The Nintendo Switch OLED was not the 4K capable device that many thought it would be. The Japanese company also made the rare effort to shoot down notion that there will be one this year a couple of times. But it looks like while the device itself may not be able to, its dock sure looks like it has the capability.
Twitter user @KawlunDram opened up one such dock of the Nintendo Switch OLED, and shared that it contained a new Realtek chip. And it’s one that is advertised as “4K UHD multimedia SoC”. This chip was also reportedly referenced in a firmware update from January this year.
Further supporting this is the HDMI cable that came with the Nintendo Switch OLED. @KawlunDram plugged it into an Xbox One X to check that it supports 4K 60fps, and the results turn out positive, suggesting that it was a HDMI 2.0 cable.
Hi gamers. Nothing ever gets properly done on the internet so I decided to do some digging myself
The DP2HDMI chip on the Switch OLED dock is a RTD2172N KBDQH1 which seems to match what @SciresM datamined from the Switch OS back in January pic.twitter.com/6i2Z8zei0W
— kawlums (@KawlunDram) October 11, 2021
But in the end, the chip may be used simply for the improved audio. The Switch itself should also be able to support 4K output, given that it uses the Nvidia Tegra X1 chip. But considering its graphical performance for most games, that’s probably not the best of ideas.
But if anyone still needs straws to grasp onto, then there’s the existence of an “update dock firmware” function for the dock of the Nintendo Switch OLED. There’s no description of what it does, so one can hope that it can, against all odds, add 4K support the way Bluetooth audio support got added.
(Source: @KawlunDram / Twitter, Nintnedo via VGC)
