General Operation

For home console use, the device mounts into the included Nintendo Switch docking station and operates in “TV Mode” to support display on a large television screen. In this mode, the device can output full 1080p resolution, though it appears the initial batch of launch titles will run at 900p.

As for clockspeeds, the Switch’s standard Tegra cores are capable of running at 1020MHz, though early reports have noted that the GPU will only ever hit 768MHz at best. This is considerably lower than the 1GHz speeds of Nvidia’s Shield Tablet K1, and already lower than the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The embedded memory controller runs at 1600MHz while docked, though in undocked usage this number drops down to 1331MHz.

The bigger surprise, however, is that the GPU significantly downclocks from 768MHz in docked mode to 307.2MHz in undocked mode – or a 40 percent difference to significantly save power. The company has decided that it will allow developers to safely ignore GPU clockspeeds even while the console is docked, allowing games to run at the lower frequency in full resolution television mode.

In docked mode, the console features a GPU with about 2.5x more power over the same unit running from battery. In theory, this is enough headroom to run a 720p mobile title at 1080p while docked, similar in concept to producing a PS4 game and a PS4 Pro game. In retrospect, even the downclocked 307.2MHz clockspeeds should be capable of outperforming the Wii U’s 550MHz graphics core from four years ago.

System Menu

Upon powering on the console, the user is greeted with a menu interface composed of six primary selection settings – News, Nintendo eShop, Album, Controllers, System Settings, and Sleep Mode. The top right corner shows the time, network connection status and battery life, while the bottom left shows the connected controller status. At the top left corner is the user Pages menu that will toggle between up to eight user profiles. Currently, there are options to set Parental Controls without the Parental Controls App, and Facebook can be used for logging in to find friends and share screenshots. The console does not include any Web browsing functionality at launch, however, as the company has decided to make this a dedicated gaming platform for the time being.

When asked about the absence of Mii characters and applications not transferred from previous consoles, Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima explains:

“In terms of the applications available on Wii U, all of those are not necessarily transferred or installed. In principle, we think about which application needs to be improved or discontinued by looking at consumers' reactions.

“As for Miiverse, while Miiverse will continue to be supported on the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS systems, our approach with the Switch is to make greater use of other established, broadly used social platforms.”

According to EuroGamer, the console is also capable of unlocking additional menu space if you own more than a dozen games. The site reveals that playing a 13th game on the system uncovers a new “all software” option at the end of the home screen’s horizontal games menu. At this point, the full games library can be displayed without the need to scroll sideways.

In addition, the console also supports plugging USB keyboards into the Switch Dock to use for editing text on photos.