Nintendo nailed it. - Nintendo Switch OLED
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,474 words · ~12 min read
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- [Anthony] Nintendo Switch.
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Oh man, I've been waiting for this for a long time.
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I had, one of these guys, a regular Nintendo Switch,
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but I ended up giving it away to a friend who lost theirs.
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So long story short I'm Switchless right now. And I've been kind of waiting for one of these to come out
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in order to, well, get a new Switch.
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Unfortunately it doesn't have quite the upgrades that I was hoping for, but it does report to be, OLED,
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check out this bezel. It's like, hang on, press the home button three times.
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Yep, that's oh, you can't, yeah, yeah. Well, you can kind of see it there that's a thick bezel
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like that reminds me of the Blackberry Playbook. In fact, that's kind of what I felt
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with the Nintendo Switch when it first launched, like, it looks like a really low end Android tablet
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or like knock-off tablet, but obviously the switch has a bunch of party tricks.
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Like it's kickstand here and your Joy-Cons here.
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So you can basically take it anywhere you wanna go and play whatever you wanna play.
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I mean, personally, aside from Nintendo's first party titles,
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there's not a whole lot that I would play on Switch versus any other console or platform for that matter,
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like PC, but it being portable is a huge bonus.
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And we have the Switch Lite here as well.
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That's something that I've kind of, sort of wanted to look into getting,
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cause they're a little bit cheaper, but I mean,
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I don't really like that you can't put it into like kickstand mode,
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you can't take the Joy-Cons off, it's all integrated.
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Well, let's get into the box and see if there's anything immediately obvious
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that makes this more of a cohesive experience.
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Oh, these are not white.
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Well, they are, but they are rather special.
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Oh man I love that aesthetic, this is my favorite dbrand skin.
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Like hands down. The only reason I didn't for my phone here
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is because I just wanted something that would immediately identify it as mine,
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because there are other people in the office with such cases.
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Yeah and even on the back here, they have the, where the battery goes, nice.
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So I take it, this is sponsored by dbrand, we'll get into that later.
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I'm not entirely sure what's involved with that, but okay.
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Here's the Joy-Cons, here's the Nintendo Switch OLED.
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Oh, I'm disappointed. There's nothing on the back of the Switch.
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I guess the robots have failed us. We'll get into the Switch itself in a moment.
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I was going to say that I was really happy about all the cardboard, but,
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everything's individually wrapped.
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Okay, oh, oh, that's interesting.
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The back of the Nintendo Switch dock is significantly changed.
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Now we have this little cutout here, which I'm pretty sure didn't exist in the previous model.
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Open this up, it's not on a straight hinge. It just comes off,
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and we've got AC adapter, HDMI out and LAN, built in LAN.
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That is an excellent addition. Before you had to go out and buy a USB network adapter
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and just kind of hope that it was compatible with the Switch.
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It wasn't a great experience and Wi-Fi isn't a great experience for online play.
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All right, so to compare, this is the new one,
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and okay so there was a little cutout here, but it was very angular and not nearly as,
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as wide as the new one.
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And again, this just kind of hinges and yeah.
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So we've got AC adapter, a USB port, and HDMI out.
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Oh, that is a nice looking screen. Even when it's blank, check this out.
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It's like, is that a little, yeah, it's a little blacker 'cause you can see the,
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where the LCD is versus the bezels on the standard Switch.
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But it's much tougher to see that on the Switch OLED.
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It's very similar in thickness. However, one thing that is not similar
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is this beefy boy kickstand,
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you can actually put this at multiple different angles, they actually got a very good kickstand going here.
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This is like next level, I like it, it's thin,
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but it does feel like it's like got purpose, you know,
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whereas this kickstand it's plastic and is it?
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Yeah, it is definitely plastic. And every time I opened this kickstand,
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I feel like something is going to break. What I can do with this new stand is angle it
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such that not only can you see, oh, hi,
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not only can you see, but I can see too. That is something that you just cannot do
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with this old kickstand. Like we're just right there, yep.
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That's the best you get. I'm honestly surprised that we put up with the old design.
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But it was such a novel concept. The Switch console itself that I guess we just didn't care.
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I wanna see what the screen looks like. Do you want to see what the screen looks like?
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- [Man] Hell Yeah. - Yeah, let's see what the screen looks like after I talk to you about our sponsor dbrand,
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dbrand has something special for us.
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It appears that dbrand has a glass screen protector
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for the brand new Switch OLED. And they have requested that not only I install this,
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but that I test it. (drill motor revving) I am gonna be so happy if I break this,
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let's see if I can align this.
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Oh, this is not good at all. Am I doing this right.
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- [Andy] Probably not. - [Phone Speaking] Note that your tempered glass comes with two pieces,
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just in case you (beep) on your first try. (multiple people laughing)
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- [Anthony] All right, it's not perfect. It's got some stuff under it. Oh, I don't like this.
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(drill motor revving)
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So there's some kind of something on there, but, it just swiped off, interesting.
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All right, let's try more pressure. (drill motor revving)
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All right, I'm putting decent pressure on it right now. I should be going through the table if I was drilling into the wood.
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Yeah, there's nothing, more pressure. (drill motor revving)
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Honestly I like with the pressure I was putting on it. I was more worried that I would like start
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to put more pressure on the OLED than the OLED could take.
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But like, not only did it not go through, like, don't worry too much about the bubbles,
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but there's no scratches, dbrand glass works.
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Get yours at the link below. We should talk about what the screen is covered with.
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So the screen is actually made of glass this time around
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and there's this nice. I'm not sure if the bezel itself has glass too,
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but it kind of wraps around, it's more gentle curve than the Switch,
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or at least that's what it feels like to my fingers. Maybe it's just that it's smoother.
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But there is a screen protector on this,
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which you do not want to take off. It's there so that when the screen breaks,
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if the screen breaks, it doesn't just go everywhere.
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It is not shatter resistant glass. So that's there to catch it.
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You don't want to take that off if you drop your Switch and you don't have that on it,
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that glass is gonna go everywhere. So keep it on there, just enjoy, enjoy it,
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it doesn't feel like actually there's anything on there.
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So they did a pretty good job with that. Switch, that's bright.
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Ooh, whoa, wow, the colors are popping. Wow, check out the, I don't know if you can see,
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the brightness is super high and the saturation of the colors.
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It may be oversaturated, actually, it's not even really a contest actually,
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let me quickly put this in or put this in dark mode, cause that's more appropriate for an OLED anyway.
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That is pretty good. And also the screen is bigger because despite the fact
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that the consoles are the same size, the bezels have been trunk dramatically.
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This is without a doubt, the way that I would want to experience the switch like,
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this console, I was never really happy with,
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and there was a reason why I was okay with giving it away.
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This I would not give away. Like if I were to launch,
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let's just launch Breath of the Wild on both of these real quick.
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The blacks here don't really look all that black,
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they look gray. Here the dynamic range is so much nicer.
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So like, yeah, it's not showing the same screen,
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which is kind of frustrating, but like you can see just how more,
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how much more vibrant this is like that energy arrow,
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that Lincoln shooting there. I haven't actually played Breath of the Wild.
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I'm ashamed to admit, it looks like it's glowing.
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Whereas here this little impact here doesn't really look like much is happening.
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It doesn't show up on the camera. I can see what the camera is seeing.
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The vibrancy of the colors is not showing up nearly as well
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as I can see in person, that is staggering.
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But yeah, even just like the Switch online logo,
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you can see it, it's red, the Metroid Dread logo, it's red.
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This looks muted by comparison, all the colors. Well, it looks kind of like the difference between vibrant
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and SRGB for a monitor or TV, which might strike you as,
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not necessarily what you want. You can see so much more of the screen,
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like it's a seven 720p screen, yes. So you're gonna see pixels,
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but honestly, not really like this screen, it looks fine.
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This screen, yeah.
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Small, medium, large, except not actually larger,
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just the screen is larger. So this is 0.881 pounds, which is 14.1 ounces
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or 400 grams exactly, 424 grams.
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So yeah, it's not that much heavier. Now, it is disappointing that Nintendo
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didn't upgrade the SOC or, give us DLSS
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when we're docked or anything like that. But at this point, that's the kind of thing
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that'll happen with a new console, I think. This is actually a game that I would buy a Switch for.
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(dramatic music)
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Okay, that sounds pretty good. The stereo engine is pretty good.
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Not a whole lot of bass to it. I don't have a whole lot of reference
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for how the original Switch sounded. - [Phone Speaking] Cling to certain walls and ceilings,
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its automated (dramatic music)
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- It is richer, it's also a little bit louder I think. Hey, Linus is here.
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You wanna take a look at these? Yeah. You wanna take, you want to take a look?
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- Yeah, I want to see I'm a mostly handheld guy. Can I just throw these on?
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I just forgot to, wanna experience it here.
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I actually bought one already, I pre-ordered.
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I know, I know, I say don't pre-order and then I pre-ordered, but literally the only real complaint
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that I had about the Switch, because I don't care about the performance from a performance side game on a PC.
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Literally the only thing I cared about, they fixed it, man.
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The bigger size freaking awesome. - [Anthony] Yeah its amazing,
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the bezels on the old one look like a Blackberry playbook. This is amazing.
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- Okay, all right. I am still okay with my pre-order.
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Hey, I love that the best game for this console is still the one that launched, goodbye air gap.
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An air gap is a big deal, you might feel like, oh, Linus your just like fussing about a stupid little thing
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that doesn't matter, but it does multiple things. One, is it makes it so that your off-axis viewing experience
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is not nearly as good, which, okay, sure, yeah, fine, most of the time, it doesn't matter.
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But when you're say, sitting on a plane playing Mario Party
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or something like that, it actually matters quite a lot.
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And the other thing is that it reduces clarity.
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So this is just better. Okay, no, I'm done, I'm getting out of the way.
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Sorry, carry on, have fun - [Anthony] See you a letter. So yeah, you can definitely make out the pixels,
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especially here with the kind of haloing around link
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in the shadow of the clouds. It is very much more noticeable,
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but that doesn't mean it doesn't look good.
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(tab scraping) Oh yeah, every time.
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In this, you can feel it scraping,
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here, it's way less of a concern.
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My goal isn't to review any games, so I guess I don't really need to play any more games
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to get across the differences that we've seen here.
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The dock is significantly upgraded actually when you think about it,
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you don't have to go out and buy a new LAN adapter,
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the Switch itself, beautiful display, better speakers,
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way, way better kickstand, that can go to any angle.
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It's just, it's just better. Now this screen might not be as long lived as an LCD,
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particularly if you're able to replace the backlight and the LCD that's failing.
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But I mean, how long are you gonna think,
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that's really far out. All right, Switch OLED model $ 349 US.
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Okay, and I think these regular switches $299. Am I not, am I correct?
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Actually, yeah. For 50 bucks in the difference, I would totally do it.
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If you don't have a Switch already, if you do have a Switch, now,
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it really depends on your priorities. If you just wanna play the games, then there's no reason to pick up the Switch OLED.
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Especially if you play mostly in docked mode, but if you play in portable mode a lot,
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this I think is the definitive experience.
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And I think it's worth paying the extra 50 bucks for. So yeah, if you wanna see more unboxings
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and first impressions like this one, get subscribed because there's plenty more
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where this came from.
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(glass breaks) Oh yeah, that's tempered glass.