nintendo’s Swap 2 TV dock helps VRR — so why doesn’t it work with Swap 2?

You need your video games to play the smoothest they presumably can — however generally, display screen know-how will get in the way in which. That’s why a few of the newest TVs and handhelds characteristic variable refresh price (VRR) screens that may compensate when your graphics can’t ship a constant 60 or 120 frames per second.

The Nintendo Swap 2 has a VRR display screen — and initially, Nintendo marketed that the Swap 2 would additionally work along with your VRR-capable TV. However Nintendo quickly scrubbed mentions of docked VRR from its web site, and on Might sixteenth, it apologized. “Nintendo Swap 2 helps VRR in handheld mode solely,” the corporate advised Nintendo Life, apologizing for “the inaccurate data.”

However I’ve simply confirmed that the official Nintendo Swap 2 dock does help VRR — by plugging the Steam Deck into it.

Actually, we discovered a number of rival handhelds can output 4K at 120Hz with each HDR and VRR when you plug them into the Nintendo Swap 2 dock. I noticed the identical with the Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS, and an Asus ROG Ally X with Bazzite, every outputting to my Samsung S90C TV. We bought the concept from Reddit, the place u/DynaMach and others have reported VRR working this fashion.

It’s not notably sensible to play a PC handheld through Nintendo’s dock, since you’ll want a female-to-male USB-C extension cable and also you’ll want to repeatedly maintain it in opposition to Nintendo’s spring-loaded platform to maintain it from getting ejected — however I simply so occurred to have a type of cables mendacity round.

And earlier than you ask, sure, I did really check that 4K VRR really works at as much as 120 frames per second — I didn’t simply belief SteamOS’s flag that it was supported. I downloaded the open-source VRRTest instrument and messed with varied settings, simply to examine that intermediate framerates between 48fps and 60fps and 90fps all stayed clean on my TV because the framerate fluctuates.

So if the Swap 2 helps VRR, and the dock helps VRR, why does Nintendo not supply VRR show output from the Nintendo Swap 2?

It might be a boon in lots of video games, whether or not we’re speaking about video games like Cyberpunk 2077 that don’t run at 60fps on Swap to start with, and even video games that solely sometimes dip under that threshold (say, 55fps) the place that dip presently manifests as a giant stutter in your gameplay.

Personally, I believe it’s attainable Nintendo simply doesn’t assume the Swap 2 is able to put it on the large display screen.

Final month, Digital Foundry discovered “clear issues” even within the Swap 2’s handheld VRR mode, together with judder in Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky’s 40fps “efficiency” modes, in addition to Hitman: World of Assassination’s unlocked-but-capped 60fps mode — though Nintendo’s personal Welcome Tour confirmed correct VRR help.

“Clearly the characteristic is in there and dealing, as a result of the Welcome Tour proves it, however the precise implementation in different video games to date is disappointing,” Digital Foundry’s Wealthy Leadbetter defined on the channel’s podcast.

However when you’re in search of technical the reason why Nintendo may not go alongside VRR to the official dock, Leadbetter tells me he hasn’t but heard a superb concept. He does consider, nevertheless, that Nintendo most likely made an sincere mistake when it wrote, then apologized for writing, that the Swap 2 would help VRR in TV mode. He doubts that Nintendo axed the characteristic on the final minute.

That is simply the most recent technological weirdness across the Swap 2’s launch, like we noticed when testing the Swap 2’s semi-locked-down USB-C video output and why the most effective webcams didn’t work.

However as earlier than, Nintendo is staying silent: it didn’t have a remark for our story.