> “ While testing was conducted at 60 FPS, the response times even fall short of this low bar, with 16.67 ms being the slowest response time required for the pixels to refresh between frames”
Well it’s actually 16.66 ms (1000 / 60). You can’t round up. A render loop that takes just a fraction more than the absolute minimum above would neck down to 30fps.
addaon · 5m ago
> Well it’s actually 16.66 ms (1000 / 60). You can’t round up. A render loop that takes just a fraction more than the absolute minimum above would neck down to 30fps.
This is about response time, not render loop time. Response time is the analog time required to transition a physical subpixel from one brightness level to another, usually measuring from when the transition starts. A 16.67 ms response time does indeed mean that with a 16.66(6) ms frame period it's still 0.003(3) ms away from completing the transition... but that just means that it's an immeasurable fraction away from the commanded brightness at that time, not that there will be rippling effects to the next frame or anything.
philosophty · 2h ago
It seems like a headless Nintendo Switch 2 that was -$100 might sell a lot of units.
freeone3000 · 2h ago
You might be looking for an Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano, which is the dev board version of the switch 2 base chip. Nvidia sells them for $249.
toast0 · 1h ago
I wanted that for the switch 1, and then Nintendo started selling a lite with no dock instead. Probably most other people use their switches differently than I do. I guess you could get a switch that someone broke the screen, maybe for $100 less.
tibbydudeza · 5h ago
Nintendo owners do not care about tech specs - to them the games is what matters.
frollogaston · 5h ago
Specifically, are the games written in Rust? (jk)
neighbour · 1h ago
I would guess that the overlap between people deeply concerned about display response times and those excited to buy a Switch 2 is tiny. Most Switch buyers aren’t chasing cutting-edge codecs, they’re buying it for Splatoon, Zelda, Mario, and Animal Crossing. Nintendo’s audience has always prioritised unique first-party games and portability over hardware specs.
Speaking from experience, I've been thoroughly enjoying the Switch 2. Even if I knew about this information before I bought the console, it would not impact my purchase decision.
frollogaston · 1h ago
Idk what the new Smash Bros is like, but in Melee, people really cared about input lag. I don't mean people who kept playing as adults like it's a job, just us kids playing on GameCube back then. It felt sloppy on the early LCDs. 33ms is kind of a lot cause that game ran at 60fps.
Probably doesn't matter in other games.
v5v3 · 6h ago
I would guess majority of Switch audience is very young and won't care.
If the response time is really 33ms, maybe they'd be able to tell playing Super Smash Bros. I remember as a kid wondering why Melee felt so weird on one TV.
lincon127 · 3h ago
Checks out
zapzupnz · 6h ago
The comments on that article are wild. They're of people who seemingly play tech specs rather than actual games.
All that mixed in with plenty of people spouting some of the talking points about the screen protector, how the screen in supposedly fragile, etc. that also applied to the Switch OLED. All in all, a lot of unjustifiable, manufactured rage from people who neither own the console nor ever intended to get one.
For $500, were people expecting to put an LG G5 in their backpacks?
Also, I know that we don't editorialise titles on HN, but I wish we could for this: "30 FPS response times" comes directly from the article, but they mean "30 ms", not "30 FPS".
NoPicklez · 4h ago
I don't think people are expecting to put an LG G5 in their backpacks, but shouldn't the average display response time be at least better than its predecessor released 8 years ago?
frollogaston · 6h ago
The "30FPS" part is about how 1/0.030s = 33.33. The article also says "While testing was conducted at 60 FPS, the response times even fall short of this low bar, with 16.67 ms being the slowest response time required for the pixels to refresh between frames such as to avoid blur or smearing." Tbh I don't understand this, I thought refresh rate and response time were totally independent, but 1/0.01667 = 60.
And yeah people complaining about Nintendo hardware is an old thing. Wii can't play BluRay, GameCube can't play DVD, N64 not enough RAM, and before that games/consoles were compared by data bus size. Doesn't really matter usually, except some N64 games were annoyingly laggy like 007 GoldenEye.
labcomputer · 1m ago
> Tbh I don't understand this, I thought refresh rate and response time were totally independent, but 1/0.01667 = 60.
They are, and I also feel like people don't really understand what response time means: It's the time for the pixel to transition from one color to another. More precisely, it's the time to transfer some percentage of the way to the second color. Since the pixel tends to asymptotically approach the destination color, so you get more than 50% of the transition when 50% of the "response time" has passed.
You can have a 240 Hz refresh rate with a 16ms response time. It just means that the pixel won't fully transition to the destination color before it is updated again. So black-white-black-white would look more like black-grey-darkGrey-lightGrey.
Another thing is that if you show people (humans) alternating black and white frames at 240Hz, it's going to look grey anyway.
khedoros1 · 6h ago
I think the point is that if you've got a 120Hz refresh rate but a 30ms response time, the slow response time negates a lot of the benefit of the high refresh rate. You end up with a sliding window of 4 frames of video smeared together.
frollogaston · 6h ago
Ah I misunderstood what response time even is. I thought the whole screen is updating 120 times per second but it's delayed by 30ms, so it looks the same but you perceive input lag. That's not how it works.
UltraSane · 3h ago
The Switch 2 LCD is too slow to actually display 120 frames a second. And it is noticeably smeary. It really isn't acceptable in 2025
UltraSane · 3h ago
An LCD with a claimed refresh rate of n hertz really is implied to have a max GtG latency of 1000ms / n. Anything higher seems dishonest and rather stupid.
Well it’s actually 16.66 ms (1000 / 60). You can’t round up. A render loop that takes just a fraction more than the absolute minimum above would neck down to 30fps.
This is about response time, not render loop time. Response time is the analog time required to transition a physical subpixel from one brightness level to another, usually measuring from when the transition starts. A 16.67 ms response time does indeed mean that with a 16.66(6) ms frame period it's still 0.003(3) ms away from completing the transition... but that just means that it's an immeasurable fraction away from the commanded brightness at that time, not that there will be rippling effects to the next frame or anything.
Speaking from experience, I've been thoroughly enjoying the Switch 2. Even if I knew about this information before I bought the console, it would not impact my purchase decision.
Probably doesn't matter in other games.
Although Nintendo is still clearly targeting families relative to XBox/Sony, the Switch itself has a lot of adult games (e.g. the Cyberpunk port).
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2021/211105e.pdf
All that mixed in with plenty of people spouting some of the talking points about the screen protector, how the screen in supposedly fragile, etc. that also applied to the Switch OLED. All in all, a lot of unjustifiable, manufactured rage from people who neither own the console nor ever intended to get one.
For $500, were people expecting to put an LG G5 in their backpacks?
Also, I know that we don't editorialise titles on HN, but I wish we could for this: "30 FPS response times" comes directly from the article, but they mean "30 ms", not "30 FPS".
And yeah people complaining about Nintendo hardware is an old thing. Wii can't play BluRay, GameCube can't play DVD, N64 not enough RAM, and before that games/consoles were compared by data bus size. Doesn't really matter usually, except some N64 games were annoyingly laggy like 007 GoldenEye.
They are, and I also feel like people don't really understand what response time means: It's the time for the pixel to transition from one color to another. More precisely, it's the time to transfer some percentage of the way to the second color. Since the pixel tends to asymptotically approach the destination color, so you get more than 50% of the transition when 50% of the "response time" has passed.
You can have a 240 Hz refresh rate with a 16ms response time. It just means that the pixel won't fully transition to the destination color before it is updated again. So black-white-black-white would look more like black-grey-darkGrey-lightGrey.
Another thing is that if you show people (humans) alternating black and white frames at 240Hz, it's going to look grey anyway.