is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
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.
VRR works. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
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.
A Legion Go S with SteamOS plugged into the Switch 2 dock with a USB-C extension. Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge
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 various settings, just to check that intermediate framerates between 48fps and 60fps and 90fps all stayed smooth on my TV.
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?
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