When Nintendo announced the Switch OLED, we had to begrudgingly accept that it’s not what we thought it was, despite its improvements. Now, fast forward three months later, and we have a teardown of the device. This comes courtesy of the folks at iFixit.
Beyond the obvious upgrade to the screen, the new Nintendo Switch OLED also comes with a slightly smaller fan on the inside and a thinner heat pipe. It you remember, it’s a similar change to the PS5 when the new revision with the better screw was made available, that is the shrinking of the cooling system’s hardware. This may or may not result in its own debate as to if this is an upgrade or downgrade as far as cooling is concerned.
The teardown of the Nintendo Switch OLED was done alongside the original, so it’s also easier to see the other changes, such as those of the PCBs. There’s some merging going on here. Namely the combining of the SD card reader and the game card reader, as well as the modular storage drive being gone entirely.
Overall, iFixit rated the Nintendo Switch OLED a 7/10 score for repairability. This is one point less than the original, likely due to the merging of card readers into one board and the non-modular storage drive. It is still a pretty good score, all things considered. But it’s quite a bummer if something goes wrong to the game card reader. And it will see a lot of use if you prefer physical copies rather than digital downloads.
(Source: iFixit)
